On Microsoft Office’s Perilous Future

Microsoft’s technology dominates corporate IT departments. The sad reality is that businesses have been slow to adopt the new cloud stuff. And yet, when it comes time for businesses to finally upgrade their tech, they are realizing that Google’s offering is not only superior to Microsoft’s, but it is also a lot cheaper.

NY Times:

Google maximizes the appeal of documents, calendars and spreadsheets at a cost of $50 a person a year. Many companies say that is 50 percent to 80 percent cheaper than Office.

Not to mention, Google is forcing Microsoft in to spending a bunch of money on customer retention. Slowly, Google is chipping away at Microsoft’s profit share.

NY Times:

Most corporate software is sold through big consulting firms, like I.B.M. or Accenture, but Google has yet to use a partner. “They have approached other companies, but others think it’s not in their best interest,” said David M. Smith, an analyst with Gartner. He estimates Google gets just $150 million a year from Apps, and that it is not enough to cover costs. Google says it does make a profit.

Instead, it uses the business in “asymmetric warfare” with Microsoft. “Google spends $1 to make Microsoft spend $10 defending itself, because Microsoft went after Google on search,” Mr. Smith said.

Microsoft is dismissive of the situation.

Your new home office will sit in the cloud and be paid for by your employer. Face it, that is the future. Look at the current crop of recent college grads. An unprecedented number of us are working from home on our computers (me!).

This setup benefits not just the employee, but also the employer. Employers can use the cloud to cut costs. Social interaction with your coworkers will be done in the cloud, not at the physical office. At least, that is what Marc Benioff wants us to believe.

When it comes time to upgrade their infrastructure, businesses will make a rational choice and choose Google Apps over Microsoft Office — it is cheaper and easier to use.

(Source: techmeme.com)

Google Reader Gets A Redesign, Dumps Social Features

Today Google is announcing a new design for Google Reader. As part of the redesign, Google is axing all of Reader’s social features. No more friending, no more following and no more sharing.

Google is telling users to transition over to Google+ if they want to continue using social features as part of their daily news consumption. This is inline with the general direction of where RSS is headed. RSS serves as a bloodline to many of the world’s most popular websites, but nowadays people prefer to consume news on their favorite social networking site. Google hopes that users of Google Reader will transition over to Google+, and not Twitter or Facebook. 

To appease disgruntled users, Google is announcing a new feature which exports all of the data that will soon be deleted. This includes Subscriptions, Shared Items, Friends, Likes and Starred Items. For more information, check out the official Google blog. 

Google Partners with Samsung for Ice Cream Sandwich Launch

Today Google unveiled Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of the Android OS. Google partnered with Samsung for the launch. The Samsung Galaxy Nexus will serve as the official launch phone for Ice Cream Sandwich. 

Ice Cream Sandwich introduces a few new features to the Android OS, including one called Face Unlock. Face Unlock uses the phone’s front-facing camera to identify who is holding the device. The phone is unlocked when the owner’s face is detected.

Google also announced that Ice Cream Sandwich will come with native support for HD. This is comparable to the iPhone’s retina display. The official launch phone, the Galaxy Nexus, packs a 1280 x 720 display. This makes makes full use of Ice Cream Sandwich’s HD, but it comes at a cost.

The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is HUGE. The device packs a 4.65-inch screen. It’s predecessor, the Galaxy S II, only had a 4.3-inch screen. No word on why Android manufacturers feel the need to keep upping their devices’ screen size. These phone are starting to get a little too big. Eventually, Levis will have to start making jeans with bigger pockets. But I don’t want to have to buy new jeans.

It looks like I am not the only one who is worried about covering his arse. The head of Samsung’s mobile division said that the Galaxy Nexus was “carefully constructed around Apple’s patent portfolio.” In other words, Samsung did everything they could to not get sued by Apple. Recently, Apple was granted an injunction against Samsung, which halted all sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab in Australia.

Head over to Techmeme for more coverage of the event.

Google Blows Past Analysts’ Expectations, Revenue Is Up 33%

Google reported just shy of $10 billion in revenue accrued last quarter, blowing past analysts’ expectations. The 13 year old company’s revenue is up 33 percent year-over-year.

Larry Page has brought a newfound focus to Google. In the last quarter alone, Google deadpooled over 20 products. This allowed Google to focus more heavily on its long-term strategy — to build a relationship with its users.

Google+ is part of Google’s long-term strategy. The business is still new, but it is growing very quickly. About 40 million users have signed up for an account, and the service has only been out of beta for a week. Another statistic, over 3.4 billion photos have been shared on Google+. So far, the service has shown exceptional growth. Google expects that this growth will carry into Q4 2011.

On the other hand, Google says they want to perfect Google Offers before they do a fullscale roll out. The service is offered in just 11 markets, which is much less than Groupon and Living Social. But Google likes the position they are in. Groupon has not been doing too well. In fact, Groupon’s current valuation is far less than what Google estimated when they were going to acquire Groupon last year. On the off chance that Groupon does implode, expect Google to pounce on the daily deals business.

Google ($GOOG) ended the trading day up 6.9 percent to close at $558.9. The stock carried that momentum into after-hours. At the time of this post, Google was up another 5 percent in after-hours trading.

For more information, be sure to check out Google’s official press release.

Topsy Brings Its Popular Social Search Algorithm to Google+

Topsy is known for being the best third-party search client for Twitter. Well now everyone’s favorite Twitter search engine is bringing its popular crawl algorithm to Google+.

As Google+’s popularity grows, we can expect to see more third party extensions spring up. In particular, Topsy’s announcement is great because it services a void in the market. Face it, Google+’s search interface sucks. Google, a search company, has so far blown the opportunity to innovate on social search with its own Google+ product.   

It will be fun to watch Google compete with Topsy on its own platform. Google has a home-court advantage, but Topsy’s specially tailored social algorithm is a major win. 

Stay tuned.