Ian Landsman is Starting From Scratch, June 7, 2006:
More on Google Spreadsheets
If you're in the market for a powerful and user friendly Help Desk solution, please take a look at my company's flagship product HelpSpot.Kevin talks a bit more about the notion of a Google Office Box (GOB) which was first brought up by Mark Lubischer in the comments of the last post (I first heard it there, I'm sure Kevin came up with it on his own).
I think this idea has more plausibility, but I still don't know if it's a money maker for them. Here's why:
1. It still doesn't address the primary issue which is training. Saving $50K a year doesn't mean anything if you have to retrain 10,000 workers.
2. It's not a game changer. Spreadsheets/word processors have been around for some time. This is just a spreadsheet/word processor with less functionality.
3. Google has never shown much prowess at providing customer service. Business users need LOTS of customer service. Many folks seem to underestimate the challenges of a B2C company going B2B.
4. I still have my doubts about performance, especially with large complex spreadsheets.
5. Microsoft still has tremendous leverage because of Windows. They can package deals of Windows/Office and Google has no counter.
6. Will I have access to the GOB when I'm on a plane? in a train? on a bus? in the park?
7. When people at other corporations send me complex Microsoft based documents which the GOB cannot correctly import since it lacks the equivalent features what will I do?
I'm not saying it's impossible to pull off, but we need to see a lot more before thinking it even has a shot at success. It might also be helpful if they actually stand behind any product they do eventually release instead of hiding behind the beta label.
Discussion
I completely agree with you thoughts Ian 
I'm battling people disagreeing with me on my own blog so I'll post a link to this in my comments as your points here are clear and hard to disagree with.
btw, as a first time comment on your blog I'll add that I've been following your RSS feed for a long time, keep up the posting
- JD
Created by John-Daniel Trask on 06.07.2006 10:06 pm
Well generally they don't react well when their hosts are offline. I don't when mine goes offline. But even if they don't mind there's a huge difference between occasional downtime and simply being unavailable offline. My wire works for a big 4 accounting/consulting firm. No offline access is a deal breaker for her 50,000 person company since many people travel. Lot's of companies have users who travel.
Even if they have a work around for that, the big thing is training and transition costs. Also I think companies know how the game works. Even if the Google solution is 50% cheaper what happens when it's the one with 70% market share? The price will go right back up. That's why I think people overthink the money aspect. Companies don't care about saving money that much. They care about productivity. If Google focuses on making their app the most productive, simplest to use, and have great support they'll have a much better shot than by simply making it cheaper and "cool".
Created by Ian on 06.07.2006 10:06 pm
Perhaps, but I've worked with lots of IT departments and they hate training to begin with. Training for 2 different apps which perform the same function would drive them insane along with nullifying most of the cost savings. Also, OpenOffice has pretty much been a flop. Geeks know about it, but real users don't and don't have much interest in moving to anything different.
Created by Ian on 06.07.2006 10:06 pm
Ian, obviously help desk software is not quite the same beast as spreadsheets, but I wonder: How do your customers react when their servers (or hosts) are unavailable?
At my day job, we use salesforce, and there have been a couple of times where *poof*, they're gone all afternoon and us customer-facing people are screwed in a couple of ways.
It's definitely a problem, but I think it's much less of a problem than you suspect because I think people are getting used to remote and hosted services and availability issues of them. I think the networks are getting more robust.
I also sort of wonder how well the google spreadsheet page works if you load it then just go offline. If the browser doesn't try talking to the server, can it persist okay and be usable in the tab/window? Obviously the shared features crap out, but if a lot of the functionality is in javascript and loaded on the computer there's some potential for limited offline usability if someone prepares in advance.
Created by Rob Drimmie on 06.07.2006 10:06 pm
The offline part could definitely be a problem, but for larger corporations where most users are tied to a desk, only those people with laptops would need offline support. To decrease costs for those users, that could probably be accomplished with OpenOffice.
Speaking of which, Sun and Google announced a strategic partnership back in October (http://news.com.com/Google,+Sun+plan+partnership/2100-1012_3-5887923.html) so maybe we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg.
