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Google/Salesforce.com Announcement Is A Yawner

from the next dept

Tue, Jun 5th 2007 8:45am — Joseph Weisenthal

For the past couple of weeks, there's been a lot of discussion about a possible alliance between Salesforce.com and Google, as many speculated about ways the two companies could team up to take on Microsoft. From the get go, it was assumed that the companies might find offer a way to integrate Salesforce.com's CRM offering with Google's nascent software business to create a more complete on-demand service. Today, the two companies made a formal announcement and (surprise) it's not nearly so exciting. The crux of it is that Salesforce.com customers will now have a greater ability to manage AdWords campaigns. This isn't even a new thing, but rather an enhancement of a pre-existing offering. Despite the the lack of earth-shattering news here some are still insisting that the deal is aimed squarely at Microsoft, which really doesn't make much sense given the actual news. The whole thing feels a lot like the big Sun/Google non-announcement from 2005, when everyone expected the companies to announce some major Microsoft Office-killer. When the actual announcement was something minor having to do with the Google toolbar, pundits still scrambled to discern deeper significance, even though there really wasn't any. If you're wondering why Google and Salesforce.com didn't unveil a more meaningful integration of their offerings, Joshua Greenbaum has a nice analysis (which he penned before the announcement), in which he points out that Google's apps aren't capable of serving in this manner due to technical limitations. The fact that they can't easily be integrated with other services is a downside to being "lightweight" and one of the real reasons that they're not (yet) a substitute for Microsoft Office. Expect this to be a major Microsoft talking point as it continues to justify its own refusal to get on the web office bandwagon.

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9 Comments

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Ajax 4Hire, 5 Jun 2007 @ 9:14am

This is a case where Google continues to
out-pace Microsoft, Yahoo and the rest of the Business world.

The new economy will be based on network, interaction, communication, content distribution, work-from-anywhere.

Microsoft is old economy;
Google is new economy.

Microsoft had such a great run with software/OS. Microsoft made its money from technologies, products and services that did not exist 30 years ago. 30 years from now we will be looking back on Microsoft as a Compaq, Sun, IBM, Xerox, Polaroid; thinking were they really that big?

Think now of how much importance is given to network connectivity, the PC and its software is no longer an ends to a means but a conduit to what you rally want.

The PC and the software that runs on a PC have become a commodity. Commodity pricing will follow.
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- DittoBox, 5 Jun 2007 @ 10:35am
  
  Re: This is a case where Google continues to
  Huh? IBM is just as big as it used to be. Their market share and the market they work in is just different. Sun's far from dead either, again their market has changed, thus not all of their current product line stands up to innovation. Polaroid was just an analog novelty (I can only think of one camera that's really worth looking into, only because of its lomo look, which ironically is novelty as well). If they can adapt to a digital world and start developing interesting digital devices (they can do some neat things with cell-phone cameras, sensors and software...again with the novelty) they can survive.
  
  Xerox isn't really that much smaller either, they just don't have research projects out the wazzu like they did in the 70s and 80s.
  
  Microsoft's market share and market will change too, so will Google's. This is technology, it changes, it evolves and as long as companies and governments don't artificially screw with the market everything works correctly, innovation occurs at the expense of a business model. Adapt your model the New, or you and it die like the Old. This is why state sanctioned or corporation forced monopolies, duopolies etc. are Bad.
  
  Technology changes. Paradigms and work flows change with it, and so must your business model. If you hinder innovation for your own selfish business reasons you're two things: 1) a business person with no insight in and little foresight with the market you're in, you are incompetent and 2) you're doing a disservice to your customers (who want better products), to your shareholders (who want a long-lived investment that won't come crashing down on top of them when people finally realize that you're screwing them out of the New) and to humanity (which benefits directly from newer technology).
  
  It does matter if you're the State, a trade union, a worker's union, an industry association, a corporation or an incorporation: greed is a temporary facade that you live with to make some immediate cash. Flow with the market, with innovation and technology, and let your business model evolve over time. You'll make more money, earn more customers as well as keep them longer, and your business will grown. Most importantly, you'll make more money and do so knowing you worked hard and worked fairly for it.
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EswaraPrakash Vaithiyanathan, 5 Jun 2007 @ 9:54am

Google's continuing purchase
How many web services will google and micrsoft tends to purchase? The number keeps ticking. May be this will lead to two headed monopoly market in the net world
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TheDock22, 5 Jun 2007 @ 12:21pm

I'm dying to know...
When does the new Google OS come out? I would jump ship pretty fast if that happened. =)
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- Charles Griswold, 5 Jun 2007 @ 2:30pm
  
  Re: I'm dying to know...
  When does the new Google OS come out? I would jump ship pretty fast if that happened. =)What's preventing you from jumping ship now? There are plenty of alternatives to whatever OS you're currently using.
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  - TheDock22, 5 Jun 2007 @ 3:45pm
    
    Re: Re: I'm dying to know...
    I absolutely can not stand Linux's GUI...and one can not live off of awesome command line forever.
    
    I do like Mac, but I also like to tinker. Apple computers are expensive and leave little room for upgrading.
    
    So I will be slightly satisfied (or dulled to a zombie-like existence) with Windows until the next generation OS comes along.
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    - Charles Griswold, 6 Jun 2007 @ 12:52am
      
      Re: Re: Re: I'm dying to know...
      I absolutely can not stand Linux's GUI...
      Which one? I just counted 126 listed at the Windows Managers for X website. If you can't find at least one that you can stand, you're probably not looking hard enough. I'm currently using KDE on OpenSUSE and it does the trick for me.
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Joe, 5 Jun 2007 @ 1:12pm

Matt Marshall has another interesting take on the whole Google-Salesforce situation.

http://venturebeat.com/2007/06/05/more-thoughts-on-google-salesforce/
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Jon Miller, 5 Jun 2007 @ 2:47pm

Boring
I agree, this is a yawner. Although it reconfirms the importance of mashing up Salesforce and Google into a seamless integrated process, the product falls short of addressing the real pain points that marketers feel when trying to use AdWords to drive new business leads. 1) Landing pages are critical for driving conversions and improving ranking, but 3 out of 4 companies still send clicks to the home page. Google doesn't care because they still get paid for each click, but the marketer ends up with fewer leads. It’s just too hard to get the right IT support to have enough targeted pages, and the Google-Salesforce alliance provides no solution to this problem. 2) Bidding well is hard for most marketers, and Google-Salesforce provides no help for bid optimization. Again, this suits Google just fine since it's in their interest to have companies over-bid, but it leaves the marketer with suboptimal results. 3) A click is just the beginning of a business sales cycle. Only 25% of the people that click on an ad and fill out a form are ready to speak with a sales rep. Companies need to put in place a relevant and patient nurturing process that guides the prospect from the research stage to being truly "sales ready". Once again, the Google-Salesforce alliance doesn't address this gap in the marketer's business process. You can read more at http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2007/06/some_gorillas_c.html.
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