Google finds its G Suite spot: Renames apps, talks up AI and BigQuery The invitation for Google's latest cloud sales pitch, dubbed "Horizon" because the company has already had its way with "Atmosphere", on Thursday directed attendees to The Mint. As San Franciscans know, and Google Search advises to those in the area, The Mint is a karaoke bar, not far from the San Francisco Mint, which began …
"When you compare our products to our competitors' products, apples to apples, they're just plain better," she said. "And we're closing the gap incredibly fast."
So yours are better, but you are closing the gap? Wuh?
Anyway, got the email this morning, very early, I had a dream about wasps for some reason. I was left with the vague impression Google was opening a lingerie chain...
The interesting thing for me, is how this G Spot will affect those who signed up when it was Google for Domains and use it for family accounts. We still can't sign up for Family Subscription/Sharing on Google Music, although Google Trips & Google Spaces has just started working.
Google seems to "reinvent" itself and its products every year - essentially there's no continuity and zero guarantee that whatever this iteration turns out to be will exist in two years time. At some point, industry is going to realize that Google technology is all smoke and mirrors aligned to fleece the punters - and they are doing it very well, but in the long term it can't last.
I wouldn't call it Tulipomania. It's not really the same concept.
You are hitting on the point I wanted to make, though, that the rebranding is needless. When your company begins to think that its biggest hurdle to adoption is branding, you have a problem, and it isn't branding.
Hell, between this and the Pixel rebranding of the Nexus phone line (which, allegedly, may not even be a complete rebranding when it's unveiled next week!), my trust in Google has DROPPED precipitously. This is a bad sign from corporate. Something is wrong in the executive ranks for this to have slipped through (much like G+ a few years ago). Pushing out bad products is one thing (hello, Wave!) but pushing out a rebranding exercise and claiming that is going to solve all your issues is just ludicrous.
I think I'll spend next weekend migrating my email out of Google Apps -- err, sorry, the G Spot now.
Tech seems to follow ten year cycles: always a Golden Age of about three years, followed by an Ice Age of seven or so years. Innovation followed by incremental change. This version is a little different, but not light years ahead of the last. Now it's time for hype and marketing. That's all that's left. I think we have at best another 3 years until the pink cloud turns into a boring grey cloud. I have always thought that marketing was meant to shame people and make them feel inadequate, and getting a product makes the shame go away. It works with credit cards: they have blue cards, silver cards, Gold cards, and Black ones now. As soon as you see a black card, the gold one is a little embarrassing.
I am from the States, and I worked with one of the first Goggle partners. You can down Google, but it's not their fault we are headed into an Ice Age. I am in South American selling (well as of Monday G-Suite). We have a big problem with the Mid Markets customers clinging to the the free version of Google Apps. Hey Google, you should have called me!!!!! I had a good marketing idea. If we can't strong-arm the Mid market customers into buying the business grade Apps, maybe we could take a lesson from the credit card companies and shame them into a purchase............
What if we called the home version "Free Suite" and the Enterprise version G-Suite...that might work. I get the marketing jokes and slights, but aim them at another offender. Ia m sure Google isn't that bad when you take a look at Happy Meals and new and improved Cheerios. I'm in sales and I need this stuff until the Ice Age ends.....I've got to eat!!!!
The new version of Google Apps is a little different. Of course it can't make the same splash as Cloud Computing did many years ago when the intelligence was pushed out of the telecom companies and slowly imploded into the "cloud". I am leading a sales team that sells this stuff. I am worried about what lies three years ahead. I keep thinking of the boardroom scene from Tron: Legacy. The scene where the evil company Encom announces the release of it's new OS 12. One of the honest board members speaks up and says, "what's the difference between version 11 and version 12 for the end users?" The CEO looks at him like he is a fool and says, "we put a 12 on the box!"
Those days aren't too far out.
I use Google Mail in my business - it's actually really good, don't really miss Outlook that much and the convenience of using Android Gamil or a browser on the go is incalculable.
BUT - the big problem for me is Google Docs. I don't know much about AI, but I just want a word processor to do some basic things - like showing non-printing characters, having a way to format numbered paragraphs and sub-paragraphs easily. I don't want tables breaking over pages. When I actually tried to use Docs, it was a disaster - there isn't a great deal it needs to be basically workable, but there are just some things which stop me adopting it as a daily tool. It's a toy in comparison with Word, or even LibreOffice.
Such a shame - the idea of collaboration is really well executed, but you have to collaborate on something usable.
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