Created by Mark Lubischer on 06.07.2006 10:06 pm
Yeah, it's not a bad story. I still don't see how you get past not being able to use it outside of an internet connection. I'm interested to see where they take it. How sad will it be if they actually don't do anything and these apps just sit like most of the other stuff. Hopefully that's not the case.
Created by Ian on 06.07.2006 10:06 pm
Nice follow up Ian and great comments everyone!
I've done a bunch of thinking since my post yesterday...
One of Google's missions is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
Being that Spreadshees is a proprietary system that they've built, I'm sure that they've spent a mass amount of time working on the storage design so as to make the information contained in the spreadsheet easily searchable.
You throw in Writely (which will most definitely be rebuilt since the original version was in ASP.NET) and an appropriate storage system for it, add on a Sharepoint portal style system for organizing documents, and finally, a tuned version of their search appliance that's specific for their GOB applications, and you have one heck of a centralized system for document management and collaboration.
They could even layer gmail and other functionality on top of that and take on Microsoft's Small Business Server... the upper hand that Google would have with it is that it comes pre-installed on hardware!
But, then again, Phil's less complicated answer is very plausible... they've already done that with the View As HTML functionality for PDFs
Created by Mark Lubischer on 06.07.2006 10:06 pm
I've only accessed Google's Customer Service as an AdWords customer, and for that only a few short and simple questions, so I really can't say much about what their service is like.
Has anyone posted about their interaction with Customer Service for the search box anywhere? Or does anyone here have any first-hand experience? I wonder if they offer better support for a company shelling out however many thousands those things cost, it seems like it would be a good barometer what their support for the notional appliance might be like.
I am sorry for being all contrary and google fanboy these past few comments, I think you're totally right about most of this, it's just triggering some excessive rambling and speculation on my part.
Created by Rob Drimmie on 06.07.2006 10:06 pm
Hi Ian,
Provocative followup!
One thing I didn't put in my blog post was timeframes. The spreadsheet that's in testing right now is certainly not the end of the story. I think Google is a company that tries to take the long view. (They actually said as much in their IPO statements... they don't project earnings, and they don't benchmark their success on individual quarterly results.)
*Every* company that I've worked for in the Excel era has emailed around tracking spreadsheets and they were always a pain. Collaborating on word documents is a pain. Google is going after that as their real value add. If the GOB comes to be, I'm sure the tools will be featureful enough to get the job done. Joel Spolsky contends that 80% of the users only use 20% of the features, but that they use a different 20%. I don't think that's completely true, and I think many would be willing to trade some of the more esoteric features in exchange for powerful collaboration.
It is certainly true that Microsoft is not going to sit by idly. That's where things get interesting (and why competition is good!).
Google definitely has a lot of work to do between now and GOB. As for why they don't come out with more search innovations: I think they are. Being a "one trick pony" is a very dangerous place for a business, and Google has thousands of employees now... they're not going to have all of those people working on search.
I have noticed improvements to search showing up over time. Results come from different places, get grouped together differently, there's the "personalized" results that they have in the Labs (or has that been released?) and they constantly tweak their ranking algorithm.
And they also have innovations like the video ad. (Just kidding
Not everything Google does is going to be a hit. They're trying out so many things that many are certainly doomed to failure (does Orkut even exist any more?). But, that's okay. Even though they seem rather reluctant to give up the "beta" moniker, they're generally pretty good at shipping software. They're generating lots of cash, and I think they're just investing a lot to make sure that if the "ads on search" business model starts faltering they're not completely exposed.
Created by Kevin Dangoor on 06.07.2006 10:06 pm
Berkay of course it can be a "success" if it just helps a few people out, but that's not the criteria we should really measure by at this point. They're not a small little startup. They're a company with 7 billion in the bank and who seems very transparently to be aiming at Microsoft. So this is an analysis of that and in that context I think it's unlikely to succeed. As you noted you haven't gotten rid of Microsoft Office which is the primary point. When Excel came out people didn't keep Excel and Lotus 123. They ditched Lotus 123.
