4 ms·

What's Holding Back Google Apps?

20 points by hko 17y ago

invisible 17y ago
The answer is really simple - a solid marketing campaign is missing. They have relied on public attention for every other product they've produced (AdSense and AdWords included).
chollida1 17y ago
> Google Apps, on the other hand, store data on Google's servers. "That's probably our biggest stumbling block to going bigger with Google," Simpson says. This is a huge problem for many companies. Some documents you really don't care if Google stores or not. However our compliance officer told us that we can't by law store rough drafts of our annual report or any spreadsheets dealing with unreported numbers on any servers but our own. Google really needs to address this issue if it wants companies to move fully to it's solution.
- SamAtt 17y ago
  I'll second this. We've been experimenting with Zoho Office which has an API (at least for it's most important apps). I'm shocked that Google (a company with way more resources) hasn't at least matched what Zoho is doing in the space.
  - tvon 17y ago
    I'm not sure I follow. First, Google Apps has an API: http://code.google.com/apis/apps/ http://code.google.com/apis/apps/ though I can't speak to it's completeness next to the Zoho API. Second, an API has nothing to do with where the data is stored, unless I'm missing something...?
- ajju 17y ago
  Either Google needs to put all their apps on servers inside your perimeter or compliance laws need to change to allow companies to store data in the cloud as long as there are reasonable security measures. I would bet on the latter. In the end it won't be just office-in-the-cloud that drives the change but also S3 and EC2.
  - epe 17y ago
    Exactly. GE may have the resources to safeguard data on its own servers better than Google could, but the average small/medium business almost certainly does not.
    - chollida1 17y ago
      The over all problem is that only a certain set of people should have access to non publicly disclosed data. Putting this data on another companies servers is a gross violation of the law. If a Google employee can see the raw data that belongs to a Google Docs user then Google Docs will never be sufficient for fully replacing locally installed software.
- joseakle 17y ago
  Your compliance officer said that? These guys http://www.boardvantage.com/ http://www.boardvantage.com/ have hundreds of customers using their hosted solution just for that, holding unreported numbers for reporting.
edw519 17y ago
"What's Holding Back Google Apps?" Speed and simplicity. Microsoft Office is slow and complicated. Google Apps are slower and, in some ways, more complicated. Need examples of outrageous successes using speed and simplicity: email, instant messaging, texting, .txt files. Google Apps must be more like these, faster and simpler, for widespread adoption.
- Flemlord 17y ago
  I disagree that MS Office is slow or complicated. It's very fast on every one of my machines, especially compared to Java-based alternatives. And it's extremely simple to use. Granted, there are complicated features but I generally don't use them and they're hidden away on ribbon strips that I never see.
  - edw519 17y ago
    "they're hidden away on ribbon strips that I never see" Because you've already hidden them. Along with that fricken dancing paper clip. Many people, when initially overwhelmed by unnecessary features, just refuse to adopt and stick with something simpler. That's Google's biggest problem with Apps.
    - MrRage 17y ago
      Have you used Office 2007 at all? They're hidden away by default. The whole purpose of the ribbon was to manage the complexity better. Plus, there's no paper clip. It's not the '90s anymore.
  - hs 17y ago
    i agree, it's amazing what ms office can do these days. my niece did image manipulation (gradient, bending, shearing, shadowing) by just clicking on previews in ms office 2009?. the same feat would take me 15 mins in gimp
- jimbokun 17y ago
  The purpose of Excel is to analyze your business's data to make better decisions. Is there a way to make that not "slow and complicated?" Making it too fast and simple might result in bad analysis. There are specific uses for Excel that might be made faster and simpler. But I'm not sure that you can replace all the uses of Excel with something faster and simpler. Another way to look at it, Excel is a faster, simpler way to solve problems that would otherwise require programming. In that sense, Excel is already the faster, simpler alternative.
ZeroGravitas 17y ago
Inertia. The same thing keeping anyone stuck on outmoded middle of the road platforms like Office. But Google are good enough to be picking folk up in various niches, and there's other smaller players getting play too. Standard disruptive innovation stuff. Some of this article sounds a bit anti-Google, pro-Microsoft but really if, as far as GE is concerned, Microsoft is simply one of three options for an office suite, and its main plus is local data (rather than say total omnipresence) then compared with a few years ago that's a terrible place for Microsoft to be.
jimbokun 17y ago
'"Building a sales staff to proffer its applications is a labor-intensive endeavor that hasn't been part of the company's DNA, says Zachary Nelson, CEO of online accounting software maker NetSuite (N). "If you want to sell enterprise software, you have to have salespeople," he says.' This seems the most concise summary of the problem. Enterprise sales is very different than their consumer facing, ad supported businesses. And adding an enterprise style sales force is probably a mistake, as it runs counter to Google's business culture. Then you have two kinds of companies joined at the hip, one that makes decisions by algorithm to keep cost of sales to a minimum, and another that uses steak and strippers to sell product. It is not clear why you should have one firm at that point, rather than spin off the enterprise products into their own entity. 'Creating new ways to analyze business data inside Apps has been "harder to get up on the priority list" given Google's long list of projects, according to Sam Schillace, a Google engineering director who created the software that's the basis for Google's word processor.' On the other hand, this seems the place where Google could add value. Surely, there must be Google engineers with clever ideas about how to employ Google's infrastructure and machine learning algorithms to slurp in all the data in a business's spreadsheets and spit out interesting, actionable information that would be difficult for that business to recreate on its own?
eugenejen 17y ago
I had a discussion 3 weeks with coworkers. I thought the reason why Google Apps and others are not making that progress fast enough is not purely technology limitation on the web platform. Google are in fact may be very careful not to put themselves in the same pair of shoes as Microsoft did to get sued on basis of anti-trust. Of course now we all heard from Techcrunch that DOJ has interested in building possible case against Google.
bayareaguy 17y ago
I'd use Google Apps more if they were actually Google App Engine applications which I could choose to run locally, on Google's server or on a third-party's system.
chanux 17y ago
Googlefail? :) http://www.roomatic.com/%23googlefail http://www.roomatic.com/%23googlefail

