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Is Tableau The Next Google?

Posted by timothy on from the tabuleau-rasa dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "At least, the founders of Tableau Software, a small company established in 2003 and based in Seattle, come from Stanford University, where they worked down the hall with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin back in 1997. In 'Tableau making name for itself,' the Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes that Tableau intends to make structured databases easy to use the way Google did with unstructured data. So the company is turning databases into easy-to-generate graphics. Tableau doesn't say who are its customers, but claims that it has more than 100 installations and that it's already profitable. This graphical data mining tool runs on desktops and costs $1,000 per user for a standard edition and $1,600 per user for a professional version. Will this company be successful and become another Google? Read more and decide after looking at an example of database drilling."

5 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. Incoherence by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This news posting is so technically incoherent as to be really quite pointless beyond corporate advertising.

    Unstructured data? What are you talking about? Data is by definition structured! This tool just looks like yet another OLAP tool, which have been around for awhile now.

    How does this compare to google in any way other than that they are both companies that use computers? Total incoherence.

  2. I doubt it... by Number_1_Bigg$ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They won't be another Google because Google made something that everyone on the internet uses, while Tableau makes something useful for only a small group of businesses. Plus it's not free as in beer.

    Unless I'm missing something...

    1. Re:I doubt it... by jdray · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't think you're missing anything. The only things these guys have in common with Google are a) they made a small leap in technology with an existing paradigm, and b) they used to work down the hall from the Google founders.

      AFAIK, Google only cleaned up the look of web searching and started inserting search-specific ads into results pages. Not rocket science, just a good idea. It turned out that they had the right recipie, and they're on top for the foreseeable future.

      But, then, maybe I'm just a curmudgeon...

      --
      The Spoon
      Updated 6/28/2011
  3. The "Next Google?" by imag0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This graphical data mining tool runs on desktops and costs $1,000 per user for a standard edition and $1,600 per user for a professional version. Will this company be successful and become another Google?

    Let's see:

    One has a kick ass interface and is free.
    One runs on windows and cost over 1K per user

    One is geek friendly and intelligent.
    One is utterly, utterly unknown.

    One has "Do No Evil" all over their offices
    One astroturfs Slashdot for a news story

    Dunno guys. I think it's a wash.

  4. Not another google. by daver_au · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I use google many times a day. I can't see this graphing tool becoming as ubiqituous as Google. I can't see that company name entering the English language as a verb like google.

    Can you pay to get your story on Slashdot these days? This seems more like advertising. It certainly isn't interesting news.