Microsoft calls Zoho the "Fake Office" - Zoho responds with a zinger
blogs.zoho.com
blogs.zoho.com
0. http://fakeoffice.org/ ->
1. click "Try Zoho Now" ->
2. A cluttered menu of options ->
3. click "Zoho Docs" ->
4. see three purchase options & feature list ->
5. "Why do I need to see this? I'm not buying anything" ->
6. click "Free 1GB space" ->
7, 8, 9??? CREATE ZOHO ACCOUNT!
Seriously, that makes sense if I want to "save" the document I'm going to play with, but I don't understand why I need to sign up for an account to see if I can insert a table into a document and then set different backgrounds for different table elements.
Nor do I understand why there are so many steps between clicking 'try now' and actually being able to 'try now'! If I click "save" I can understand. Theoretically I'd like to be able to open a document too, without having to register, but I understand limiting that to one or two.
The reality is, I already have Office installed. If you want me to try your alternative, you should have barriers as low as possible. I even picked Documents, instead of, say, CRM, because I -knew- I'd be able to test a document without signing up. I was wrong.
Letters (Word / Pages)
Spreadsheet (Excel / Numbers)
[ROTATE] - [A/B testing, good data]
There shouldn't be an 'easy' signup process, there should be _no_ signup process to use it. It's already easy - I could have entered my google info (apparently) if I wanted to. I don't want to link my google account to yet another service.
Make me sign up if I want to save something that I made. _THEN_ you know I'm interested enough in your product to overcome the hurdle.
The best analogy I can think of: right now you've got window shoppers that see interesting things inside. But you have someone standing at the door asking them to put their name on a sheet of paper before they come in the store, 'So we can better serve you.' How many people are likely to walk in the store? Of course SOME will, but a lot wont.
And my point with the "random third" is that it becomes a great way to figure out what the market is looking for. If you put up, say, CRM, and get 30% clickthrough, and you put up, say, discussions, and get 1% clickthrough, that's valuable data.
A small usability nit: someone else (odd) linked a 'try it' page. Since you're capturing right-click, any misspelling that my browser detects can't be auto-corrected since your right click menu doesn't have spell checking.
Oops.
Given MS's track record in recent years, I think they really need to stop trash talking other people - more often than not they end up eating their words.
So, you've given Google's competitor's product a try because of what Microsoft said. Maybe Microsoft knows a little about marketing after all...
Sounds more like a generic trash talk on everything non-MS Office, than a purposeful marketing move.
Where Google and Microsoft are both sitting on two cash cows (Add words + Search) vs (Office + Window) and are bouncing around trying to diversify (XBox vs Wave etc) they are not really focused on killing off the competition. However, Zoho is trying to turn Office into it's cash cow and is focused on building a great long term product which means they are going to try and make an equal or better product for less money. Which is why I expect Zoho to build a stand alone office sweet long before Google goes there.
I am starting to see pattern in their marketing, this plus the windows 7 launch party video, seinfeld ads... these were so bad that they got people talking. It might be an example of latent marketing :-)
Nov 2007: 'Ballmer Calls Android a "Press Release"' http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/08/1326234 'Right now they have a press release, we have many, many millions of customers, great software, many hardware devices and they're welcome in our world,' [Ballmer] added."
Oct. 2009: "Big Cellphone Makers Shifting to Android System" http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/technology/26android.html 'But now that smartphones are popular, Microsoft’s operating system, Windows Mobile, is foundering. More cellphone makers are turning to the free Android operating system made by Microsoft’s latest nemesis, Google.'
With a history like that, I take every example of trash talking by Ballmer to mean "yikes! those guys are going to kick our butts."
Which they have, by the way. My Android-powered phone is fast, powerful, and sleek. I have hated every Windows Mobile phone I've ever touched - slow, buggy, and crashy are how I'd describe them.
Why Ballmer is still employed at any Fortune 500 company, much less running one, is a problem worthy of serious academic study.
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2007/04/ballmer-says-i...
"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance," said Ballmer. "It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get."
The charts here have iPhone handily out-pacing all Windows Mobile units:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/11/03/canalys_q3_200...
Another comment in this discussion admitted of that in passing, pointing out their real strengths are in sharing, etc., but MS's Live Office is also very strong in sharing. In fact, in simultaneous editing, it surpasses even Google Docs.
(You can try out the Live Office at http://skydrive.live.com/acceptpreview.aspx/.documents?aobrp... or at least you could a couple of weeks ago; don't know if they're accepting new previewers.)
I don't mean to bash Google or Zoho and praise MS, but this is a serious issue.
Will anyone step up to the plate with a serious browser-based document editor? Perhaps none of the solutions that rely on the in-browser editing will ever be any good. I've been tempted to write something more serious with Cappucino, but that's a pretty high hill to climb...
Next year, Microsoft will come with Office 2010, which will have both desktop client and online app, while Google or Zoho has only the online app.
