Google Docs & Spreadsheets Usage Increasing - But is Google Apps the Market Leader?
Yesterday we published a 2007 review of the Web Office market. In that post I concluded that Google Apps was the leader in this space - but this point was disputed in the comments by CentralDesktop's Isaac Garcia, who wrote that "real traction in the business world is yet to be seen or proven for Google [Apps]." This may well be true, but today Compete provided some very useful stats around Google Docs.
The following image shows a rise in usage from June '07 till October. Overall Google D&S had an 84% year-over-year increase.
Compete attributes the leap in June onwards to a June user interface overhaul for Google D&S and "subsequent intense marketing".
Compete also studied the average time on site for Google D&S, which was flat (if not slightly down) during the same period June-Oct:
However as Compete commenter Otis Gospodnetic noted, Google D&S can be slow at times - so this could be one of the reasons for the high 'time spent on site' initially.
Conclusion
I don't think Isaac will be satisfied with these stats, because it was almost certainly mostly a consumer audience that Compete's data comes from; and Isaac's point was that we can't prove Google Apps is a market leader in the enterprise/SMB space. Nevertheless, these stats do show that Google D&S had a big jump in usage in June and so they are probably the leading online word processing tool right now.
However I have asked Compete if they can provide us with comparative stats, showing Google D&S against say Zoho Writer and/or ThinkFree Docs. I will update this post if I get more data from Compete.
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Richard, Please feel free to let Jay or myself know if you need any additional data from Compete. We're more than willing to add more to the discussion.
Richard,
Just to make sure - ThinkFree Docs and ThinkFree Online are two separate sites. So comparing ThinkFree Docs would not be the right comparison.
It also gets complicated with us because of the technology licensing deals we have done with Naver, Telstra, and what we have in the works with Vina in Vietnam. Making direct comparisons is going to be fairly tricky.
But, whatever data you could get if you could get the data broken out by application it would be something I would love to see.
As a follow-up comment - I meant to add that I would have a hard time doubting that Google has the lead, what with the brand name and the marketing budget it would be incredibly embarrassing if this wasn't the case.
But I think there are plenty of opportunities for competitors to win some serious business in direct head to head competition with Google. And there are plenty of ways and business models to compete indirectly.