Thin vs. Fat: Google's plan to kill Microsoft Office

We all know that Microsoft also stumbles through its offerings, requiring several versions to deliver highly useful, largely stable apps. So it's easy to imagine Google going through the same "long march" strategy and ultimately outpacing Microsoft. But it's a shame that it doesn't shorten the march by avoiding the stumbles to begin with.

First Google needs to shore up its current offerings. Offline access and persistence are two huge technical hurdles that Google has only recently begun to address with its Gears initiative. It needs to expand this functionality to the Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations apps -- and do so quickly. But the company's recent Android project has stolen much the limelight away from the whole Google Apps initiative. That could take Google's eye off the Office prize. Google executives need to refocus on the bigger quest, dethroning Microsoft, and not let too many major initiatives get in each other's way. Google also needs to avoid getting too caught up in myriad side projects that may have a limited return on investment.

Google can't do all this alone. The company can hire as much uber-talent as it wants, but that won't fix the fundamental issue that the Web is not a monolith that one company can control. You win by being part of a great team that together delivers the best results and has financial interests in seeing the team succeed. This is where Google's paucity of ISVs is a real problem. It takes more than vision to change the world. It takes incentive, and for Google that means growing a real developer channel, one that can translate all of the cool Google technology into innovative, commercial applications that address real customer requirements.

If and when Google can bring such an ecosystem to life, it might actually have a chance at dethroning the Office king.

Why Microsoft is hard to beat

Embrace and extend. For better or worse, this has been Microsoft's modus operandi for more than a decade. Company strategists identify an emerging standard, publicly pledge support for it, then flood the marketplace with all sorts of proprietary extensions to "improve" the standard.

In some cases, it actually works out for the better. Key hardware technologies, such as the ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface), owe their existence to Microsoft's push to improve the Windows platform's compatibility and stability. In many other cases, however, the company's embrace--and-extend moves have had disastrous consequences. The browser wars of the late 1990s were the direct result of Microsoft's attempts to squash Netscape by forcing developers to choose between incompatible HTML tag and plug-in standards.

The question now is: Can Microsoft continue to embrace and extend its way through a Web-centric world in which the traditional, fat client PC model of stand-alone applications and locally stored data seems almost anachronistic?

If you were to ask that same question while shaking your Magic 8 ball, I'm guessing the answer would be "Outlook Good." Despite its legion mistakes, Microsoft still commands what is by far the most extensive software/hardware ecosystem in existence. From application servers to Zip file utilities, Microsoft's platforms are the primary targets for developers of all stripes. Many a commercial software development empire has risen on the tide that is Windows.

Case in point: Microsoft Office. Most people think of the big three -- Word, Excel, and PowerPoint -- as merely an integrated suite of stand-alone applications, albeit a wildly popular one. Take a closer look, however, and you see that Office is much, much more. Thanks to the inclusion of some robust integration APIs (Visual Basic for Applications, OLE automation, and various add-in interfaces), Office is a commercial development target in its own right. In fact, one of the easiest ways to break into the Windows development marketplace is by targeting Microsoft Office. Make it do something new or better and the world will beat a path to your door.

Of course, the Office "habitat" is just one part of the larger Windows ecosystem. SQL Server, Dynamics, Outlook, IIS (Internet Information Services) each generates its own gravitational field that helps capture the hearts and minds of commercial developers. And whether it's IIS with SOAP and WSDL or SQL Server with metadata, each implements the embrace-and-extend philosophy in a way that strengthens each piece of the ecosystem, including Office.