Microsoft's Tough Night: Google And IBM Both Launch Free Office Products

from the on-your-toes... dept

Just about 24 hours after continued to insist that Microsoft is a monopoly that needs to be restricted, three major tech companies demonstrated why that might not be the case. First up, Google rolled out their long awaited presentations capabilities to Google Docs. Google continues to insist that this is merely a "feature" added to the Google Docs offering, but obviously, this is a light version of PowerPoint. Still, Google seems to recognize that this isn't a full featured offering just yet, and the announcement plays up the biggest strength of Google Docs that can't be matched by Microsoft's Office Suite: the real-time collaboration ability. That's what made the original Writely so useful, and Google seems to recognize that and know to focus on it. My quick test of the software suggests that it works pretty much exactly as you'd expect it to -- which means it's quite simple to pick up and use.

While the Google announcement may be more important long-term, it's also worth noting IBM's decision to offer a free downloadable office suite. Way back when, IBM bought Lotus and tried to compete with Microsoft in the online collaboration, email and office suite arena -- and pretty much failed miserably. Sure, there were an awful lot of legacy customers (especially on things like Notes) who kept sending cash to feed the cash cow, but it was clear many years ago that the offering was losing to Microsoft. In recent years, there's been a new interest in office suite applications with the various online offerings from the likes of ThinkFree, Zoho and Google -- as well as via the open source desktop office suite client OpenOffice (and Sun's StarOffice variant). Last week, IBM threw its support behind OpenOffice, and the new free "Lotus Symphony" suite is going to be based on that platform. This could lead to two important things. First, if IBM dedicates increased resources to improving OpenOffice, it can become an even stronger competitor to Microsoft's office suite (and it's already pretty strong) -- similar to the way that IBM added some heft to Linux. However, more importantly, the IBM brand name is likely to go a lot further in enterprises than OpenOffice (or even Sun's StarOffice).

Finally, as we've already discussed, Yahoo's Zimbra purchase gives it a path into enterprise collaboration software as well. If you're Microsoft right now, it would seem you have pretty good evidence that a strong market position is no guarantee of keeping competitors out of the market.

Filed Under: competition, free, office suites
Companies: google, ibm, microsoft

Why Paul McCartney Would Have Been Better Off Giving Away His Latest Music For Free

from the promote-the-other-things dept

Earlier this year, we noted that Starbucks was going to start its own record label to sell CDs, with Paul McCartney as the first artist to release an album on it. This came after the relative success of promoting a few albums exclusively in Starbucks when they launched (on other labels). However, as Bob Lefsetz points out, McCartney's album looks like it's a money loser for Starbucks -- though McCartney likely made money from Starbucks who probably paid him a nice sum to put the album out on the new label. However, as Lefsetz points out, he could make a lot more in concert revenue much faster. Lefsetz goes on to point out what we've been pointing out for years: McCartney would have been better off giving away the music for free everywhere, and actually getting people to hear it. In fact, Lefsetz suggests that he might have put more effort into making better music if he knew that there was a much bigger likelihood that people would hear it and care about it. Where I disagree with Lefsetz is his belief that it makes sense to offer the music for free for now, while you still get a promotional bump just for announcing that you'll be giving away music for free, that it won't make sense in the future when lots of artists are doing it. Instead, it seems likely that more and more new models will arise, where the music acts as the promotion, and bands make their money elsewhere. The more popular and widespread the music is, the more opportunities there will be to make that money elsewhere. Once bands start seeing success using that model, more and more will pile on, and people will wonder why anyone pays just for the music if they're not given anything else of value with it.

Filed Under: free, lefsetz, music, paul mccartney
Companies: starbucks

One Year After Tearing Down The Walls, AOL Still An Also-Ran

from the free,-as-in-CDs dept

Last year, in a move that came only six years too late, AOL decided that walled gardens were out and that free web services were in. For a brief period, there was a flurry of news about AOL's attempt to reinvent itself as a Yahoo-like portal. With the walls torn down, the challenge for management was to actually give people a reason to use AOL's services, thus driving up traffic and ad revenue. Simply being free would not be enough to bring people back unless there was a compelling reason. A year later, it doesn't look like the company has accomplished this. Earnings guidance was recently reduced as the company's growth rate continues to lag behind the industry average. As Wall Street gets antsy over its performance, it seems likely that we'll hear renewed calls for Time Warner to just dump AOL and finally wash its hands of the whole affair. AOL's problem is the same one facing Yahoo: it's not Google. The difference is that Yahoo still has a lot of market share and traffic to work with. Both companies have made several acquisitions in the past year or so in an attempt to reinvent themselves, but unless one of them stumbles onto the next MySpace, Facebook or YouTube, it's unlikely that acquisitions will hold the key to a turnaround.

Filed Under: free, walled garden
Companies: aol, google, time warner, yahoo

Future Of Libraries: Legal Providers Of Free Content

from the entertainment-industry-suing-libraries-next? dept

Quite often when there's a discussion about free content online someone will eventually bring up the library comparison, pointing out that libraries provide free access to books and it certainly never killed off the book business (though, there are still some publishers who mistakenly think that libraries are bad for business). At the same time, however, libraries have been struggling with how to update in order to be more relevant in this digital age. Well, apparently one area they could focus on is becoming the legal provider to all kinds of free content -- even beyond the areas of content they're already known for providing. This certainly won't endear libraries to the entertainment industry (at least those in the entertainment industry who are still convinced that their obsolete business model makes sense), but certainly could bring in plenty of younger folks who are interested in checking out the available content and experiencing new books, music, movies and data that would otherwise be difficult to access.

Filed Under: content, copyright, free, libraries