Who said Google was a search company? In the beginning it was. Today Google is a collaboration company: IM, email, calendar, writing, maps, and searching, and so on. Maybe they should package their collaboration related products under the Google Collaboration product/brand name.
Google has released its Google Calendar web application. And the title of their announcement blog post is It's about time…
It's about time to release the product? Or, it's about time to crush some more (small) companies? Maybe it is the latter. Google Calendar will have a major effect on a number of companies, the majority startups, such as AirSet,
Trumba,
Kiko, 30 Boxes,
Yahoo! Calendar,
Spongecell, and the Eventful's of the world? It is a tough game, as expected.
Google is the new Microsoft, and I said that from the products perspective – questions from VCs included “what about Microsoft?”, meaning, how long before Microsoft would come up with a similar product, and crush you. But today it is “what about Google?” Or actually, it is “what about Google, and Microsoft, and IBM, and Yahoo?” It's the deep-pocket companies, the ones with lots of time, and patience, and cash, the ones to really watch out for…
And you (or I) say, but I see that Google Calendar has no mobility play… maybe that is my ticket in! But soon Google will release their mobile extensions to calendar, I am sure. Not to mention that mobility all by itself is not sufficient, and you (typically) need the end-to-end solution the customer needs, and mobility all by itself is only half the equation.
What about the enterprise play? I would imagine that the Google product marketing team already has envisioned Google email and calendar appliances for the enterprise (and if they haven't, they should! that is what I would do), similar in concept to their Google search appliance for the enterprise – imagine a truly turn key collaboration appliance that all you have to do is add to the existing rack and do minimal configuration, and puff! done – secure calendar and email and IM for everyone! And when that happens, all businesses that offer (web-based ) collaboration tools for the enterprise will be in trouble, as their market share will erode – they should be concerned right now…
So what should smaller companies do? Mashups? Services and consulting? Continue pushing the envelope and innovating and pushing their ideas and products no matter what?
Pray? The answer is all the above.
[Update: Jeremy of Trumba, dropped a comment with a link to a Forrester report on Google Calendar]
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