To bring you up to speed if you have not been following: Yesterday in a total PR move Microsoft publicly released a series of questions about Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE). Today Google has not officially responded, but it has made it’s way onto several Google related blogs. I agree with what most are saying, thatsome of the questions bring up reasonable points, but on the other hand there are some questions that I would give a big old ‘?’ to. The simple fact that Microsoft needs to pull this PR stunt means they are worried, and they might just have a good reason to be worried.
So lets take a stab and see if we can’t answer these questions for Mircosoft, after all I am a customer of Google Apps.
1. Microsoft asks: How many enterprise users does GAPE really have?
Do companies ever release statistics about things like this… really Microsoft? You want to pull this kind of stunt, why don’t you tell us how many Vista users you really have, and how many are holding out for the first service pack? No accounting tricks, just raw numbers that you are pulling from WGA that you swear is not spying on us. No? Didn’t think so.
2. Google often releases incomplete products to then issue incremental improvements without any official schedule – this is not what enterprise users want, says Microsoft.
Yes, Google was known for starting the whole “beta” trend, but they really have been getting better. The difference here Microsoft is Google is always improving their products instead of just walking away from them for a while, and releasing service packs over a year past the original release date because they are too busy failing to compete with Googles Adsense, or Apple’s iPod, or Nintendo’s Wii; OK the XBox 360 kicks ass… but the Zune? Really?
3. Microsoft argues Google says GAPE is a low cost office option, but if enterprises still need to support MS Office, they will then actually have additional costs and complexity.
Yup, that’s what happens when you have a Monopoly Microsoft, and I am fairly sure that this is what Google and others are trying to change. Additionally enterprises could always use Open Office on the desktop to “support” your MS Office. It’s not a pretty solution, but the Free price tag sure makes it attractive.
4. Google makes most of their revenue via ads, with other services only on the 1% fringe, says Microsoft, wondering if Google will shut down their office products line if it doesn’t generate the right revenue.
Google doesn’t seem to be hurting on ad sales, and Google also has services that users and enterprises pay for that are ad free.
5. Microsoft says Google Apps are mostly usable for non-power users and have less features than MS Office tools. Also, they mostly require the company to be always-online.
Didn’t you have to redesign Office this year because you did a study to find out what features users would like in MS Office, and the majority of people were coming back with features that were already built into MS Office but they just didn’t know how to use them or where they were? Yeah thought so… for most simple is better. Take a look at your Apple competitor for a lesson on this one.
6. Google Apps “don’t have essential document creation features like support for headers, footers, table of content, footnotes etc.â€.
You are correct, they do not. If I were Google I would add this to the top of the list of features to incorporate.
7. MS says that Google defines a downtime for Gmail (for which they promise 99.9% uptime) as over 10 consecutive minutes of being unreachable. What, MS asks, if Google is down for 7 minutes every hour of a day?
Why don’t we wait for that to happen before we call it a problem? I have only seen Google down once, and I checked everything little cord on my Internet connection first because I couldn’t believe Google was actually down.
8. Google’s direct tech support has limited opening hours. MS writes, “… M-F 1AM-6PM PST – are these the new hours of global business?â€
I will give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, Google’s thought process that computers are better than humans does not carry over well to technical support. People want to talk to humans, especially when they are footing the bill. Microsoft has much more experience in this department, but they are still not perfect. Ever called Microsoft technical support?
9. Microsoft writes that Google argues most people only use 10% of the features in today’s office products. Microsoft argues that however not everyone uses the same 10%.
Again, I kind of feel we have covered this. Google’s Office product is going to prioritize bring to market the features that it’s users want and need. Was MS Office built over night? Well it was acquired overnight, but you have put many years work into it. In a shorter amount of time Google has passed you on some things.. don’t be jealous.
10. As Google rolls out features on a constant basis, Microsoft says customers lose control of planning the update, and also aren’t able to sufficiently train their employees.
The key words in this sentence are “Google rolls out features”. And honestly can you really tell me that Microsoft customers have control of their update schedule? Why aren’t more enterprises adopting Vista? If you asked most customers, would they not tell you they are waiting for Vita to be stable which means a service pack? Did I not have to go back to XP because Vista did not support three monitors on two graphics cards, which XP has supported for years now?
So Microsoft, I hope this helps you out a little. It’s not an official Google response, but I am sure these and more are some of the thoughts going through the minds of those wicked smart Googler’s. Next time lets not call someone out publicly and act like your shit don’t stink.
Recently I have realized that there my pet peeves relating with the Internet have been popping up more and more. My list consists of:
- Taking longer than a minute to unsubscribe from a newsletter. Do not tell me it takes 7-10 days to remove my contact information from a list!
- Making me enter personal information before downloading an application I wish to try out and potentially purchase.
- Linking tags back to your site instead of to information related to what you are blogging about.
- Full page ads.