Even if I would like to stay away from Microsoft, I will prefer Open Office + online sharing service over Zoho or Google Docs.
I think if someone were to adopt the Pixlr model and create a lightweight Flash-based solution to this, I think they would have the flexibility to create an experience as rich as Office, and start stealing customers.
However, I'm more and more impressed with the Cappucino apps I'm seeing, so there are clearly many possible solutions to this problem.
I wonder if Ballmer is familiar with the way Gates handled this kind of thing. Maybe someone should introduce them.
I think that landing page needs to change. I mean my comments in the most constructive way and I want to see competition and companies like Zoho compete.
The marketing copy on the landing page right now sounds a tad defensive and like they are trying to prove something. They have NOTHING to prove, because just like they say, "you have most of the familiar functionality found in Microsoft Office, ... other things Microsoft Office doesn't offer, like the ability to easily share and edit documents online... use it for free."
You NEED to make an acronym out of "FAKE Office"... I can't think of one right now, but even Free Ass Kickingly Effective Office would be a start ;)
Run an entire campaign on this like a politician, seriously.
First, the top banner needs to be changed, because the emphasis needs to be more positive "Zoho the Free Ass Kickingly Effective Office that Microsoft doesn't want you to try" (with the f,a,k,e, emphasized some how).
ALSO, you can take Microsoft's quote out of context: They said "we're not seeing any inclination that Zoho or Google or Zimbra or any other of those offering fake Office capabilities can replace [Microsoft Office]," he [Ron Markezich, corporate VP of Microsoft Online] said.
So in the copy, quote them! Microsoft's VP of Microsoft Online said "FAKE Office capabilities can replace [Microsoft Office]."
Make a comparison chart with Office that matches check for check what Zoho offers and then the one-sided Zoho checks for FREE and the ability to share and edit online.
Remove your line of "you have most of the familiar functionality of Microsoft Office".
This is just a start and I would be more than happy to pitch in and help and I'm sure the rest of the community wouldn't mind lending a hand too ;)
Aggressive tactics, but all's fair in love and war.
I heard some companies have made it big off "dont be evil"
Zoho Writer is not supported yet in Chrome
Please switch to IE 6.0+ or Firefox 2.0+ version for better experience.
I am not sure why I feel the need to explain this, and not on this website.
I think their main focus is on some of the other apps rather than word processing / spreadsheets.
Will this give them some publicity: yes.
Will it make them a player? Unlikely.
This is smart MS moves against Google (as someone else already pointed out)
"we're not seeing any inclination that Zoho or Google or Zimbra or any other of those offering fake Office capabilities can replace [Microsoft Office],"
into
"Zoho... fake Office capabilities can replace Microsoft Office"
is a little dishonest, IMO.
And, you can call bing the fake google, but not "fake search".
Having said that, best of luck to Zoho.
Given that he's spot-on right, I'm not sure what the big deal is. The online office apps don't even compete favorably with OpenOffice, much less Microsoft Office.
On the other hand, Microsoft's Office Live offering isn't going anywhere as far as I can tell. They don't understand the importance of simple.
What MS Office does well, these online apps do passably at best.
But what the online apps do well, MS Office doesn't do at all. Like getting the same documents from anywhere you are, collaborating with people, making things publicly viewable with a click, and building a web survey that feeds right into your private spreadsheet.
The online apps just need polish to compete with MS Office. Office has to completely transform and go online to compete with them.
And guess what? If it does that, it has to play catchup with them, both in making things work in the browser, and in mindshare.
Yes, but: 1) This will probably change next year with Office 10 2) It can be partially supplant with online sharing services. For example, I use Office 2000 (still a good product) with Live Mesh, so I can access my files from different locations. I think the collaboration could be achieved this way as well.
Microsoft Office is, arguably, the most successful software line in history. It has remained so despite all the naysayers, despite numerous free replacements with at least respectable basic functionality, despite its relative lack of improvement in features and/or usability in recent years, and despite the fact that the technologies to do all these on-line alternatives have been viable for several years now. Perhaps this tells us something about how much the competitive "advantages" of all these other products are actually worth.
> Like getting the same documents from anywhere you are
I had this really cool idea for that once. I called it a "file server".
> collaborating with people
I had this really cool idea for that once. I called it a "file server". (Or did you mean in real time? Because I haven't seen even a prototype for that so far that would be useful in practice.)
> making things publicly viewable with a click
I had this really cool idea for that once. I called it a "web server".
> building a web survey that feeds right into your private spreadsheet
I didn't have any cool ideas about that one, but about a million other people did, and they all made simple web sites to do it much better than any of the on-line office suites I've seen so far.
> The online apps just need polish to compete with MS Office.
Sure. And so do Notepad and Calc.
Sorry for the cynicism, but I think you are vastly overestimating the significance of these products in the market and their future potential. Even if the idea of an on-line office suite has merit -- and the jury is still very much out on that one -- the execution of the toys available so far isn't even on the same scale as products like MS Office, or various other respectable desktop applications.