I know, I’ve been ranting on people and Google all day. But let’s stop with the “killer” talk.
Yes, Jason, that means you too.
Yes, you called it. Which is great foresight, truly. Because I wouldn’t have called it, and I’m a huge fan of my own foresight 
An app isn’t a killer until it actually does some damage. Until a single app that targets Office does 2 key things, it can’t even be a Diabolical Plotter, nevermind a Killer of Office. Those 2 things?
1. Get past 10M active users
2. Actually make Office sales go down (or cause a market share slip, take your pick)
This happened with FireFox and IE. Which was great. It hasn’t happened with Gmail and Outlook (hell, it didn’t even happen with Gmail and HOTMAIL for goodness sakes). It hasn’t happened with Writely and Word. It won’t happen with Spreadsheets and Excel.
If it does, I’ll admit I’m wrong. But until it does, there is no “killer” here. That’s just sensationalism. Tabloid journalism. Grandstanding. I’m not pointing the finger at Jason now, since he has every right to dance around (since he called this ages ago, and I didn’t believe him). But every other person calling this a “killer” needs a little perspective.
Unless, of course, Live Local is a Google Maps killer, start.com is a google.com killer, and a post-it on Don Dodge’s desk is a Froogle killer.
#1 by Jonic - June 6th, 2006 at 23:09
Why Jeremy, I didn’t know you had it in you to be so acerbic!
I’m thinking of starting a “Jeremy Wright and Jason Calacanis disagree on awful lot of things” category on 100yen… I think it would make for a truly gripping read…
Personally I’m with you on this one… Google know their territory, and they know they’d be fools to venture out of it… Just as Microsoft can’t possibly compete with Google in terms of search etc, Google sure as hell can’t compete with Microsoft in terms of software, desktop or otherwise…
Diluting the open source market isn’t going to prove beneficial to Google… If anything they’re hurting the very thing they’re trying to bolster just to make Microsoft feel uneasy… The truth is I doubt Microsoft are even bothered…
Google have the infrastructure and the talent to make this work, but it’s just not going to happen… After Firefox stole so much market share back from IE the OSS community was optimistic, but have you heard a single story about OpenOffice stealing market share back from Microsoft Office? Not a single one…
I disagree with Jason on his prediction that a “light OS will follow shortly”… It would be a massive waste of time, money and resources… There’s too much of a battle between Windows, OS X and Linux/Unix/Whatever right now, do the waters need muddying any more? The same logic applies to office suites.
#2 by Jonathan - June 7th, 2006 at 23:40
“but have you heard a single story about OpenOffice stealing market share back from Microsoft Office? Not a single one…”
My wife and I switched. That’s what… 2 out of 500 Million? Just a tiny bit of market share… hahah.
Our switch was purely based on cost, but I’ve been really impressed with OpenOffice.
#3 by Jeremy Wright - June 8th, 2006 at 08:27
Pudd: That’s not market share though, since more new folk probably bought Office that day than left
#4 by apples - June 10th, 2006 at 05:13
I had people praise Google Talk when it first came, saying it was the best there had ever been and that it would completely take over. They used it non stop for two weeks, then came right back to MSN cuz that’s where everybody else was..
Google Talk is… It’s probably just the kid in me, but I for one need my dirty emoticons.