Google recently announced the premier version of GMail is now accessible with Microsoft’s Outlook e-mail client. This is a striking development with two of the major giants in the world of technology. Microsoft Exchange pushed Microsoft into the corporate enterprise at a time when Novell was the giant. Now Google takes on Microsoft and “puts it’s dukes up.”
Microsoft has to be a little bit more nervous as Google continues to bite a little here and a little bit there. Microsoft’s biggest money generators are Office and Exchange. These two platforms alone fund a good portion of Microsoft’s revenues and should for quite sometime. However, there is a clock on the horizon that may start to run backwards.
Some 15 plus years later the strategy that Microsoft played on the market still continues to produce benefits for the company. In fact, some would still agree that Microsoft will continue to hold onto the dominance it possesses with the office suite it has built.
Starting in the early nineties Microsoft clearly saw the only way it would survive was by diversifying. MS-DOS and the first generation of Windows were the only things Microsoft was riding on. It is a matter of survival to push onward by spreading into new areas. Every successful business does this very strategy. Microsoft placed it’s sight on Lotus 123, Harvard Graphics, and WordPerfect. And like a target, scored a direct hit. Not much else is necessary to see how things evolved.
Now to the present. Since the late nineties Microsoft has ran in place trying to keep up. It barely jumped on the Internet bandwagon. Netscape, AOL and Yahoo gave Microsoft a good “run for it’s money” during the late 90’s and early part of this decade. Microsoft has completely lost innovation, creativity, and market share. No not the ninety percent dominance in the operating system world, but in desktop productivity as it pushes to the “cloud” or Internet based office solutions.
Enter Google. The next train that would. Google, just as Microsoft did, realizes it will not sustain profits forever based on search and advertising alone. This is what made Google, but doesn’t guarantee long term profits. Google’s strategy is moving into Microsoft’s desktop publishing dominance via the use of the Internet.
Google Docs, Spreadsheets, and GMail are processed entirely on Google’s network with minimal communications passed between Google and the end-user’s computer. This modular design is called cloud computing. There are no CDs, installations and data storage on your local computer. The design may vary a little, but most of the resources are on the Internet. Thus this is the cloud.
Microsoft Office comes with a plethora of disk space requirements, proprietary features, and a steep price tag. As a service provider of network and computer repair services in St. Louis, MO, it is embarassing informing customers that Microsoft Office costs between $200 and $400. Fortunately, there are affordable options available. We like knowing our customers are informed.
Source: Google Press Center
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