A few weeks ago I wrote about some indications that Google is looking to push its cloud computing services into new markets. Specifically, that they removed the “beta” label from Gmail and the other elements of the Google Apps suite and announced a Google-ready, stripped down operating system (the Chrome OS) that would serve as a perfect light-weight way to access those services.
But Google has moved past quietly making changes and improvements in order to make their solutions more appealing. Now they have billboards:
An explanation of the campaign from the official Google blog:
Over 1.75 million businesses, schools and organizations have gone Google — including Motorola, University of Notre Dame, the Mercy Corps and many more — and each day, 3,000 more organizations join them. We want every organization to understand the benefits of going Google, so today we’re telling the story in a new way. We’re kicking off a series of outdoor billboards in four cities — Boston, Chicago, New York and San Francisco — that will change every weekday for the next four weeks. The billboards tell the story of an anonymous IT manager who gets so fed up with the typical IT status quo that his company eventually — you guessed it — goes Google.
Are Motorola, University of Notre Dame, and the Mercy Corps the most impressive examples they’ve got or did they just pick three at random? 1.75 million is a lot of organizations and that billboard stunt will surely get some attention and the Chrome OS announcement certainly sent the blogosphere—and even some “traditional” media—into a bit of tizzy…but how much does all this matter?
Part of what makes that non advertising sliver so small is that Google is really good at selling ads. But another, more fundamental part is that Google has yet to really get this Apps thing to take off. And that’s why they are making this push.
But it seems like maybe they aren’t pushing…broadly enough. For example, their billboards tell the story of “an anonymous IT manager.” Sure, that’s the sort of person who they need to convince in a lot of cases but it’s not the only sort of person they have to convince. Example:
In a recent Los Angeles Police Protective League blog post, President Paul M. Weber raised some concerns about the boys in blue switching to Google-hosted services. The group received their latest computer system after donations from the Michael Jackson memorial service at the Staples Center crashed the department website and took out their old system for most of the day. As the second-largest city in the US, they knew they needed to modernize; however, Weber raises legitimate concerns over the department’s consideration of a $7.25 million contract with Google to replace the city’s email and records retention system.
Said Weber, “This is a complex technological issue that demands careful study and planning by the city. Before the city introduces an outside entity into the chain of custody, sufficient safeguards need to be in place to secure confidential information. We will be closely monitoring this issue for the security of both our members and the sensitive information they access on a daily basis.” [RWW]
Making the LAPD comfortable with the move to the cloud is going to be a challenge. The security issue is a frequently cited barrier (even though keeping one’s own data entails its own risks) and sometimes seems like an excuse not to investigate cloud-based solutions more thoroughly. It takes a fair amount of explaining to convey all the advantages of shifting (floating?) cloudwards but the idea of not putting your data and computing in someone else’s hands is fairly simple.
To significantly grow that 3%, Google is probably going to have do more than target techies. They’re going to have to introduce the basic ideas of cloud computing into the common computing vernacular the same way functional concepts like “download”, “save”, “crash”, and others have been.
That claim probably needs more support than is amassed here or in previous posts on this issue. But the Web is becoming more and more about applications. The growth of the smartphone market means that syncing data across devices (by way of a Web-based repository) will eventually become a common practice (once it gets easy enough). Already it’s at least tacitly clear to a whole lot of people that they can upload their photos to Facebook and never have to worry about having them get deleted. Everyone knows computers crash but that a lot of stuff can be recovered by re-downloading email attachments from a webmail service. How long until the connected dots become self evident to decision makers of any stripe?
And will it happen in time for Google Wave to make the splash I kind of think some people are hoping it will?
(I tried to write a blog post about Google Wave once, it’s basically impossible.)