Here is my take on Stacy Collett’s Google’s Next Moves article (ComputerWorld), posted to digg.com by Burento. Stacy makes some good points, but I do not agree with all of them, and have a few ideas of my own.
1. Buy WordPress.
Give every WordPress and Google user the ability to use a custom GoogPress blog as their home page, and change the iGoogle buckets to Widgets/Extras for ALL themes to access. Users would be empowered to edit, create, and share GoogPress themes… ALL for free… well, almost. In return users would allow Google ads on a portion of their page (user decides how much ad space Google can control, and user can utilize remaining ad space for their own Google ads to make some cash).
2. Buy Skype.
Add Skype features to free Google Apps accounts. Plus extra features for Google Apps Premiere users, like SkypeMeet (up to 32 users at one time), SkypeBoard (sketch for all to see), SkypeLine (diagrams/org charts for all to see), SkypeScraper (scrape things off the web related to meeting in realtime) and SkypeCam (see users who have cams and allow viewing).
3. Buy Pixelmator.
Turn Pixelmator into a web app, and add limited version to free Google Apps accounts, and expanded version to Google Apps Premiere users. Then there would be a decent online image compositing tool.
4. Rest.
Take a break from the company acquisitions, retooling, recoding, etc. and focus on small, incremental improvements to usability of Google Apps suite. What the world needs now is usability and stability (not love sweet love) if web apps are to succeed and replace desktop apps.
