Google vs Microsoft

I don't know why this dog is here.

Zemanta suggested it as somehow

relating to Microsoft... or Google.My son asked me the other day how it was possible for Microsoft and Google to compete. He's in 6th grade, and he thinks of one company (MSFT) as a seller of operating systems, and one as a web search engine.

Probably a lot of CIOs are asking the same question because there was an article in CIO magazine called "The Business Case for Gmail in the Enterprise." The author compares the cost of buying, supporting and updating business apps that include e-mail, a calendar, document and spreadsheet programs, and instant messaging with moving to Google Apps, a web service version of the same apps that also includes a platform for wikis. Google Apps, which Google calls "software-as-a-service for business email, information sharing and security," is $50 per user per year, which is a huge savings over an enterprise version of Microsoft Office.

"The average cost of [enterprise] email is 8 dollars per month [per user]," he says. "For half that, we can get more value beyond just e-mail. We're getting Google apps and video for the enterprise. We're getting the ability to share spreadsheets and documents."

So, while Google's stock has dropped 50% over the past 6 months, it looks like their poised not only to take over the advertising "supply-chain," but also the business desktop platform.