Like Phil says, MS will certainly have their own Live versions available at some point with direct integration. At that point these Google apps are worthless. When I can click a button in Word and be transported to the web version the game is over anyway.
So I conceded that they can help people without being a financial success, but with a company that big (and a business analysis post such as this) I think you need to think about it in financial terms and I don't see how it will help their bottom line.
I continue to be baffled at why they don't come out with more search innovations. That's where the money is and that's where they are experts. They don't know anything about office applications, but they know lots about search.
Created by Ian on 06.07.2006 10:06 pm
I still think everyone is giving Google way too much here. What would be the advantages to the Google office box? Collaboration isn't a real big deal in an office since most files can be shared over the network. Free isn't all that much of an issue because OpenOffice provides a lot more functionality then Google Spreadsheet may ever do, and businesses by and large have not switched. Add in all the negatives, and the fact that Microsoft will undoubtedly have an online office of their own... not to mention that once they get into hardware, their costs go up immensely... they have to worry about supply chain, manufacturing etc. For as much as they charge for their search appliance, I'm not sure they would be able to give much of a discount for office.
I think the answer is much less complicated. Perhaps Google is creating these apps so that when you run a search on Google, now not only can you find results that are pdfs, but you can also find XLS documents, and instantly view and edit them without plugins.
Created by Phil on 06.07.2006 10:06 pm
Ian, most of your objections above has an underlying assumption that Google Spreadsheet needs to be a replacement for Excel to succeed. I don't believe this assumptions is correct. I tried to explain why for Writely before http://berkay.ifountain.com/technology/16/.
An online word processor or spreadsheet is a different beast. It addresses different needs. They provide more functionality not less of it. . We use Writely quite often to work on documents collaboratively, concurrently. Word, with its vast feature set is just awful when it comes to collaboration. it is a nightmare to manage multiple people working on the same document and I don't miss it! Writely will never have the full feature set that Word has. It does not have to. It's less than a year old, without Google's weight behind it and it's already a great productivity tool. Have I got rid of Word/OpenOffice? No. But I sure use it much less.
Same arguments go for the Web Spreadsheet. Time will tell how well Google execute but the concept is not bad at all. In fact it's not even that original . One of the leaders in this area is JotSpot Tracker. They have just integrated their spreadsheet product with SalesForce.com giving us a glimpse of the possibilities. Take a look at the video, it's very educative. http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/detail_overview.jsp?id=a03300000021qNBAAY
Jotspot also sells the product in a box inside the corporate firewalls. Google can also do this easily. After all they already have a box (search appliance) they provide to the enterprises. It's not a strectch to think that they can just add their web applications to their appliance for the corporations that do not want to host data outside.
Also offline access to the application may not be a problem in the near to mid future. There are already emerging client side persistence solutions. Besides if you really must, you can always save the spreadsheet as xls file, work on it offline and upload it once back on the grid.
My fundamental point is that we need to look at online apps as new applications in their own right and not just replacements for desktop versions of the same apps.
Created by Berkay on 06.07.2006 10:06 pm
Many folks seem to underestimate the challenges of a B2C company going B2B....
true, remember the pains MS is having with Dynamics
Created by Sevenoaks on 06.07.2006 10:06 pm
I won't agree with number 6, which is I think the most controversial one. I think Google just doesn't care about those who are off-line. All they do is web-based: look at google reader - taking rss feeds back from off-line to on-line.
I think Google struggles to marinalize role of off-line working at all. The same Microsoft did with operating systems some time ago...
Created by Pawel on 06.07.2006 10:06 pm
[...] No offline access - One of great points mentioned by Ian Landsman [...]
Created by El Ruso » Google Spreadsheets: After trying on 06.07.2006 10:06 pm
Thanks John. I think it radio parlance you would say "first time long time" 
Yeah they're really roughing you up over on your blog. Stand your ground!
Created by Ian on 06.07.2006 10:06 pm
I agree with Ian, I've seen a couple of firms, advertising mainly, who switched to Open Office for the mass users, leaving power users on MS Office. It was a nightmare for support and the cost savings blew away.
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Created by Sevenoaks on 06.07.2006 10:06 pm