{"id":482,"date":"2006-08-28T11:03:07","date_gmt":"2006-08-28T15:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/08\/28\/google-moves-office-troops-into-position\/"},"modified":"2006-08-28T11:03:07","modified_gmt":"2006-08-28T15:03:07","slug":"google-moves-office-troops-into-position","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/08\/28\/google-moves-office-troops-into-position\/","title":{"rendered":"Google moves Office troops into position"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three guesses what the big story<\/a> in the blogosphere and tech-o-sphere is this morning. Here’s a hint: It starts with the word Google, and ends with the word Office. I’ll say one thing — like my friend Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0, I wish the search company would stop protesting<\/a> about how it isn’t really competing with Microsoft, and just cut to the chase and say “Game on.” <\/p>\n

Despite what the online Office skeptics say (and Kent Newsome has a point<\/a> about large-scale corporate use of such apps), the future of applications like Word has to include the Web, and so far Microsoft hasn’t exactly been a shining example of how to do that. The battle has been joined, and Google is likely to be a powerful competitor — and its number one strength is that it doesn’t have a gigantic legacy business model to protect. The more Microsoft tries to accommodate users with a free online product, the more it eats into its massive Office profit margins.<\/p>\n

The bottom line for me is that competition is good, and new features that encourage collaboration are good (my friend Paul Kedrosky says he is impressed<\/a> with Google’s app package — so far). Microsoft has dominated the Office market to the point where there has been virtually no competition, and there hasn’t exactly been a lot of innovation either. If Google can help push things forward and engage in a little creative disruption, so much the better.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/b><\/p>\n

It hasn’t gotten quite as much attention as the Office wars, but I think another Google announcement is almost more interesting, and that is the deal with eBay<\/a> to collaborate on ads and (more importantly) click-to-call features on eBay’s international properties. According to the Yahoo story, this arrangement will involve both<\/i> Google Talk and Skype. Now that could be interesting.<\/p>\n

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Three guesses what the big story in the blogosphere and tech-o-sphere is this morning. Here’s a hint: It starts with the word Google, and ends with the word Office. I’ll say one thing — like my friend Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0, I wish the search company would stop protesting about how it isn’t really … <\/p>\n

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