When Google announced on April 1, 2004 that it was releasing a webmail product with 2 GB of free storage, many thought it was an April Fools’ joke. On July 8, 2009, the day after Google announced an operating system to compete with Windows, the Gmail announcement looks like the first step in a secret 5-year plan to unseat Microsoft as the world’s most relevant software company.
Over the last five years, Google has shuck-and-jived its way into all sort of markets that seemed tangential to a search engine, but most people thought of them as fun hobbies for a company that figured out how to make billions from tiny text ads. Well, Gmail turned into a full-blown communications platform, with instant messaging and video chat. Google’s adventure in making online office-productivity apps led to an integration where e-mail attachments of Microsoft Word documents can now be safely opened with a single click.
It bundled all of them together for businesses into Google Apps, charging an annual seat license of just $50 — a small price compared to software and backend costs for Microsoft’s Office suite.
read more: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/07/all-roads-lead-to-chrome-os/
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire