Microsoft has launched an attack on Google in which it sought to dissuade businesses from downloading Google Apps.
The attack came in a statement on Monday, the same day Google signed a deal with Capgemini to promote its office-productivity software among businesses.
Capgemini, a global consulting firm, is to offer desktop support and installation services to large corporations running Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE), the premium version of Google's web-based package. Google Apps includes a word processor, calendar and mail functions, and so is a direct rival to Microsoft Office.
In its statement, Microsoft laid out 10 questions it wanted users considering Google Apps to ask themselves.
"We believe competition is good for customers and the industry. That said, customers tell us that our solutions deliver the ease of use, reliability and security that enterprises need," the statement began. It then asked questions such as: "Google's apps only work if an enterprise has no power users, employees are always online, enterprises haven't built custom Office apps — doesn't this equal a very small percentage of global information workers today?"
Another poser read: "Google touts having enterprise-level customers but how many 'users' of their applications truly exist within the enterprise?", while a further one questioned Google's commitment to Google Apps, asking: "Their enterprise focus and now apps exist on the very fringe and in combination with other fringe services only account for one percent of the company's revenue. What happens if Google executes poorly? Do they shut [them] down given it will [affect] them in a minimal and short term way? Should customers trust that this won't happen?"
Microsoft's statement poured scorn on Google's "perpetual beta" ethos, which sees its software upgraded on a relatively continuous basis, rather than upgrades appearing in official releases. "With Google apps in perpetual beta and Google controlling when, and if, they roll out specific features and functionality, customers have minimal, if any, control over the timing of product rollouts and features."
And the statement asked: "Google has a history of releasing incomplete products, calling them beta software, and issuing updates on a 'known only to Google' schedule — this flies in the face of what enterprises want and need in their technology partners — what is Google doing that indicates they are in lock step with customer needs?"
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Leader: Two hits for Google Apps
Capgemini's adoption of Google's applications suite is good, but Microsoft's reaction was remarkable…
Ovum analyst David Bradshaw told ZDNet.co.uk that the missive showed: "Microsoft is paying [Google] the second most sincere form of compliment, in treating them as a serious rival."
Bradshaw described Microsoft's allegations that Google released incomplete products with no clear update schedule as being: "At best, cheeky." He suggested that the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model of updates had been proven successful by Salesforce.com. "Clearly they are taking advantage of the platform to change things when they need to, when it's ready," said Bradshaw. "They don't have to wait until the end of the year or whenever — all that has changed. In a sense, SaaS enables continual improvement."
Bradshaw added that, as Microsoft itself was moving into the SaaS market with Office Live Meeting and its upcoming CRM play, there might be "people in Microsoft who will strongly object to [the viewpoints in the statement]".
Google refused to comment on the statement.
Talkback
Who would know more about" releasing incomplete products" than Microsoft? Everything they have marketed has been in perpetual beta, with the consumer paying the consequence. Just look at VISTA.
Make Sure You Read the Fine Print before
making a Career (or Income) Limiting Move
- to see why see the article at http://www.pcprofile.com/Office_Collaboration.pdf that I wrote some months ago on the topic.
Great tool, great concept, BUT it has a big downside for the unwary. It’s not as plain sailing as many would like to believe.
If you want to share your IP with the rest of the world and have it all over servers everywhere, go for it, but those of us that make a living out of IP matters, it’s a real issue.
It’s an even bigger issue if you want to have commercial secrets and decide to collaborate using Google Apps, the Ts and Cs will kill you, and not with laughter!
Are you aware that for anything you load up into Google Apps you immediately grant a license to Google to use in any way they so choose? Read their fine print.
Whilst you might own the IP, you are also assigning them rights to it as well!
Is that what you had in mind for confidential documents, spreadsheets, presentations etc?
I suspect not.
Use Google Apps with caution!
I think you mean Microsoft, not Google, in your title.
However I do rather agree with post below.
