For as long as we have known Google, they have simply target the consumer rather than businesses. Yes, Google does have their corporate search solution available for businesses to purchase, but for the most part that is not the market that they are targeting. This might change in the near future for all that we know.
The co-founder of SAP, the world’s biggest business software group (according to the Financial Times), said that SAP is open to be bought, with only three buyers: IBM, Microsoft, and Google. Being bought out by either IBM or Microsoft, as IBM does compete with SAP and Microsoft having approached SAP a few years back with a purchase proposition. But why Google?
No one really knows if Google would really be interested in acquiring such a company, but what is known for sure is that Google has almost double the market capitalization of SAP ($112 billion vs. $64 billion, respectively). Would the acquisition of a company such as SAP leverage Google in terms of its competition from Microsoft? Would the acquisition of SAP by Google create more competition for Google from the likes of IBM? The answer to both these questions is surely yes. It would be great to see Google acquire a company like SAP and increase its potential for providing innovative solutions to businesses.
Any comments or responses from anyone majoring in MIS or currently in the MIS field?
I am not sure how I feel about Google being named as one of the potential suitors. While I feel that it would give them a solid product that would allow them to diversify (bringing them away from being solely dependent on ad revenue), I really am worried about them pursuing something SAP. It seems far from their core competencies and could only invite trouble I feel for them. The time, money, and energy could be better spent pursuing other interests. There is no need for Google to get into this market at this point and leave it to others who have more experience in this area and with business consulting in general. I believe Google has more potential looking elsewhere.
I don’t think that Google’s strategy has really been consumer centric, but is user centric. This distinction isn’t very evident since Google’s main services have been consumer centric (Google Search Engine, GMail). However, consumers as well as business employees are both users. Google’s user focus (that is not limited to consumer users) is evident in the company’s mission statement (http://www.google.com/corporate/index.html). Google states that: “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Furthermore, the number one point in their philosophy statement is “focus on the user and all else will follow.” These both make no mention of consumers, but instead mentions individual users that can be consumers or individual members of corporations.
Google has in fact offered services tailored to corporate users. Products such as Google Earth Pro, Google Analytics, and Google Mini all provide interfaces in which corporate users can gain access to information such as demographics, web traffic, and company documents.
To look at whether Google would have any interest in SAP, and why SAP expressed interest in Google, lets first look at what both are doing. Google, as mentioned above, currently provides products to connect users to a vast amount of information quickly. SAP offers integrated software packages that provide include CRM, an ERP, and Supply Chain Management. Google’s goal as mentioned before is to make information accessible and useful. SAP’s goal (http://www.sapdesignguild.org/editions/philosophy_articles/brandingdoc.asp) is to “make work become a more personally enjoyable and rewarding experience”. A merger would actually help both companies to fulfill their mutual goals. Google would be able to tap into the data in SAP to provide a useful tool to search company data. SAP would benefit from a Google front end to make using SAP ‘more enjoyable and rewarding.’
While a merger between the two would make sense, I’m not sure what will actually happen. Microsoft will probably have a strong interest as they have a big load of money to throw around, and is already integrating SAP into office and would be able to integrate SAP’s capabilities into its own ERP, CRM, and SCM systems. While I believe an acquisition by Google would result in an extremely innovative and highly valuable product, an aquisition by Microsoft seems to make the most sense.