DMEC

I saw the following at the end of a Google Groups email:

…

Regards,

_name_

---

Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage.
–~–~———~–~—-~————~——-~–~—-~

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “_group name_” group.
To post to this group, send email to _group abbreviation_@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to _group abbreviation_-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/_group abbreviation_?hl=en
-~———-~—-~—-~—-~——~—-~——~–~—

The contrast between the information shown above from Yahoo! and Google reminds me of one of the main reasons I stopped using Yahoo! Mail altogether: I don’t like serving as a billboard. Others have felt similarly for many years now. The message from Yahoo!, appended to the sender’s email because she uses Yahoo! Mail, is irrelevant to most recipients. Most web surfers are well aware of what yahoo.com has to offer. If they wanted to set it as their homepage, they would have long ago. In contrast, the message from Google contains information relevant to many recipients of the email (albeit probably more information than needed by most).

I realize I’m comparing email appendages to mailing list appendages. In the case of email, Google does not advertise to recipients at all. Don’t even get me started on the corruption of messages from Yahoo! Groups…

I’m curious: has Yahoo! reevaluated the decision to append advertisements to their members’ emails, or has improving existing services been lost in the (literal) shuffle? (I hope I get called out.) Has Yahoo! decided their target market doesn’t mind having the Yahoo! brand clutter up their email conversations and they’re willing to pass on people who care? Granted, maintaining an email platform may be a secondary concern as communication shifts to authenticated mediums like IM and other social networking tools.

Salesforce.com name is clearly associated with Software as a Service (SaaS). They also want to become the platform of choice, except that the Platform is not in your premises, it is delivered as a service too (PaaS). Salesforce.com is threatened by big players SAP, Microsoft and by small players like NetSuite and of course the open source free versions. While it is not obvious, there is one player who don’t directly associate with SaaS or Paas, the big daddy of them all with loads of cash, Google.

Google is working with mobile providers and delivers them software as  service, delivers Office applications a s a service, delivers software as a service (their API to Google maps), Ads as  a service, soon your social network as service …

Salesforce.com is associating closely with Google, as New York Times calls it,
 

… hoping to ride whatever success that company has in social networking
and office applications, a field now dominated by Microsoft.

…

“Marc is waiting for Google applications to mature,” said one former
Salesforce executive, who asked not to be identified. “If it can link
with Google applications, then maybe Salesforce can develop into a
platform.”

It is an oft repeated remark from businesses partnering with Google that they view Google as both friend and foe. Is Marc relying too much on Google for Salesforce.com’s success? Despite all the rumors in summer about Google acquiring Salesforce.com, nothing happened and I believe nothing will. Google’s  philosophy of open platforms, open networks doesn’t jive with the Salesforce.com model:

“The more our users customize, the more they are tied to our service,”
said Steve Fisher, the Salesforce executive overseeing the platform
project.

 Is the ecosystem a perfect match? Is there a danger of Google turning into the worst foe for Salesforce.com, bigger than SAP and Microsoft combined?

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Still wondering if SaaS is just a segment of the CRM industry, or just a slimmer alternative to the on-premise, highly functional [feature-bloated] Excels of the world? Adobe’s CEO Bruce Chizen isn’t. The software executive declared at the recent Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco that all of Adobe’s software would eventually be delivered over the web as a service. In fact, here is a screen shot of Photoshop Express, currently in development.

One of the quintessential desktop applications is set to enter the web services space. Adobe has announced that they will offer an online version of its standards-setting image editing software Photoshop, possibly within the next six months. The initial online edition will be a pared-down version of its mature offline sibling, but more robust than other free offerings currently available.

It will be interesting to see how Adobe integrates this into its partnership with powerhouse photo sharing site Photobucket. I would think that is where most of the interest in the new online product will come from, rather than the traditional artistic elite.