This article certainly points to an interesting change of pace in Redmond when it comes to the ongoing battle for Web 2.0 dominance. While Microsoft is certainly turning the ship to open fire on Google and the myriad of the new .com startups, Microsoft still remains at disadvantage because it has a lot more to lose than to gain at least initially. This new development of making Works available online for free is certainly interesting, considering that the cost of $50 (to Microsoft, “retail”) could be easilly made up by anyone actually using the application online:

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. said on Thursday it may offer a free, advertising-supported version of its basic word processing and spreadsheet software, in an apparent bid to fend off a nascent challenge from Google Inc. in the business software market.

Microsoft, which dominates the market for desktop computer software through its Windows and Office franchises, has long resisted offering its software online.

But it faces a growing pack of Web-based competitors — led by Google — that is offering similar technology for free with a business model that makes money off advertising.

The world’s largest software maker is now mulling how it can move Microsoft Works, a basic suite of business software that often comes preloaded on inexpensive consumer PCs, onto the Web as part of its growing stable of free online services.

Microsoft continues to roll out new online services under the Windows Live brand and it started testing Office Live, a software for small businesses to create e-mail accounts, Web sites and collaborate on projects.

Alan Yates, general manager of Microsoft Information Worker Business Strategy, said the company will consider many options to woo entry-level users.

“We’re also thinking about how we might take advantage of new business models like advertising and other payment models, as well as new forms of distribution,” said Yates.

Revenue from software licenses for Office and the Windows operating system accounts for a bulk of Microsoft revenues.

The challenge for Microsoft will be to make sure a free or, possibly, a subscription-supported version of Works won’t hurt sales of its dominant Office software, which accounted for a quarter of the company’s $44 billion in sales last year.

Microsoft expects its new version of Office, due out in early 2007, to spur another round of demand. Office includes Outlook e-mail, PowerPoint presentation software, Excel spreadsheets and Microsoft Word.

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft sells the latest version of Works, which includes a calendar, word processor, spreadsheets, Web Browser and e-mail, for $50.

Last month, Google said it created a free software platform to run a set of business software programs including e-mail, scheduling and communications. A paid, premium version will be available later this year with an ad-free option.

At the time, Google also said its online spreadsheet and word processing software were candidates for bundling into its business software platform.

Google acquired word processing Web site Writely.com in March and began testing Google Spreadsheets, which allows users to create, store and share spreadsheets on the Internet, in June.

So here is the Web 2.0 scale as I like to see it. A year ago right about this time Microsoft was almost down for the count. It just got smacked by the steel chair and got the elbow drop from the top rope across the ring. Google released Gmail and speculation of Google Office was mounting. Microsoft, dazed and confused, was spending live.com $$$ on creating online/sharing integration for its upcoming Office 2007 suite knowing full well that most corporate (“big money”) users have privacy policies restricting the sharing and uploading of files outside of corporate firewalls.

So here we are a year later and boy does time make a difference. Google has released one uninteresting application after another unexciting bundle and is slowly but surely losing both trust and fan girl image that it once had. They are the Back Street Boys now, whether they like that or not. Fan girls are over on myspace, on Youtube, blogging, vlogging… and Google has to put a finishing move on Microsoft, which as in all wrestling, appears to be Hulking up through some miraculous burst of energy.

Make no mistake, Microsoft is still very bloody and the greasy hair is looking pretty bad. It has to convince already frugal corporate gatekeepers that the productivity from its new OS and Office suite will displace the additional costs of retraining and retooling literally every non-ITPRO worker (you know the kind, that have printing instructions glued to the side of the monitor) and change the way they have worked and viewed their desktops for close to a decade.

The funny thing? Even though Microsoft is no stronger a year later, Google is by comparison weaker and has virtually everyone else after them, at least in the web 2.0 world. And that, after all, is what we’re lead to believe is the future… The funny thing is that the one leading that notion is Google themselves.

It’s been a while since I talked about G vs. M, but little has changed since then. Google is still whipping that llama.

If you’re a Microsoft Small Business Specialist I hope you remember the IT Basic questions from the Sales & Marketing assessment. If you’re truly one of us you also know that most small business owners, regardless of size, tend to be IT Basic, if not to an extent even IT ignorant. 

If that turns out to be true, there are bad times ahead for these guys.

Google is launching a (beta) of Google Spreadsheets, a web-driven ajax spreadsheet program that at least for my needs is superior to Microsoft Excel. Yes, superior. Look at some of these modern features that are available directly from a web site: access control, instant sharing (enter an email and send out an invitation), realtime collaboration via IM. No application to install, no viewer.. just the web browser. I don’t need to link data in 3 books, I don’t get easily impressed by shiny objects and I have not built my entire business and accounting system on top of Excel – but what I do often is edit the sheets with multiple people, work from systems that do not have Excel installed, create backups and save my work at every turn. For me, this is perfect and its enough.

