Google Aims for Microsoft Business Users in 2013

It appears Google may not be fully into the "spirit of giving" this holiday season. The search giant has announced its intention, as part of its business plan for 2013, to take 90 per cent of current Office users away from Microsoft.

In a recent Q & A session conducted by the online tech news publication AllThingsD, Amit Singh, a Google vice president and head of its Enterprise unit, made clear that his company's goal was to target "the 90 percent of users who don't need to have the most advanced features of Office." (Source: businessinsider.com)

Google Beefs Up Enterprise Business in 2012

Google stepped up its enterprise business efforts in 2012. In June, it launched its "infrastructure-as-a-service" cloud Compute Engine, which allows companies to run large-scale computing workloads on Linux virtual machines hosted by Google's infrastructure.

The service competes directly with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

The company has begun billing companies with 10 employees or less for using Google Apps, and also introduced Drive, which allows users to store any type of document online.

This investment of resources helped Google gain credibility and recognition from a host of new businesses. The company eventually secured lucrative deals with major corporations, including Roche, Kohl's, and Office Depot. (Source: yahoo.com)

According to Singh, 2012 "was the year where we broke the barrier and got large-scale customer adoption."

Google: Microsoft a Target in 2013

Google now says it plans to take on Microsoft by luring customers away from the Redmond, Washington-based firm's well-established Office suite of software.

To accomplish this, Google says it will offer consumers business software that is more accessible than Office. At this time, few specifics have been made public. However, discussing Google's business software, Singh says: "we're improving ... week by week."