Google manager: Google Apps replaced Microsoft Office at 100,000 businesses

Stan Beer
Friday, 23 February 2007 15:43

Your IT - Home IT

"We’re not saying get rid of your existing productivity tools," says Gough. "If those are working for you, that’s great. We’re saying the thing that’s really going to make you exponentially more productive is easy sharing of that information and that is accomplished by Google Apps.

"Also there’s a large segment that’s underserved by today’s productivity tools. Production workers and retail employees for instance. 48% of all employees actually don’t even have an email address. That’s because the cost of hardware, software and maintenance has made it prohibitively expensive to provide email to employees.

"Google Apps is tremendously powerful for users that don’t have email right now as well as users that frankly don’t use 80% of the features of some of their productivity tools, while their companies are paying 100% of the price."

While Microsoft is trying convince users that the learning curve of its newly released Office 2007 is worth the cost, Google's message appears to be the exact opposite.

Gough says: "It happens that most people are choosing to work in an online environment, a collaborative environment, an environment that has a user interface that they know, with a familiar interface with search in the center. They are choosing to use Google Apps because they’ve seen how easy to use they are and how productive they can be at home. So they’re saying why can’t they bring Google into the workplace and have those same benefits and usability.

"This is especially key for growing companies. Google has adopted Google Apps because we’re a high growth company and we’re hiring people at a rapid rate. We can’t afford to have them be unproductive even for that first week when they’re trying to figure out how to use their calendar and email system. We need them productive from the first day and that’s what Google Apps gives them."

Gough dismisses the argument pushed by desktop proponents that the Archilles heel of Web 2.0 productivity tools is the necessity of being online to access information.

“I think that we have a hyper-connected world," says Gough. "You don’t have to be connected just from your computer to Google Apps. You can also be connected from your mobile phone, your Blackberry or from a kiosk at the airport. All those places are where business is getting done and all those places are increasingly wired.

"That’s not to say that you can’t have off-line access to content. Things like the ability to pop out your email and read it on any program, whether it’s Outlook, open source, or an Apple program – you’re able to do that. For Calendar, we support open standards. We support iCal format so that you can export your calendar and you can have it available offline."

Gough even has an answer for the old Microsoft lock-in argument, where years of data is bound up in proprietary Microsoft Office files.

"It’s as simple as an email," he says. "I can actually email any document I want to whether it’s Microsoft Office, HTML or text. Once I’ve created it, I can email it to a special email address and automatically it’s in Docs and Spreadsheets. Or I can open up Docs and Spreadsheets, browse for a file on my local drive and upload it."

The coming months should prove interesting for both Google and Microsoft, with both releasing new diametrically opposed products representing the new and old worlds of IT. Some analysts are starting to refer to Google Apps as a disruptive technology, a particularly ominous phrase for Microsoft.