In 2004, Google quietly upended the online battle for user attention with the roll out of Gmail - an email service that for the first time promised unlimited storage for email with the following vision " you will never have to delete a message again". Then unlimited looked like 5 GB of storage. That amount of storage jolted established email services providers out of their storage reverie ... Yahoo was selling 10 MB storage for $20 a year (and now Google is giving away 500 times that for free!), and Microsoft, through its MSN email was selling 25 MB. In short order, many established email services became essentially obsolete (include Excite) and Yahoo soon teetered on the verge of outright collapse - many people blamed it search engine not catching on; but the problem was users suddenly had another reason not to visit Yahoo anymore or spend more time on the site.
In 2005, Microsoft, striving to remain relevant in the fight for the future of the web, launched Microsoft Live @ Edu. A co-branded email system that allows academic institutions globally create their own domain-branded email system on Microsoft's Hotmail. This new solution with its starting 100MB storage, created another opportunity for Microsoft, but the lumbering giant failed to radically change the dynamics. The response to Google's onslaught was no where near as overpowering as Google's own first salvo. An appropriate response would have been something like this:
- Unlimited Storage for all Academic Users
- A simple, comprehensive way to integrate with University Business Platform
- A clear (24 months or less ) roadmap for moving office online
- All other Microsoft Web-able tools included for free
- A very simple management and integration interface
Rather, Microsoft's response was minimalist, allowing Google to frame the business argument for hosted messaging infrastructure. By 2006, Google has released its Google Apps platform which includes email, calendar, instant messaging, documents and everything else Google ever builds for consumers. And Google included a simple interface to data migration and integration (sure it has evolved since then) and provided a clear guideline on data ownership. Yahoo remains lost at sea. And Microsoft wandered in the desert.
But lately, Google's marketing effort is beginning to experience some lethargy while Microsoft is increasing the value proposition for its customers, albeit slowly. While Microsoft has not defined a clear education version of its Office 365 platform (which includes Exchange Online (or Live @ Edu), Office Online, Lync (collaboration tools) and SharePoint (portal)) with 25GB online storage (for documents), 25 GB message store, 25MB message size (recognizing the increasing sizes of attachments which now routinely include video). Google's sales reps are sounding arrogant and growing tin-ears, just like Yahoo did before them on its way to ruins. Microsoft's sales rep on the other hand, although domiciled in India, are more inclined to be respectful and responsive.
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