{"id":566522,"date":"2010-05-17T09:48:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-17T13:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5587346.post-4879449022574848876"},"modified":"2010-05-17T09:48:49","modified_gmt":"2010-05-17T13:48:49","slug":"jean-louis-gassee-on-cloud-2-0-%e2%80%93-post-of-the-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/566522","title":{"rendered":"Jean-Louis Gass\u00e9e on Cloud 2.0 \u2013 post of the month"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jean-Louis Gass\u00e9e<\/a> blogs<\/a> on Monday Note<\/a>. He\u2019s been doing it since Feb 4, 2008<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gass\u00e9e has done many things, but he\u2019s best known for having been Apple\u2019s CEO for a time. These days he\u2019s a VC \u201cgeneral partner\u201d. It\u2019s safe to assume he\u2019s rich beyond my paltry dreams of avarice. Why does he bother writing a not-terribly-famous blog? I don\u2019t think it\u2019s for the adword revenue.<\/p>\n

My best guess is that he\u2019s helping out the blog\u2019s co-author, and that he writes for love. Alas for those who write to live, his free stuff is better than the best of the WSJ. Such is the curse of early 21st century journalism.<\/p>\n

Today he takes on the Google-Microsoft cloud apps war. It\u2019s fantastic stuff (emphases mine) \u2026<\/p>\n

\n

Cloud 2.0 – Monday Note<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2026 Last year, Microsoft\u2019s total sales were $58B, down 3% from 2008 \u2026 Note the Operating Profit, 35<\/strong>%. The company spends 15% of its revenue in R&D<\/strong> and 28% in Sales, Marketing and General Administration\u2026.<\/p>\n

\u2026 Compare this to Apple\u2019s 29.5% Operating Profit<\/strong>, 3% R&D<\/strong>, and 9% SG&A [selling, general and administrative expense]<\/strong> with a comparable revenue level, in the $50B to $60B range annually\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026 Microsoft\u2019s Net Income is 25% of revenue, Apple\u2019s is 22%\u2026.<\/p>\n

\u2026 Microsoft Office represented 90% of the $19B Business Division sales, with a nice 64%<\/strong> Operating Profit \u2026 Roughly 60% of all Microsoft\u2019s profits come from Office and a little more than 53% from Windows OS licenses<\/strong> (or what MS calls its \u201cClient\u201d business):<\/p>\n

So\u2026 Office + Windows, 60% + 50% = 110% of Microsoft\u2019s Operating Profit? The math is complicated by the losses in something called \u201cCorporate-Level Activity\u201d\u2026 \u2026and, more importantly, by the hefty 73% operating loss in the company\u2019s Online Services Business<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If I\u2019m interpreting Gass\u00e9e\u2019s writing correctly, Apple\u2019s numbers are only comparable to Microsoft\u2019s because Microsoft \u201cwastes\u201d a huge percentage of revenue. Microsoft\u2019s R&D percent spend is 5 times<\/strong> Apple\u2019s and Microsoft spends 3 times as much<\/strong> on selling, general and administrative expense \u2013 not to mention \u201ccorporate-level activity\u201d. If Microsoft were as stingy as Apple, their profits would be mind-blowing. Microsoft Office is a money-factory.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m reminded of an old Cringely column, in which he opined that Microsoft could have any profit number it wanted to have.<\/p>\n

Gass\u00e9e continues from numbers to user experience, saying the same things I\u2019ve whined about but that, honestly, I never see mentioned anywhere else<\/p>\n

\n

.. Google Apps aren\u2019t Office killers. I\u2019ve been using Gmail in both the free and paid-for accounts. The basic email functions work well, but managing contacts is awful<\/strong>. (Months ago, I heard Google had an internal project called Contacts Don\u2019t Suck. I\u2019m still waiting.)\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026 I\u2019ve tried to use Google Docs to write, share, and edit these Monday Notes. Failure. Compared to any word processor, Google Docs feels clunky and constrained, and hyperlinks die when you download the document\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026 Google Apps aren\u2019t \u201cthere\u201d yet. They\u2019re still clunky, to say nothing of managing the \u201cstuff behind the desk\u201d. They\u2019ve been quickly upgraded\u2013perhaps too quickly\u2013 at the expense of the user experience. If managing Google Apps is as complicated as running an Office DVD install program, an important part of the Google theory falls apart. We see the trumpeted announcements of large organizations and governments that have turned to Google Apps, but what we don\u2019t see is a courageous journalist going back to the proud early adopters a year later to tell us what actually transpired<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So why is it that only cranks like me and outliers like Gass\u00e9e ever point out where Google fails? It\u2019s a bit hallucinatory. Gmail\u2019s contacts function has been terrible<\/em> for years (starting with the weirdly isolated link to \u201ccontacts\u201d in Gmail). Google Docs are still very weak (though about to move up a notch), and things are worse when you look at the channel confusion around Blogger, Google Doc, Buzz and Google Sites.<\/p>\n

Really, I do love a lot about Google, but they have to give up on the idea that good design is emergent. <\/p>\n

Go and read his Cloud 2.0 post and the \u201crelated columns\u201d he references at the end. Don\u2019t forget to marvel at the strange age we live in, where some of the best journalism is done for love*. <\/p>\n

* P.S. As a bone to the pros, Gass\u00e9e drops a broad hint on how they could write something interesting \u2013 go to the early adopters of Google Apps and tell us what happened.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jean-Louis Gass\u00e9e blogs on Monday Note. He\u2019s been doing it since Feb 4, 2008. Gass\u00e9e has done many things, but he\u2019s best known for having been Apple\u2019s CEO for a time. These days he\u2019s a VC \u201cgeneral partner\u201d. It\u2019s safe to assume he\u2019s rich beyond my paltry dreams of avarice. Why does he bother writing a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":711,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-566522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/711"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}