20 points by hko 17y ago

The answer is really simple - a solid marketing campaign is missing. They have relied on public attention for every other product they've produced (AdSense and AdWords included).

chollida1 17y ago

> Google Apps, on the other hand, store data on Google's servers. "That's probably our biggest stumbling block to going bigger with Google," Simpson says. This is a huge problem for many companies. Some documents you really don't care if Google stores or not. However our compliance officer told us that we can't by law store rough drafts of our annual report or any spreadsheets dealing with unreported numbers on any servers but our own. Google really needs to address this issue if it wants companies to move fully to it's solution.

SamAtt 17y ago
I'll second this. We've been experimenting with Zoho Office which has an API (at least for it's most important apps). I'm shocked that Google (a company with way more resources) hasn't at least matched what Zoho is doing in the space.
- tvon 17y ago
  I'm not sure I follow. First, Google Apps has an API: http://code.google.com/apis/apps/ http://code.google.com/apis/apps/ though I can't speak to it's completeness next to the Zoho API. Second, an API has nothing to do with where the data is stored, unless I'm missing something...?
ajju 17y ago
Either Google needs to put all their apps on servers inside your perimeter or compliance laws need to change to allow companies to store data in the cloud as long as there are reasonable security measures. I would bet on the latter. In the end it won't be just office-in-the-cloud that drives the change but also S3 and EC2.
- epe 17y ago
  Exactly. GE may have the resources to safeguard data on its own servers better than Google could, but the average small/medium business almost certainly does not.
  - chollida1 17y ago
    The over all problem is that only a certain set of people should have access to non publicly disclosed data. Putting this data on another companies servers is a gross violation of the law. If a Google employee can see the raw data that belongs to a Google Docs user then Google Docs will never be sufficient for fully replacing locally installed software.
joseakle 17y ago
Your compliance officer said that? These guys http://www.boardvantage.com/ http://www.boardvantage.com/ have hundreds of customers using their hosted solution just for that, holding unreported numbers for reporting.

edw519 17y ago

"What's Holding Back Google Apps?" Speed and simplicity. Microsoft Office is slow and complicated. Google Apps are slower and, in some ways, more complicated. Need examples of outrageous successes using speed and simplicity: email, instant messaging, texting, .txt files. Google Apps must be more like these, faster and simpler, for widespread adoption.

