MY THOUGHTS

This isn’t news to most people, but to me it is a major league big deal see the Official Google Blog for more details.

Google Apps (Docs, Gmail, Calendar and Talk) are out of Beta.  What does this mean in reality to most of us – absolutely nothing.  These Google applications will all act the same as before, Google will make changes as they think they need to and we will be able to access our “stuff” either online or offline (if we remember to switch “gears”).

Please note – no Beta tags.

So why do I consider this a big deal?  Beta to me and I believe a lot of other people, means an application or software that is not quite ready yet and needs more work.  The removal of the Beta tag from Google Apps tells everyone that Google has enough faith in its product to not tell everyone that it still needs work.

I still do not  believe that Google apps is ready to compete head to head with Microsoft Office right now.  However, with the Beta label removed, it can compete more than favorably with other online word processors that are already out there (Zoho Writer, Adobe Buzzword, ThinkFree, etc.).  Statistics on cloud word processor market share are difficult to find, so I hesitate to comment on how Google Apps is competing against the other cloud word processors.  If it can dominate market share among the online word processors with the Business and consumer users, then it might have a chance to compete on a more equal footing with Microsoft Office 2010,  which will have its own Cloud version of Office that Google Apps must compete with. 

I don’t foresee Google Apps supplanting Microsoft Office as the dominant player in “productivity suites” in the near future (the next 5 years).  Google Apps is currently stereotyped as more a consumer/individual/student than a business model application.  For Google to break into the business market, it is going to have to break down the stereotype it has built for itself with its Google Apps.  Unfortunately, for them part of that stereotype was developed when Google decided to have a 5 year beta for their product.  It will probably take 5 more years to get rid of the consumer stereotype that businesses view Google Apps. 

In 5 years it will be interesting to look and see how the non-beta Google Apps has competed with Microsoft Office and the other online Word Processors and the improvements that all of them will have compared to the first generation productivity suites that are currently in the cloud.

Those are my thoughts, what are yours? Please leave a comment below, so I will know your thoughts.


This work by Harold L. Shaw, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.