Comments on: Google Pitching Services to Small and Medium Sized Businesses

By: Matthias

Matthias — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 15:13:59 +0000

Although I had to look up “facetious”, I think we agree. I’m surely pleased by some more modern features, but the whole “extensions” concept of Firefox should be made available everywhere (with mentioned 64k application as core). Or are there other options?

By: Dietrich Kappe

Dietrich Kappe — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 18:53:18 +0000

Matthias,

I wasn’t being facetious when I called for the comeback of 64K applications. For my money, Word 3.0 was the best version of Microsoft Word. Everything else has been downhill since then.

By: Dietrich Kappe

Dietrich Kappe — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 18:49:53 +0000

Jeffrey,

SaaS can be a slippery concept. When you sell someone a bottle of shampoo versus giving them a manicure, it is clear which one is a product and which one is a service. But if I sell you the use of a word processor on a monthly basis via a remote server, is it a product or a service? The word processor is a product, but the way I am selling it to you is a service.

Think of it this way: if Microsoft went out of business tomorrow, XP and Word will still work on my machine. If Google goes out of business, Writely and GMail and company no longer work. By that criterion, Google is selling services, not a product. If they license the software and sell appliances, then it starts to look like a product.

By: Matthias

Matthias — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 11:11:17 +0000

Bring back the simple 64k application.
I’m thinking similar. Well, kind of. I find it very annoying that with a decent machine you still have a noticeable response time from most applications today, be it the MS office suite, eclipse, firefox or whatever. While Firefox slowing down is essentially down to me adding all those extensions, I’d love to trade in many features of Word or Outlook for a quicker response time. I don’t want to see splashscreens for 10 seconds, Loading trazillions modules and plugins. even bloody acrobat reader takes its time nowadays.
I want everything as fast as … Notepad. I don’t mind if that’s inside or outside of a browser, and as long as I don’t have people coming back to me saying “I can’t open that”, I couldn’t care less about who offers that solution.
Can you do all that for me, Dietrich? :-D

By: Jeffrey McManus

Jeffrey McManus — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:24:16 +0000

Er, Google is pitching products, not services.