Flemlord 17y ago
I disagree that MS Office is slow or complicated. It's very fast on every one of my machines, especially compared to Java-based alternatives. And it's extremely simple to use. Granted, there are complicated features but I generally don't use them and they're hidden away on ribbon strips that I never see.
- edw519 17y ago
  "they're hidden away on ribbon strips that I never see" Because you've already hidden them. Along with that fricken dancing paper clip. Many people, when initially overwhelmed by unnecessary features, just refuse to adopt and stick with something simpler. That's Google's biggest problem with Apps.
  - MrRage 17y ago
    Have you used Office 2007 at all? They're hidden away by default. The whole purpose of the ribbon was to manage the complexity better. Plus, there's no paper clip. It's not the '90s anymore.
- hs 17y ago
  i agree, it's amazing what ms office can do these days. my niece did image manipulation (gradient, bending, shearing, shadowing) by just clicking on previews in ms office 2009?. the same feat would take me 15 mins in gimp
jimbokun 17y ago
The purpose of Excel is to analyze your business's data to make better decisions. Is there a way to make that not "slow and complicated?" Making it too fast and simple might result in bad analysis. There are specific uses for Excel that might be made faster and simpler. But I'm not sure that you can replace all the uses of Excel with something faster and simpler. Another way to look at it, Excel is a faster, simpler way to solve problems that would otherwise require programming. In that sense, Excel is already the faster, simpler alternative.

ZeroGravitas 17y ago

Inertia. The same thing keeping anyone stuck on outmoded middle of the road platforms like Office. But Google are good enough to be picking folk up in various niches, and there's other smaller players getting play too. Standard disruptive innovation stuff. Some of this article sounds a bit anti-Google, pro-Microsoft but really if, as far as GE is concerned, Microsoft is simply one of three options for an office suite, and its main plus is local data (rather than say total omnipresence) then compared with a few years ago that's a terrible place for Microsoft to be.

jimbokun 17y ago

'"Building a sales staff to proffer its applications is a labor-intensive endeavor that hasn't been part of the company's DNA, says Zachary Nelson, CEO of online accounting software maker NetSuite (N). "If you want to sell enterprise software, you have to have salespeople," he says.' This seems the most concise summary of the problem. Enterprise sales is very different than their consumer facing, ad supported businesses. And adding an enterprise style sales force is probably a mistake, as it runs counter to Google's business culture. Then you have two kinds of companies joined at the hip, one that makes decisions by algorithm to keep cost of sales to a minimum, and another that uses steak and strippers to sell product. It is not clear why you should have one firm at that point, rather than spin off the enterprise products into their own entity. 'Creating new ways to analyze business data inside Apps has been "harder to get up on the priority list" given Google's long list of projects, according to Sam Schillace, a Google engineering director who created the software that's the basis for Google's word processor.' On the other hand, this seems the place where Google could add value. Surely, there must be Google engineers with clever ideas about how to employ Google's infrastructure and machine learning algorithms to slurp in all the data in a business's spreadsheets and spit out interesting, actionable information that would be difficult for that business to recreate on its own?

eugenejen 17y ago

I had a discussion 3 weeks with coworkers. I thought the reason why Google Apps and others are not making that progress fast enough is not purely technology limitation on the web platform. Google are in fact may be very careful not to put themselves in the same pair of shoes as Microsoft did to get sued on basis of anti-trust. Of course now we all heard from Techcrunch that DOJ has interested in building possible case against Google.

bayareaguy 17y ago

I'd use Google Apps more if they were actually Google App Engine applications which I could choose to run locally, on Google's server or on a third-party's system.

chanux 17y ago

Googlefail? :) http://www.roomatic.com/%23googlefail http://www.roomatic.com/%23googlefail