Google’s latest challenge to Microsoft

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/technology/14google.html?em&ex=1208318400&en=71baed664abb1c6d&ei=5087%0A

In a newly announced partnership with Salesforce.com, Google launched its latest effort to gain market share in competition with Microsoft. Google and Salesforce.com unveiled a program intended to increase the use of their customer management and office software among businesses. The integrated product offering combines Salesforce’s customer relationship management software with Google’s office productivity applications (e-mail, word processing and spreadsheets programs). Underlining its position as a leader in the Web 2.0 landscape, the new Google partnership “will not require a download or installation, but rather will be delivered as a service over the Web.” Moreover, the association with Salesforce.com, a brand well-established in the business world, serves to add credibility to Google’s effort to sell business applications. The new product will directly combine customer relationship management with day to day online communications. For example, “users would able to keep track of e-mail sent to a customer right on that customer’s sales record, and a group of people collaborating on a sales account would be able to communicate by instant message with one another.” Placing more control in the hands of the user, this program promises to increase productivity by allowing professionals effectively manage customers without switching between applications, essentially allowing business to be conducted in the familiar communication methods of the Internet. Microsoft responded to the introduction of “Salesforce for Google Apps” by dismissing its potential; “’Salesforce has belatedly recognized that it is important to link C.R.M. apps to productivity tools,’” said Brad Wilson, general manager for Microsoft’s C.R.M. unit. “’It has been core to our product since we launched five years ago. It validates our strategy.’” Not too subtle. Salesforce for Google Apps, a product rooted in insights in consumers’ use of the Internet to accomplish both personal and business tasks, highlights the growing divide between new media and old.