My views on Google’s future plans

September 4th, 2007

I was thinking this morning while taking my shower (I know, I know it’s rare but it happens) and I thought how evil (in a genius way) the Google guys were. Let’s face it: they are trying to take over (or “create” I should say) the online applications world. I guess this is nothing new to most of us. What I like is the monetary part of it so keep reading. Google is in a very good position to quickly overtake Microsoft in terms of usage. The way I see it, people hesitate to buy Office for their personal use at home. I understand this considering the outrageous cost. Business don’t mind have choice for 1 reason: it’s the de-facto standard and they have no choice.

Google apps are now free but consider this: in the future, would you mind watching a 30 seconds advertisement to use a totally free version online? This is a great way of making a LOT of money for Google. Say that Google restricts you to 1 hour of free online editing after which you must watch another advertisement, that makes a lot of money at the end of the year. I don’t want to do big calculations but if we estimate a revenue of “25 cents per ad” X “usage per year” than that’s big money IF because there is a IF, you consider software piracy.

See, when Microsoft gets his software pirated, they don’t get any money at all. Some might say that MS wants people to pirate their software instead of other software as it creates a big pool of people who know and want MS software at work. The Microsoft rebates for students and teachers is a great way to mould those innocents brains and dictate them in the right path. Let’s face it, what are the alternatives to Excel and Word? While I could quickly give out some alternatives, most people don’t even know about Word Perfect, Star Office or Open Office.

But back to money. If you pirate Microsoft software, they get no revenues. That’s plain simple. If you use free software from Google, they get some money. Once again, using the 25 cents per ad example, someone using a Google app once a week for 1 year will bring in 13$ in Google’s pockets. If you use it everyday then that’s 65$ in Google’s pockets. See where I’m going? It’s not a lot, but better than nothing! Of course, if someone is paying for a full license, then Microsoft is making more money. But I’d be curious to know the percentage of people who pirate software and I’ll bet you the Google boys studied that as well and I’m sure they’ll be coming with a “watch ads as you need” plan soon… Evil? Hmm not really. Genius? getting close.

Also, let’s not forget that Google now includes Star Office in their free Google apps package. Time to sell your Microsoft stocks?

Forward yourself a few years in the future. The future is and will be the browser. TV channels, radios, newspapers and yellow pages are all virtually extinct within the geek crowd. Google is working on everything “online” including user storage. What we need to do now is to work on getting decent bandwidth and online storage will be interesting (I’m not even going to talk about privacy here!)

As a bonus to the readers, here’s a free idea to anyone willing to take on the challenge: Come up with a great way to play games “truly online”. By that, I’m mean games that are playable in a browser (without a console) and playable anywhere and anytime. And while we’re at it, why can’t games be free just like those Google apps? Product placement and micro-localized advertisement could do the trick. There’s money to be made in them kids!

Oh well, maybe when I get old…