Google 'failing to live up to software claims'

GOOGLE has been accused by its arch rival Microsoft of peddling "hype rather than reality" over what it can offer to the business world.

Tom Rizzo, Microsoft's recently installed global senior director for online services, told Scotland on Sunday: "Google do have a good name in online consumer search capabilities. But they take this halo and put it into the business productivity field and here they fall short."

Google, the online search market leader, responded by pointing to the revamp of its online image search function, aimed at parrying competition from Microsoft's Bing search engine.

As a tit-for-tat between the two tech giants for new business continues, Google's search experience vice president Marissa Mayer claimed "the new interface is the best in the world."

Rizzo, whose previous role was as global head of Microsoft's Sharepoint business productivity server push responsible for its enterprise content management and collaboration portals - which sold 100 million licences and raised $1 billion in revenues - claimed a clear distinction now exists between the two companies.

"When Google tells companies they do not need Microsoft Office or Sharepoint our concern is that their hype is more than the reality." He pointed to claims of 25 million users in the cloud productivity space for Google Apps.

"In reality less than one million are actually paying. So most of it is free plus significant numbers of business customers that initially went over to Google 18 months ago are now returning to Microsoft."

Google's Mayer pointed to one billion page reviews already achieved daily, and that the latest search engine revamp will result "in the largest image search engine by far," maintaining that for many searches the best answer isn't text but an image or set of images and that was the way forward.

Preston Gralla, a technology expert with Computerworld, warned: "Unless Microsoft powers up Office on the Web, five years from now Google Apps could very likely make significant inroads in the enterprise zone."

Peter Burtwistle, managing director of Sysnet, a Livingston-based technology solutions company and Microsoft gold partner, said: "Microsoft should focus on their business software and offer more innovations when it comes to the desktop.

That way they will ensure that folks stick to the Windows platform on their PCs rather than going elsewhere."

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and financiers are reported to be more optimistic about the future as the technology sector experiences a surge of businesses increasing their investment in a proliferation of online-based systems including servers, storage and networking equipment.