In March, Google bought an online word processor, Writely. Recently, it launched the Google Spreadsheet (I did a piece on this recently for Bloggingstocks.com).
What's next? Maybe a Microsoft PowerPoint wannabe?
That's what a recent report from Gartner speculates. Actually, the scenario is that Google will buy Thumbstacks, which is a Web2.0 presentation app.
Interestingly enough, Gartner thinks Google's Office-type strategy is really to target the newbie crowd (such as "soccer moms"). In fact, it is a way to make Google's site more sticky, which has been a problem for the company (after all, users mostly go to Google to search, not stay around). If Google can keep users on its site longer, there should be more opportunities to rack-up even more ad revenue.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-16-2006 @ 1:58PM
sarah gilbert said...
PowerPoint is it, I agree: it's the obvious hole in the current set of useful offerings by Google. And the soccer moms target market is partly right -- it's for all the students and individuals who are either (a) out of the workforce or (b) self-employed or working for small nonprofit organizations who can't afford $300 for a software suite. They still want to make presentations, at the PTA or to the board of the foundation they're courting.
while Google is just trying to gain market share, stickiness, and more ad revenue, they could actually be doing some *good* here by giving a more widely-disseminated and trusted platform for the software the low-income dreamers need. I'm already utilizing Google Spreadsheets to share fundraising plans with my nonprofit buds, Google Calendar to plan meetings and events, and we have a Gmail account, like every other wired nonprofit I know.
hey, Google, maybe you're not evil...
6-19-2006 @ 12:35AM
steven markig said...
Nice info....but can u tell me it cud make revenues by let the users stick to google...when more then 70 of world population dont use internet and they need to stuck to offline kinda applications.
6-19-2006 @ 1:55PM
DJosephDesign said...
The problem is that free alternatives to Microsoft Office already exist—OpenOffice and the Serif suite. But these two programs are just as bad as PowerPoint itself. Actually, they're worse. While Apple's Keynote application receive wonderful upgrades with each version, Microsoft PowerPoint and its freeware competitors have received few upgrades that actually make these any better.
PowerPoint 2007 finally did away with WordArt and replaced it with a better special-effects-for-text engine, and they did update their templates, but the basic short-comings of the programs still exist.
All this to say that for Google to make something useful enough, they'd need to make it easier to use and "prettier" than PowerPoint.