Social Glass

I recently pondered over the myriad applications and services Google has acquired and produced over recent months and realized that they are well positioned to dominate the Enterprise 2.0 market. The best way to illustrate is to give a simple rundown of how Google addresses the Enterprise 2.0 SLATES approach (I’m not going to argue the value of SLATES as I and others have done that before):

• Search: Google Enterprise Search
• Links: Page Rank
• Authoring: Google Apps for the Enterprise, JotSpot, Blogger, YouTube
• Tags (Social Bookmarking): Google Base
• Extensions: Adsense
• Signals: Google Reader, Feedburner

We musn’t forget Orkut, Google’s Social Networking application (Social Networking is one key element that is missing from SLATES), as this could easily be bundled into the commercial offering as well.

All of these applications are, or can be, converted for commercial use using either the cheaper SaaS model for economies of scale as Google has done with Google Apps, or packaged as a more expensive Appliance. In my experience larger companies feel better when they control their data, so the appliance option for them might be more compelling.

As a consumer, we already get single sign on to most of these applications. For example, when I sign in to GMail I can access Google Reader or Google Base without signing in again, and this cohesiveness is fundamental for user acceptance of any Enterprise 2.0 solution.

I also see a lot of potential for Adsense in the Extensions camp, where instead of promoting ads as one would do in the consumer world, companies will promote presentations, deadlines, important documents and highlight employee contributions using Adsense technology.

Enterprise YouTube could also significantly change the way people blog inside the firewall. Imagine your engineering team recording and uploading their status updates on a biweekly basis, or your boss sending you an email with a video message about his meeting in Shanghai yesterday, and having all of these video blogs stored in a searcheable repository.

As of now all Google really offers in the Enterprise 2.0 space is Enterprise Search (and I think Search is the first and most important element), and Docs and Spreadsheets (online, collaborative versions of Excel and Word). I’d bet money that Google will come to the market with a more compelling offering in the near term.