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Google Apps Slow to Replace Competition
ericatcw brings us a Computerworld article about how businesses are still hesitant to switch to Google Apps as an alternative to Microsoft Office. While a Google spokesman claims "millions of active users", only "several thousand organizations" have paid for the Premier service, which was launched earlier this year. From Computerworld:
"'If we deploy it correctly, Google Docs can replace some [of] our Office apps -- but not all of them,' said Les Sease, IT director of Prudential Carolina Real Estate in North Charleston, South Carolina. Sease would like to switch everyone over completely to Google Apps. But first he would like to see better synchronization between Google Apps and mobile devices, shared online file storage similar to that of Apple Inc.'s .Mac, as well as a simple desktop publishing tool similar to Microsoft Publisher."
A UI based in JavaScript or even pure HTML is horridly inefficient.
Yeah, I gave the google apps a test drive last week, and although the word processor seemed fine on my (relatively recent) hardware, the spreadsheet was just pathetically slow. All that could change, though, when the Tamarin JIT compiler for javascript gets incorporated into Firefox.
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For pete's sake, two HUNDRED MHz? I had a faster computer than that in 1996. You're not the typical user, or even in the ballpark.
The Pentium Pro peaked at 200MHz.
The Pentium peaked at 233MHz, but that chip was not released until June 2, 1997
The Pentium II debuted at 233MHz, on May 7, 1997.
By the way, for the original poster: For mere pocketchange, many, many "Socket 6" motherboards can be upgraded to 500MHz [or higher] with a K6-2 [or, in some instances, a K6-3]:
On the other hand, if you're running a Pentium Pro at 200MHz, then there was an upgrade part to 333MHz, called the "OverDrive"; here's a guy who appears to be selling one of them for $15.99:
Now as far as being the "typical" user, I've got some older Socket 6 motherboards [some of them Intel TX chipsets, others VIA chipsets] which, with 500MHz K6-2's, can still handle most of the stuff I throw at them, although, admittedly, AJAX, Flash, and Acrobat Reader can be a pain in some web pages [particularly in poorly coded pages, like the "New & Improved" Slashdot, which can produce some really awful hangs with its sloppy Javascript].
Personally, I've often thought that the Socket 6's potential for a five-fold [or, in some cases, greater than five-fold] increase in speeds [when upgrading from circa 100MHz, to circa 500MHz] was, dollar for dollar, the greatest value in the history of the Personal Computer.
To get the equivalent bang for the buck nowadays, there would need to be a roughly 3GHz motherboard on the market already, which, five or ten years from now, would be capable of an upgrade to 15GHz.
And I just don't see that happening.
About the most you might hope for is that some single-core motherboards could get upgraded to maybe quad or octal cores, but I kinda doubt you'll have much luck with that.
You're exceptionally lucky if a really outstanding board, like an older Tyan, is capable of upgrading from single-core to [merely] dual-core.
Your response is a misdirection. The point that I am making here is that the mere fact that a product or service underperforms today is not always good evidence of its future performance. The point is to look at the product, its vendor, and how the vendor is positioning the product in the market. If the vendor does a good job of matching a product or a service to the proper customer base, they can succeed. The theory of disruptive innovation helps us answer a key question: how is it that so many great companies have failed?
Before Christensen, the answer was that management failed to follow the needs of their current customers. Christensen shifted the focus by helping to identify the relationship between great companies and emerging demographics. Google is a great company today because it saw that you don't try to sell Linux to the same customers who buy Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office the same way that Microsoft sells those products: in a desktop computer or notebook used by power users. At least not at first. Instead, rent Linux to them 1/10th of a second at a time.
My point exactly. At one time, steel production in North America was dominated by large integrated steel mills. They produced all types of steel, from rebar at the bottom, to sheet metal at the top. Then along came mini-mills. They used recycled steel, rather than raw ore, to create steel. But they were not able to produce blemish-free steel, no matter how hard they tried. So, rather than compete with the integrated mills for the production of the high margin sheet metal, they produced rebar, because surface blemished don't matter for rebar. Eventually, the mini-mills were able to produce rebar at prices that the integrated mills couldn't match, so the integrated mills exited the rebar market.
And their investors rejoiced.
Because rebar customers are disloyal, price-sensitive customers. But more and more mini-mills sprung up, and the price of rebar collapsed, as the mini-mills fought with each other over price. So the smart managers of the mini-mills focused on creating steel for angle iron, which requires slightly better surface quality than rebar, but still far less quality than structural steel or sheet metal. Lather, rinse, repeat, and the integrated mills exited the angle iron market because they couldn't compete with the mini-mills on price.
And their investors rejoiced.
Because now angle iron customers had become disloyal, price-sensitive customers. Mini-mills turned to the production of angle iron by the droves, and the price of angle iron collapsed. So smart managers of the mini-mills turned to structural steel, which requires slightly better surface quality than angle iron, but far less than sheet metal. Lather, rinse, repeat, and the integrated mills exited the structural steel market because they couldn't compete with the mini-mills on price.
This time, their investors did not rejoice.
The pattern was becoming clear. Large, integrated mills had huge cost structures, and they could not compete with the mini-mills on price, but the mini-mills were showing no end to their ability to produce high quality steel out of low-grade raw materials. The big mills were hugely expensive, required huge labor pools to run. Not a single integrated mill has been built in North America since the mid-seventies as a result, and all the dominant integrated mills have closed.
Microsoft employs 70,000 people, and has a market capitalization of about $335 billion as of the market's close today. Google has a market capitalization of about $216 billion
I tried it while I was at my parents' house. They have 256K connection that is fairly slow, but Google Docs took 10 freaking minutes just to put something on the screen! It was utterly ridiculous! Then I had to wait for the formatting options to load. No thanks. I could load the entire Office 2007 suite on my slow-ass laptop faster than it took Google to show me the first thing it could render.
FUD.
Sure, it could, but given the face Google would lose, it seems unlikely they would suddenly pull it.
Exactly. That's like saying Google would launch a service where you could buy videos and then a year or two later pull the service so you can't watch those videos any more.
With a company with the size and profile of Google, that just aint going to happen.