Questioning Google

Bangalore: Google is aiming high and dreaming big with aspirations of earning upto $10 billion in enterprise revenue. With 5 million businesses on Google Apps and over 40 million users, it can be safely concluded that the goals set by Google Executives can be justified, reports Fritz Nelson of InformationWeek.

This has posed a new challenge for CIOs as Google is associated as the neoteric ‘avatar,’ facilitating the concept of consumerization – right from Gmail to Android. As such, CIOs just can’t put Google on the sidelines. But at the same time, Google has to adapt to the prevailing concept of dwelling on strategy in order to ensure predictability.

This is mainly because the typical image that Google projects as a ‘search engine’ company makes it even more difficult to associate itself with something fresh and innovative.

But Clay Bavor, Google Enterprise head of product management, had a very contradicting view. He said, “When I talk to CIOs about products, they ask about Google Glass, about self-driving cars . . . there is almost this philosophical approach: I want to transform the way my employees think, to be more collaborative.”

But when asked about an enterprise product from Google, Bavor put forward the Google Vault, which to be honest is fairly unheard of.

But for Google, which believes in the philosophy of ‘customer first,’ finalizing a roadmap for future ahead with respect to enterprise business has put CIOs in a catch-22 situation.

But if that is the usual route Google wants to undertake with respect to the consumer space, who are we to question. After all, it is currently the second most valuable company in the world.