Google has rarely needed affirmation from other companies. Its services are there for everyone. If we like them, we use them. Hundreds of millions of individuals are already converts to its technology.
This doesn't play as well in the enterprise. Although many of the biggest changes in corporate IT have bubbled up from the shop floor — the PC and the internet were both populist revolutions — incumbent IT suppliers are very keen to promote top-down command and control, denigrating the alternatives as toy-time distractions.
For Google to get signpost status on the IT director's roadmap, it needs respect as an enterprise contender. That respect will come from two things: a pinstriped partner and a cowed competitor. As of today, it has both.
Partnering is the easy one. Capgemini's agreement to include Google Apps as part of its corporate desktop offering is a low-risk, high-gain, feelgood deal that works for both parties. Just how well can be judged by the reaction of a third party, Microsoft, whose public pronouncements on Google have until now been sleekly bland or aggressively unfocused.
This time, Redmond is feeling the pain. A 10 bullet-point salvo from Microsoft takes Google Apps to task for not having any users, being short of corporate features, updating too frequently, not updating regularly enough, costing too much to be worth it, being too cheap to survive, and not being tuned to the needs of businesses. Golly.
As with most yelps of anguish, this says more about the yelper than the yelpee. The irony of Microsoft slinging accusations of bad deadline management is one thing; the fact that the company was driven to make such counterproductive claims is proof that the Capgemini blow struck home — hard.
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Microsoft attacks Google Apps
Redmond responds to Google's tie-in with Capgemini by suggesting that Google Apps is not appropriate for many businesses...
While Microsoft is a master of enterprise-grade fear, uncertainty and doubt, such tactics fail if the recipients know better. Enterprises are full of people who already use Microsoft and Google products: Microsoft products because they have to, Google products because they want to. Microsoft is preaching to the converted — but these converts are on the other side.
The only argument that will work is: "That's good. This is better. Try it." Until Microsoft can say that, it should say nothing. Otherwise, it risks hardening the affection people feel for Google into dangerous respect.
