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Google Declares War on Microsoft
hajmola writes "According to an article in The Inquirer, 'Google has confirmed that it will launch free spreadsheet and word-processing software online and take on Microsoft in one of its biggest markets. Under the deal, Google will allow web users to access Sun's OpenOffice from a toolbar.'" This is full confirmation of a story from Tuesday. Forbes thinks this isn't anything to write home about, while InfoWorld disagrees.
Excuse me. StarOffice is Sun's. OpenOffice is ours.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
1. Customers win as there are better cheaper choices
2. Google wins because well just because they are google
3. Microsoft because they can now say they have competition
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
Ignoring the fact that this seems like more speculation (already well discussed with less then 10 comments), how exactly is this a threat to Microsoft and its Office family? Microsoft's main customer for it's 500$+ office suite is not home users, but businesses. Taking away some home users (half of whom where likely running pirated copies) is like a drop in the barrel.
For a business, dropping out $500 isn't much, especially when compared to wages (this is something OSS needs to understand when they try and convince businesses they're cheaper - the initial cost is meaningless, they want figures on the support cost). On the other hand, having your critical work depend on a network connection to some internet server is quite a huge risk (especially if you can't call up that internet server and demand instant human support for any little problem). And that's before you figure in the fact that Google's whole business model is personal information data mining. Even if Google is going to give their song and dance that they won't use it for evil, most companies aren't going to let a 3rd party store their documents, let alone run an automated program over every document they have mining out key information. As has been shown in the past "Google Hacking" is often used to get to information you weren't supposed to see. Can you imagine "Google Hacking" used for corporate espionage? A company wants to know if their competitor is looking into sprockets. So they take out an "ad" on Google specifically targeted at that keyword, but with completely different ad text. They then record IPs from incoming clicks to gauge if that ad was shown to people in the target company a lot, indicating that Google had mined that phrase from many of their documents and emails (gmail). And that's before you consider the fact that Google becomes a serious hacking target (even to hostile foreign governments), since a breach would affect tens of thousands of companies. With so many eggs in one basket it might be enough to warrent a physical breakin, stealing the data of thousands of companies, which are then sold to competitors or held for blackmail.
Yes, MS has some strong arming advantages in their tactics to protect themselves from Google, but they've already been limited by the government, people are becoming frustrated with MSFT's stock performance over the past five years, and CNBC has been pointing out threats like Linux and the world is taking it seriously.
So, in addition to software quality, Google's war will be helped greatly by their brand, imo.
Google isn't declaring "war" on Microsoft. That isn't their way. I know several people who work at Google, and they just don't talk about "killing" companies the way Microsoft employees do. It truly is a different work culture there. If someone does use "the K word" at an all-hands meeting or something, the bosses are quick to say that they don't want the employees to think about things that way.
Google can be a resoundingly successful company even if Microsoft is alive and well, and they're fine with that. The only thing Google needs from Microsoft is for them not to put up artificial barriers to accessing Google's services, such as modifying IE in ways that hamper Google. So I'm sure Google would love to see everyone using a non-MS browser such as Firefox.
I really think Google's strategy is (or should be) to lift the key services and applications from the OS up into well-made web services. Word processing is a huge one for most of us. I'm still anxiously hoping that a calendar and scheduler (Outlook-type program) comes along soon to integrate with Gmail. Once Google fills those needs, assuming they do it well, I'll really enjoy having consistent services that I can use from anywhere, on any platform.
I think you may be missing another part of the value equation. Previously, people had to buy:
1) A Java runtime ($0)
2) The Google Toolbar ($0)
3) OpenOffice.org. ($0)
This cost users a prohibitively high price (3 times $0!) Now, thanks to these revolutionary decisions by Sun and Google, you only have to pay $0 once. One enormous $0 download. What a deal! A third the price for all the functionality.
When Microsoft signed the deal with Sun, they never realized that Google might want to use that against them. They can now use Sun software as a service via Google, and infringe on any of Microsoft's Office patents, without the threat of a lawsuit. OpenOffice does not have this ability. Microsoft WOULD sue Openoffice.org if it became very popular. Under the agreement, there is no limit to the way Sun could distribute the application/service.
Go Google!
i for one want to be able to work on my document wherever i can get online, and leverage the sheer size of my Gmail account more flexibly. at university i never get the same box every time and they wipe them completely, word reinstalls to default settings every time i login. I connect to a central server for my files and thats the only degree of portability between machines. Not to mention being unable to get anything but http in the linux labs (they even borked SSH to their public linux Terminal server) they fear linux there. I want this portability badly. Sit down, open my personalised google, open my half finished report, resume working, save, close, logout. change rooms, repeat progress. all without stuffing round with my acurrsed central login, so i can use ANY machine to work on with any login, as long as ive got net access i can happily get to my work and work with my settings :)
XML - A clever joke would be here if
Word wasn't "better" than WordPerfect (if you are running a transcription service or something similar, people have the FASTEST results with WP 5.1 than ANY modern system), and Excel wasn't "better" than Lotus 1-2-3. However, they were less than half the price and you could get the bundle for less than either program individually.
With respect, you're wrong. WordPerfect and Lotus were the best office apps for *DOS*. Microsoft couldn't sell *any* copies of Word or Excel for DOS because they were out-done.
Microsoft's business growth depended on selling apps so they devised a strategy to change the platform.
Microsoft created pushed Windows, and Word and Excel were far-and-away the best Office apps for the Windows environment.
They couldn't compete on DOS apps, so they changed the platform. This is exactly what Google is now doing to them. No one in the world can compete with Microsoft on Windows Office apps, so Google is changing the platform to the web.
Will work. Microsoft is in trouble.
Sam