Google is going one further in taking on Microsoft:
Mountain View, Calif. - February 22, 2007 - Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) - today introduced Google Apps Premier Edition, a new version of Google’s hosted services for communication and collaboration designed for businesses of all sizes. Google Apps Premier Edition is available for $50 per user account per year, and includes phone support, additional storage, and a new set of administration and business integration capabilities.
It's about time. Recently I've noticed that as most of what I write is usually for e-mail anyway, and my gmail has an in-built spell check, I'm using Word less and less. As a result, I've become so comfortable with the font in Google's e-mail that when I gravitate back towards Word I tend to change it to simulate my gmail font, rather than sticking with Times New Roman. This is not something I had previously envisaged happening; at one point I never wanted to type in anything but Times New Roman. It's a classic example of a disruptive technology in action: it's technologically inferior, but it's cheaper and just more convenient so you end up making it a standard. Google however still has some way to go in terms of catching up with the full sophistication of a Word package, and the "docs and spreadsheets" application on the gmail is still just a basic extension of gmail itself, so it will be very interesting to see how this new application fares.
While on the subject of gadgets, I've noticed a lot of scathing criticism of the Blackberry phones - namely the Blackberry Pearl and the Blackberry 8800. "... Well done overall ... but this device's keyboard, a highly important feature, left me frustrated no matter how many e-mails I typed," wrote Katherine Boehret in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, in a product review of the Blackberry 8800. I've heard the same complaints elsewhere: principally that "the keyboard is too small", and "I don't like the trackball" (the blackberry's 'mouse'). Journalists have come down on Research In Motion (RIM) with no shortage of criticism for making these stylistic changes.
I have a Blackberry Pearl, and I find it very easy to use, so at first the criticism surprised me. But then I began to notice a common feature: all the lambasting was coming from people over the age of 35. What no one has succeeded in noticing is that the Pearl and the 8800 are not blackberries designed for existing blackberry users: rather, they are blackberries designed for the under-30's who want to step up to a blackberry from a smart phone but find the old model just too bulky. This demographic - of which I am a member - has been conditioned since the age of 15 on increasingly miniaturized hand-held devices, and therefore expects the same thing from a blackberry. Neither do we have a problem using tiny devices.
It's a great coup for RIM, which now secures a new, and younger, market segment - and one which practically lives through e-mail.
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