More importantly, as I use this I will invite others to look at the Spreadsheets and edit them in a browser instead of piling on attachments and thus starts a viral elimination of Microsoft Excel.

Now I usually caution against trying out beta software for consumers but considering that this runs out of a web browser it just might be worth a try. Honestly, I’d pay for Google Spreadsheets over Microsoft Excel, just based on the few screen shots that I’ve seen. Although ads don’t bother me much I really don’t click on them often and I’d rather pay and get all the screen real estate I can. Really, it is that good… except… Google Talk is just awful which means I’ll be sticking to Outlook until Google admits that their chat is weak and figures out a way to totally rip off MSN Messenger.

Now will an established small business jump at this? Highly, highly unlikely. One thing you start to appreciate about small business IT ignorant cases is that they will run their business out of an Excel spreadsheet. That spreadsheet eventually becomes a full blown application and a CRM and a toaster and a babysitter when the child grows up enough to be able to do basic data entry. Forget about “switching” to Google Spreadsheets for most established small businesses. However, if you ask 9/10 people they will admit that the behavior I just described is detrimental to their business and that there must be a better way. So to all the doomsday predictions in links above, I don’t think Microsoft has much to worry about here. For the new business, IT basic and everyone not living in a spreadsheet… there seems to be less and less of a reason to buy Office 12 with each passing day. Don’t worry about Steve or Eric, they’ll still sell millions of copies of Office 12, in the short term they got nothing to worry about.

In the long term, this is pretty bad for Microsoft. Where is a live.com equivalent of Google Spreadsheets? “Our goal is to make our customers more productive with bloatware” is the likely quote from Microsoft PR because, lets face it, do you think they would really sacrifice their cash cow to win a little fight with Google? Of course not. But in the long term, that same stance of “our customers need features, our customers need integration” will make live.com part of their initiative largely irrelevant. What is more likely here? Microsoft kills its cow and succumbs to Google’s killer online portfolio… or Google rips off MSN Messenger and pushes forward with Gmail, Gcalendar, Gspreadsheet, Gpowerpoint and Goutlook? I’d bet on Google. Which, in essence, is a bet against me and my business.

Who are you betting on today?

Free tool allows you to syncronize your Windows Mobile phone with free and sharing-friendly Google Calendar.

Every now and then I get approached by someone that needs a shared calendar or a good calendar for their use but they don’t need Exchange. Newlyweds need help coordinating their joint activities. Pregnancy or new baby brings up a scheduling nightmare. Party planning. As Windows mobile becomes a commonplace so does the reliance on shared calendars but the only thing Windows Mobile will sync against is Microsoft Exchange. Enter Google Calendar.

Google Calendar, which launched just a few short weeks ago, has become a de facto standard for free calendars online. It is friendly, dynamic, fast… and supports sharing… AND now can be synced to your Windows Mobile device using this free utility: Companionlink for Google Calendar.

It’s free, syncs using Outlook (which is also free with every Windows Mobile phone you buy) and you can sync and share to your hearts content without bringing in Exchange/SBS. Now all thats left is the the disappointment that comes with knowing how boring you are and how little life you have.

Guys over at msmobiles really did a good job selling this and also have a story about G-Spot XP, a free tool to take better screenshots of your SmartPhone.

Update: Whoa, what a bait and switch. Apparently earlier today it was free, now its magically only a 14 day trial. What a bait and switch. I'm sorry I sent you there under the wrong premise (unintentionally) and I would nuke the links to it along with the post except this may be worth it to someone, somewhere. As for the publisher, shame on you.

Google Desktop 4 is out and in one hit takes out 50% of the eyecandy that Microsoft is promising with Vista when/ever it comes out. Gadgets (similar to side dock, Yahoo Gadgets, Widgets, Mac OS X stuff) are new and allow you to detach parts of your Google Desktop sidebar and smack them on your desktop. Pretty nifty but fairly useless and annoying for anyone over 13. It is somewhat interesting to see how Google is taking Microsofts hints and teasers and turning them into actual, free, downloadable (albeit beta) quality software. 

Google Desktop is supposed to leave the beta stage and go live today. I initially got GDS for search purposes but what made me stay is the near infinite number of widgets that are developed by others - most even share the source code. Certainly something for Microsoft to take note of and excite developers for their search platform at launch. It's not all about "finding" it, its more about organizing and making it available. My GDS includes news, scratchpad, todo, quickview, weather, search and RSS from places I still browse to. So go get it. Make sure you do not enable search across workstations or Google will copy your files to their servers. Big no no!

