Jennifer Rice has an interesting take on some of the less-than-positive remarks being directed Google’s way after the release of their experimental beta online spreadsheet last week. She points out, as others have, that saying “but it doesn’t do everything that Excel does” is probably exactly what Google is trying to accomplish. That said, I do expect some of the fancier features such as charting to show up soon. Jennifer says more:
So going back to Google’s “half-assed” version of Excel: if they’re following the classic path of industry disruption, they should be pleased when they hear scoffing remarks about their beta products. This allows them room to establish a foothold at the base of the mountain, serving customers that Microsoft (apparently) doesn’t want. They can gain experience, add new features, gradually move up-market, and eventually take the high ground.
The biggest problem we have in the office suite market right now is people trying to create a clone of Microsoft Office. Analysts like Steve O’Grady of Redmonk have pointed this out before and it is a bit counter-intuitive. On one hand, Microsoft has such a big marketshare, more than 90%, that you would think that you will never get adoption of another product unless it does everything Microsoft does in pretty much the same way.
There aren’t too many ways to compete after that except perhaps on price and support. Price can be a big motivator and there will be people who go to open source or bundled document editors just to avoif paying the really big bucks for Office. Many people may just stay put because it’s the simplest thing to do even if some money could be saved. That is, the path of least resistance oten gets followed.
So what do you do if you really want to compete? You rely on a disruption in the market that you’ve either created or in which you are taking part. Arguably, Google is doing both. Give the people just want they want with a new paradigm that is becoming more familiar to them everyday. Look at Google Sync, a new Firefox add-on that makes it easy to pick up your browser environment and move it anywhere else you want it. My understanding from what I’ve read is that it’s not yet perfect, but it will be. Then wherever you are, there you are. That is, you won’t think of your desktop or laptop as an anchor that you have to go visit to get work done. If you can have access to your email, your calendar, your documents, your spreadsheets anywhere you are, that’s a pretty powerful advantage over the traditional office suite approach.
I don’t think Google will be the only one to do this, not by far. I hope that we see office technology being pulled apart and combined in new ways and with new things, both proprietary and open source. The race is on for a new vision of how we’ll deal with documents and be productive in the future. If you say “I’m just going to use what I have now,” you’re not even stepping up to the line to begin.
“The biggest problem we have in the office suite market right now is people trying to create a clone of Microsoft Office. Analysts like Steve O’Grady of Redmonk have pointed this out before and it is a bit counter-intuitive.”
Precisely! Microsoft itself snookered themselves with their WinCE version of MS Office, because they were trying to clone MS Office in a consumer embedded-electronics version of MS Windows.
It’s one thing I can claim to have put some thought into. With space as small as that, you can’t think like a PC developer, any more than you can think like a mainframe developer when you’ve got no MMU. I’ve been thinking of rolling all the interpreter stuff into one big ball – because face it, it takes up room, and when it’s not talking to some database, it’s better off listening to the word processor, or web browser, or suchlike.
I expect Google.com will succeed with their on-line spreadsheet – more so by giving the idea of online office suites credibility than by sheer weight of numbers uptake of their own spreadsheet offering. In which case they’ll be merely the biggest fish in a very large pond, rather than a very big fish in a very small pond, which appears to be Microsoft’s problem as we speak.
Of course, anything they take as standard is likely to gain traction from that.
No Google Spreadsheet isn’t Excel and neither is Writely MSWord — but who cares. Most people don’t use anything but a small percentage of the featues in MSOffice — don’t know that they’re there and don’t care anyway. I use Gmail and Google calendar and love them. I’m using Google Spreadsheet for such things as our Xmas card address list — that has been re-created 3 time in the last 5 years because the home computer it sat on kept needing reformatting. Now it’s safe and backed up and my wife and I can edit it from any computer. I also use Google Pages if I want to throw something up on the web in a hurry — say for people on a mailing list to look at. All of these apps are free, easy to use, always accessible and backed up — and those are good things as far as I’m concerned. I can see the day when the only thing I’ll need on a home machine is a web browser and a minimal harddrive — and if GDrive comes out I won’t even need that.