Following on Google's announcement of their online spreadsheet product, I had a chance to chat with a friend who works at Microsoft. In the discussion we had, I expressed concern for his current workplace due to this move by Google. "Why should Microsoft care?" he asked, to which I responded with the following theory:
Facts:
1. Microsoft's major sources of revenue are from their Office and Windows products.
2. MS Office is dominating the market and has no real competition.
3. MS Office runs only on Windows (or primarily runs on windows)
4. Google recently bought an online word processing tool by the name of Writley
5. Online applications are gaining popularity over desktop applications.
Estimates:
1. Google to release an online version of office during 2006/2007
2. Once people can get office for free, Microsoft office sales figures will drop
3. If I can get most of my applications online using a browser only interface, there is no need to buy an OS but use free ones such as Linux.
I heard of Microsoft vision of moving their applications online but to this I say "it might be too little and too late"
Let me know what you think...
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Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Google VS Microsoft
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2 comments:
I’m surprised, coming from MS that you don’t acknowledge the obvious: 95% of Google’s customers come to the via Windows. By making search integrated into the Vista OS, defaulting to live,com and bypassing the browser, MS — just by providing search results that are “good enough” for most customers — can put a big dent in Google’s revenue. Could be why Google is trying so desperately to diversify their product offerings beyond browser-based search.
People make such a big deal about Google Office taking aim at Microsoft’s major source of income, while never acknowledging just how vulnerable Google’s single source of income is.The concept of storing my sensitive excel data in the web scares me.The google docs which they have given so much hype is not better than an average HTML Editor. .
These are twon interesting concepts you've raised. Hmmm... guess I need to think about this.
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