There are more than a few screenshots over at TechCrunch talking about Google's new calendar software. Ajax based, integrated into gmail, portable, yada, yada, yada. I'll spare you the tech details, suffice to say its yet another web calendar. Nothing new here, all portals have had sucky web based calendars for ages. What is more interesting is the amount of interest and need people have for a Google-delivered calendar software. This is, by far, the most expected and desired feature since Outlook Web Access back in 2003. I have never seen more people look forward to a product this much and desire it so bad. Now if Google is smart enough to build in sharing to this calendar it may be a defacto winner on the day it launches. Why? Full integration. Look at Gmail. It integrates (albeit sucky) chat client, file storage, pop3 access, group subscriptions, tagging, flagging and no advertising on outbound or inbound mail (unlike Yahoo). So basically with a calendar this is a lightweight Outlook Web Access with more features and pesky side-text ads? Now as a standalone this is no match for Outlook or OWA. But if it gets any level of management, sharing and policies…. Well, it becomes a fight over the desktop (yes, again) and where you spend your day. I spend more time in Outlook than any other app. If that app suddenly becomes a web page does it take a lot of people away from the Office suite by default? Thats a big question. What is interesting is the amount of people that say "Hey, check out Google *.*, I use and love it." - Thats what everyone was saying about Outlook 2003 when it launched and now those words are associated with Google. Would you switch? or have you already? And yes, sucky is my new word of the day.

Gdon't care, not really. I only know of one person that actually installed this program and believe me, I tried hard to find someone to play with me and see what Gtalk can do. At the time, not much, aside from a branded stripped down Jabber client it didn't have anything to offer. Google seems to keep on pushing forward with this, it has integrated Gtalk message history (conversations) into Gmail. Aside from being based on an open platform Gtalk really has nothing to offer, especially when you consider other clients that have it beat by a mile. Furthermore, nobody really uses the Gtalk software - everyone seems to be on Gtalkr. So why post this at all? Well, there are such high expectations for Google to provide a Google Cube, power the Google Internet, deliver Google Office, Google Linux… Yet they can't even write a decent IM client and get spanked at it by two Flash programmers. I hope this puts the rumored Google ambitions in some context, if it doesn't go check out Google Pack and it's merry bunch of freeware and you'll see what I mean.

They sure have been buying a lot of fiber. Get it now? Eh? The fiber.. Anywho, the rumor mill over what Google is doing with the dark fiber, the acquired telco building in New York, the $100 Google cube PC, the Google Office, Google Linux. We get it, its a big company with $400/share stock price and they can use the funds at their disposal to do anything. The latest rumor: Google to build its own private global IP network. This, as usual, is bringing out a lot of people concerned over the privacy and how this could lead to Google limiting access only to the web sites that pay for their service. Oh, really? And how is Google going to hook into the Cable jack in my bedroom? The last mile has always been an issue, both for cable and still for ma bell. So let me see if I can settle this would destroying my tall stack of NDA's: Every big private company that has a lot of information on its hands does not want to store it in a single place. Over time it becomes simultaneously impractical, expensive and even impossible to do multi-master replication. Sure, Google has a lot of cash to spend and a lot of ambitions, but at the end of the day Google is an advertising company. Everything else is given away for free in hopes that users would be dragged to their properties to click on ads. So needless to say that every time GOOG shares go up 10% there will be rumors of them taking down Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and DOJ in one swoop. In reality, they just want you to click on ads. As do I. It's called "making money" and despite all the no evil stuff, it is all about the cold hard cash.

Since I'm all about mobility today I think it warrants a little discussion on what is without doubt the most popular web application on the web today - Gmail (though I am playing with Microsoft Live.com webmail and wow, they really give Google a run for their money). So what about Gmail and mobility - well, until now you had an option of syncing your phone with Gmail via provided pop3 download feature. However, if you know the joys of browsing via GPRS on two bars or less you know how painful getting mail on mobile devices is. Well, Gmail went mobile. Now you can browse around your Gmail inbox as easilly as you go through your SMS messages. So check out Gmail Mobile. Now on the other end stands the 500lb gorilla of Microsoft Outlook and there are some great news on that end too. First off, and totally unrelated to Outlook, is the great news that IMF updates are now being distributed through WSUS so you don't have to go fish every other week for IMF content filter updates. But back to Outlook - the latest Outlook Junk Filter update is available for download and you if you got junk mail you need this. Even if you're an ExchangeDefender customer and you don't rely on IMF/Outlook to take care of your spam you need to download this update - I have received a TON of support calls with really weird things happening since the last Outlook junk mail update so please put this on the top of your to-do list.