New Updates Google’s Jotspot Will Turn Pages
Today,
A flood of information about Google’s plans for its JotSpot acquisition and Google Apps met attendees at an Ann Arbor presentation.
Scott Johnston, former VP of JotSpot product development and a Google staffer since October 2006, told the Michigan audience that JotSpot would re-emerge in 2008.
Your Search Advisor blogger Andrew Miller cited some of the questions and answers Johnston addressed during the event. Among them, JotSpot will feature significantly in Google’s software as a service strategy:
Google Sites: Scheduled to be launched sometime next year (2008), Google Sites will expand upon the Google Page Creator already offered within Apps. Based on JotSpot collaboration tools, Sites will allow business to set up intranets, project management tracking, customer extranets, and any number of custom sites based on multi-user collaboration.
Johnston also noted the integration of GrandCentral, a Google acquisition that centralizes multiple phones into one number, into the forthcoming Google Sites. He declined to cite a timetable, but said it was a “huge priority” for Google.
Google Apps, JotSpot, GrandCentral
marco on 15 Feb 2008 at 1:44 pm #
I’ve become a cynic about Google JotSpot. The top guys on the integration told me last September that the new site would be released in Q4 2007. It’s now mid-February. So I’ll believe it only when I see it.
Has Google perfected the art of vaporware?
Google acquired JotSpot in October 2006. Sixteen months ago. In the web 2.0 world how many companies have been formed, financed and sold in that time? All Google had to do is integrate an existing fully-finished product. Something is seriously amiss.
The most interesting factor about Google and the new apps is that users have never really had to rely on the continued existence of Google products before. If Google search went away tomorrow we would all just switch search engines. Same with gmail, etc.
With JotSpot Google enters a new world, where businesses must be assured that Google will not leave them technologically stranded. Collaboration software is highly valuable because of the collective value of the data. How many customers had substantial amounts of data in JotSpot last October, and left it there because of Google’s continued promises of “any day now”? These customers are still there, without the ability to add projects or databases, without support, without even an official word of a release date. This go-in-dark-mode-without-a-word for sixteen months is exactly what businesses do not want for any collaboration or database product.
Google has taken their first real software opportunity and shot themselves in the foot. First impressions are hard to shake, especially when the first impression goes on for sixteen months.