I think it is (very) fair to say this is a risky bet. I would love to hear from the HN community why we are wrong to take it.
Here’s the case we see:
1. Google has a long history of seeking to evolve the GSuite and failing. There are notable exceptions, but the failures are far more notable (Wave, G+).
2. Extending Gsuite is a scripts game. As amazing as the idea of an AI powered Gsuite is, practical B2B implementation requires a heavy amount of custom process design and integration. While Google can modify their own products far beyond what GApp scripts do, the ecosystem around Gsuite is still fundamentally very hacky. There’s an entire universe of products that could just be Google add-ons but aren’t. Google has missed the trend of no code/low code when you compare to tools like Notion, Coda, AirTable, Zapier, etc.
3. GSuite products are fundamentally legacy UIs. This is the riskiest part of our bet. The thesis is that AI-first approaches to solving for user needs will be significantly better solved by re-imagining common products than adding chat-driven functionality on top of them. If true, Google could actually lose market share after incorporating Gemini.
Microsoft, in relative terms, is executing on all of the above and has been for a while.
There’s a host of other reasons (mentioned on this thread already) Google may fail in this attempt, but the execution challenge here is intense. Google is both taking longer to get to market and delivering a lackluster comparison overall to OpenAI/Microsoft, despite all the metric gamesmanship.
MS has so much more of the market and has to win, whereas Google’s revenue and stock price is far less impacted by GSuite.
It would be an extraordinary thing for Google to actually win this race.