From the agreement:
"Google does not own third party content used as part of the Service, including the content of communications appearing on the Service. Title, ownership rights, and Intellectual Property Rights in and to the content accessed through the Service are the property of the applicable content owner and may be protected by applicable copyright or other law."
Seems pretty clear.
R
Yes, I am sure
Your IP Rights have been licensed to syndicate!
Read the rights you have assigned away from the Google Apsp Tersm and Conditions link at http://www.google.com/google-d-s/intl/en/terms.html
When you assign away your rights, you have done just that, you might own the content but so does someone else, that's what assignment means!
Syndication of "your content" is also a possibility when you read the fine print.
Your Rights (from Google Ts and Cs)
"Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services.
You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate.
By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services.
Google reserves the right to syndicate Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services and use that Content in connection with any service offered by Google.
Google furthermore reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Content in its sole discretion.
You represent and warrant that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the rights granted herein to any Content submitted."
Breaking this statement up into its constituent parts presents some new governance challenges for organizations who want to contain and protect their intellectual property.
Read again the paragraph that states "..................you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services. "
I am sure that most organizational IP counsel will not have read the content of that paragraph through to its conclusion and even though the "purpose" is stated, this may not be in the best interests of your organization for a number of reasons outlined in a whitepaper where we raised this issue almost 6months ago in April 2007.
It also presents serious "governance" challenges about who in the organization has delegated authority to license and sign over content such as is indicated by Google above in the last paragraph.
Organizations need to be very careful about what they want to be listed using Google Apps as it is clear that what is being displayed is being made available “to members of the public” through web search engines as recently evidenced by the issue of Google Calendar meetings and passcodes being displayed about meetings for organizations such as McKinsey etc.
In our view the use of Google Apps needs careful consideration by senior management of all the issues before they jump into these free tools as there are some procedural in-house issues that need to be addressed as well as the issue of Intellectual Property Management that need to be addressed.
The above Ts and Cs clearly states Google have now been granted a license to share in your IP!
Is that what you intended to happen to your correspondence with customers/suppliers, internal documents, product drafts, financial results, budgets and forecasts, new product designs etc etc etc by "....submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public,........"?
We understand a Google "Powerpoint lookalike" is soon to be released and this will also present some serious IP challenges and Commercial-IN-Confidence issues for C level execs with the content us
...don't publish stuff through Google.
If you consider those terms in the context of the problems Google's been having with things like Google Books, it makes perfect sense that it needs to clarify what its role is. Google is more than a passive replicator of other people's content, it has to do things with it, and it's making it clear in those T&Cs.
It seems to me that if you don't publish stuff through Google (ie, you use Google Docs to share some info between a closed group), then Google has no licence on your IP. I'd be shocked otherwise.
Unless you self-publish, publishing _always_ involves the granting of some rights to the IP of the original content to a third party. I agree that people should be aware of Google's T&Cs, and that there may be (many) cases where they're inappropriate. But that's true of any service, and I don't think Google is being unreasonable.
Not that I see Google competing strongly with Microsoft Office, but when Microsoft thinks that constant upgrades to software in a software as a service SaaS environment is a bad idea, then someone has to say something!
Most software-as-a-service CRM vendors such as Salesforce.com, Netsuite and Salesboom.com offer upgrades 4-5 times per year! This is awesome since new features, upgrades and bug fixes are more quick and are transparent, without the users having to deal with installation, upkeep, interruption in service , etc.
Microsoft never innovated, even the Windows user interface was stolen from Apple!
A company seems scared to me if they are ready to talk bad about a product that they too will be releasing. To say that the constant update ways of SaaS Software is not as good as those annoying little message pop ups on your desktop telling you when it's time to download something to fix a problem. With proof coming from the success of CRM Software vendors like Salesforce, Netsuite and Salesboom.com we have already seen that this works well. Why wait to get an improvement for your platform when you have the option to be working with the most up to date software everyday.