I had no intention of chiming in on this, largely because it’s responding to rumors that really have little basis in fact. Considering it took Google nearly 8 months to bring Urchin to public consumption after the aquisition, I can’t imagine how long it’d take them to develop anything as complex as an OS or Office suite.

That said, Jason posted a really well reasoned mind dump of why he thought they’d do one in 2006. If they do one, I really, really dont’ buy the 2006 timeframe. But, as I started responding on his blog I realized the post was a bit long for a comment. So, here it is, my responses to why I feel Jason’s reasons are wrong – even if his analysis is bang on:

Sigh… I’m not going to argue with whether or not Google will do an OS or Office, but I’ll happily argue with your reasoning ;-)

4. Google has built the largest grid computing networking in the world with hundreds of thousands of computers–extending this to a desktop OS would be a cake walk.

They require hundreds of thousands to maintain half a dozen really important properties that do an average of 5 pages per user per day. Running an AJAX (I’m assuming) desktop or office suite would require at least a doubling of server resources, as Google is past the point of adding infrastructure purely for redundancy. They now bring up entire data centres to deal with CPU and RAM load.

5. Google has hired folks who worked on Open Office.

Yeah, and they’ve hired lots and lots from FireFox and RedHat. Considering OO.org is based on Java and Google’s moving to Java, that’s a natural reason for them to hire from that team.

6. GMail’s WYSIWYG is 90% of Microsoft Word. Everyone and their brother is making web-based word processors and spreadsheets today.

Gmail’s WYSIWYG is just a WYSIWYG. It might have 90% of the features *you* use, but it doesn’t have 1% of the features most enterprises use (just on the desktop, that’s ignoring every server bit).

Also, when was the last time you could copy from Excel into Gmail, or from a web-based spreadsheet into a web-based word processor? Web-based office tools are great. Fantastic even. But to say they’re ready to compete with MS Office or even Open Office.org is laughable.

7. Google is about to launch a calendar according to reports. That’s a no brainer since they have contacts and email already.

Agreed. No brainer. But a calendar is different than a time management system, which is what Outlook is (specifically O12).

7a. Email, contacts, and calendar=Outlook. Outlook=Microsoft Office. Office=Microsoft’s main revenue stream.

Outlook is far more than just email, contacts and calendar. If this is all you use Outlook for, you’re missing out on 90% of the app. Office is more than Outlook. If it wasn’t, why do companies spend 500-1000$ on Office when they can get Outlook for 150-200$ (and then use OpenOffice.org for the rest)?

8. Most folks are fine with web-based applications now. AJAX has made web-based email competitive with desktop email–case is closed on that issue.

“Most”? What’s the combined marked for web-based apps? Maybe 150M people? Office farts and more people smell it. Also, AJAX has made web-based email similar in structure, though far lacking in features, to desktop email. Again, if you’re only using 10% of the features of Outlook then you probably don’t miss much using Gmail, but the power users who actually run companies (secretaries, project managers, etc) won’t be switching anytime soon.

9. Google’s server network is the only one in existence that could handle a hosted office suite–GMAIL has proven that.

Yeah, and Google Reader, Google Analytics, Froogle and a half dozen other launches have proven that they can’t. Hell, Gmail even proved they can’t since their biggest reason for the invites was to ensure things could scale.

11. Bill Gates himself said that there will be a huge market for advertising-based software, and Microsoft is making a web-based version of Office a major priority.

Well, it’s not a full version of Office, for one. But agreed, web-based stuff is where companies will be focussing for quite a few years. The problem is that for enterprises it simply isn’t enough.

12. Tech CEOs lie through their teeth all the time–they have to. Steve Jobs said that he would never make a video iPod for two years–then he did. I would task Eric’s comments that they are not interested in making a desktop OS, Office Suite, etc. with a grain of salt. If they were interested–and i know they are–they would never tip their cards.

Agreed. Statements mean bunk.

Overall, your analysis of the market is a touch simplistic. As I said, I wouldn’t be surprised if Google did an Office suite or a desktop. Okay, I *would* be surprised, but not all that surprised for the reasons you stated: it makes a great carrier for AdSense.

At the end of the day I’m not convinced they’d succeed though. Anytime anyone’s challenged Office they’ve run into exactly why it’s so popular: because so many people use it for so, so, so much. Office hasn’t lost market share in a decade (in spite of dozens of apps getting millions of users) because Office hasn’t even hit its saturation point yet.

It’ll be exciting to see what Google does in 2006 (and what mis-steps they make, as they get bigger it’s becoming more common).