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Comment by thras | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft isn't competing with Zoho. They're competing with Google which is competing with Zoho. If they were trying to trash talk, they would have trashed Google docs. Instead, they mentioned Zoho, Google, and Zimbra in order to make Google look like a bit player.

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...

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>Maybe Microsoft knows a little about marketing after all...

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 :-)

"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]"

Sounds more like a generic trash talk on everything non-MS Office, than a purposeful marketing move.

Perhaps. But Microsoft is almost certainly not really worried about Zoho or Zimbra. But Google? Yeah, that's a different story, and mentioning all three of them in the same breath is a subtle hint that they're all just "bit players", as someone else in this thread pointed out.

I think Zoho is far more dangerous to Microsoft than Google in the long term.

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.

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