Google Apps Team Edition

2008-02-07

Google just announced that they have a new version of Googles Apps available: Google Apps Team Edition. While standard edition of Google Apps needs to be hosted by some domain, usually under whatever company's using it, the new Team Edition allows people to use it just with their corporate email address. This means that the company's IT department doesn't need to approve the system first before people can use it.

I see what you did there (and now for a picture of a cat).

Arguably, Google is trying let the employees of a company migrate over to the Team Edition first, then because the IT department wants control, make the company subscribe to the standard Google Apps service. It's kind of like starting a revolution when you can't become join the government; it will create such a big (and uncontrollable) situation for the governing body that they have to listen to you. In this case, the users become so accustomed to Google Apps that the company has no choice but to subscribe to get control.

This is not a bad strategy, but I'm wondering if this counts as a form of the "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy that Microsoft has been using for the past decade. Although Google is not targeting a standard, the process of entering ("embracing" a company's culture), extending (how employees work), and extinguishing (the company's choice in the matter).

Does this seem like a sound analogy to anyone besides me?