- Using “Username” when it really is your email address you need to login with.
- Google’s safe search.
- Adding, or changing newsletters and resubscribing me without my permission.
- Comment spam.
Not meaning to rant, but seriously I have been noticing these and others more often lately.
HTTP error pages are more important than some may think. If you have a visitor or a customer to your site and they reach an error, you want to display a message and give them alternatives to find the content they are looking for. Most graphical control panels from hosting companies give you the option to easily setup error pages, but if you are in a situation where you need to create error pages on your own .htaccess is the way to go. In two easy steps you can have error pages up and running.
Step 1: Create your .htaccess File
Create a file called .htaccess and put the following contents in this file. Then place this file in the root “/” directory of your web server, where your web content goes.
[ftf]
ErrorDocument 400 /400.html
ErrorDocument 401 /401.html
ErrorDocument 403 /403.html
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html
ErrorDocument 500 /500.html
[/ftf]
Step 2: Create Error Pages
Now you want to create the above HTML files with their respective names. In these files you can put any sort of message to your visitors. It is a standard HTML file, no special rules apply.
Done!
Told you it was easy. Not you should be able to test it out by going to a page that does not exist on your website, and getting to the appropriate page above.
A week ago I wrote about how I was going to try Mahalo for a week, in an never ending attempt to break myself from the habits that I have formed with tools and services. So it has been a week, actually over because of the holiday, and overall I must say Mahalo is a lot more useful than some have made it out to be. I had heard all sorts of reviews about the service before actually trying it myself. So here is the breakdown:
Initial Expectations:
I was a non believer that Mahalo would be able to replace Google for the majority of my searches. I did not believe that the “static” content generated by a human would be current, relevant, or what I needed. On top of that, there was the natural resistance to let go of the control with my searches. You know the whole, “I am a geek, I know how to find what I am looking for.” mentality. My rules were simple: all information seeking would be done with Mahalo first, and then if I could not find what I was looking for I would resort to common searching methods.
Where Mahalo Shines:
I found that Mahalo is better at current events and general topics than most search engines. They have vast information on television shows, movies, and can get information to those pages quickly. This is the type of information that I would be searching Google News for, because it’s so new that Google’s robot hasn’t indexed it yet. I was surprised with how much Mahalo was able to work for me, even when it came to events that were new and still evolving. Mahalo nicely organizes relevant information on a single page, that is easy to read through and continue on my way; no pagination, no mixed tabbing, not sponsored results, no BS… just information I am looking for.
Where Mahalo Lacks:
As a software engineer a lot of my searches are specific error codes, or search strings that it’s not reasonable for Mahalo to create a page on. Mahalo nicely will show Google search results for those searches so I do not need to up and move over to Google myself. Aside from that, there were some more nerdy topics that I was disappointed to find Mahalo had not covered. Understandably, they might not have a guide with background in this area, or it might not be high enough on their priority list. But as I got addicted to the Mahalo juice, when it did not work for me I found myself let down. Not necessarily a bad thing for Mahalo, it means their service is working for me.
Where Mahalo Would Be Better:
If Mahalo could strike a deal with Google, to be in their search results: game over! Imagine searching for reviews on the newest movie that you and your family are going to see over the holiday weekend. A little Mahalo icon up at the top, with some sort of text saying “all the information you need on XXX movie!”. Or better yet maybe two or three of Mahalo results at the top, would guarantee that those are good results for Google. It could be much like that Google does for it’s product search. For one, this would most likely lead to an acquisition of Mahalo on Google’s part; not bad for Jason Calacanis and team. On top of that, it would change the way most people search. Here you have filtered, vetted results and the top that most likely cover what you are looking for, and then if those do not work: here is everything else on the web.
Sure why would Google want to partner with what is arguably a competitor? Well first, I do not feel Mahalo is a competitor of Google. They are both search engines yes, but they work in completely different ways and both have their strong points. Second, Google’s all about organizing the worlds information and making it readily available for consumers. I think having human filtered search results mixed in with regular results would fall under that category.
In the short while, Mahalo should buy up adwords for common search query terms and link them to their pages on those terms. It would be great exposure for Mahalo, and would mimic the above short of a partnership.
What Will Stop Mahalo From Succeeding:
Right now I am really impressed with how quickly and relevant the search results on Mahalo are. But over time, will it scale? I certainly do not know the infrastructure over at Mahalo, but I am sure they have build a plan to combat this. From the front end, this is really what could ruin Mahalo for me. After a short week, I now go to Mahalo for topics that I know they will be up to date on, even if it’s a news event that just happened. If that changes, all it takes is a handful of incidents for the service to no longer be reliable for me. As more and more people take to the web, the list of topics that Mahalo will need to cover will grow. This means Mahalo will need more human-power, which is more expensive than adding computers like other search engines do. Right now they seem to be doing well, and I hope that continues.
Best of luck!
