It is becoming increasingly speculated that Google’s strategy is not about putting all it’s eggs in the SaaS basket but in creating a seamless offline and online experience which, it is believed, could work something like this:-

• Google Desktop is used to synchronise your local drive with your GDrive (obviously still speculation but Google has publicly stated it is working towards 100% storage)
• If you’re working on your regular computer within an office environment, click a document and it opens up into OpenOffice Writer.
• If you’re working without access to desktop apps, on a public workstation for example, log into GDrive, click on the same document and it opens up in Writely.

What interests me in all the speculation about Google’s and, to a lesser extent, Microsoft’s emerging strategies and SaaS activities is how quickly the conversation turns to both the security and privacy of data. Examples…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4930796.stm

http://business2.blogs.com/business2blog/2006/02/would_you_trust.html

http://weblogs.java.net/blog/davidvc/archive/2006/06/google_spreadsh.html

http://money.cnn.com/blogs/browser/2006/06/google-would-like-to-see-your-id.html

As an SaaS convert for a number of years I wouldn’t give a second thought of putting all manner of data online as I tend to rationalise it in the same way as I would with online and offline credit card purchases – ie; I am more likely to be a victim of fraud through an offline scam, card cloning, pin theft etc – than through an online purchase. Maybe there’s a sense of safety in numbers and the thought simply that ‘why would anybody really be bothered to target my data over anybody else’s’.

However, I am frequently struck by the comments of friends, relatives and associates who either run SMBs or would be likely to, who would not consider trusting even a seemingly ‘non-evil’ company like Google with their data.

I do get a strong sense though that the idea of trusting an established national or local business services provider who has a reasonable heritage (say 5 to 10 years) and a whole bunch of tangible and relevant case studies and testimonials is somewhat different. I think people simply feel more comfortable with the idea that the data centres are in places with names that they recognise, that they can speak to somebody with the same accent and that they could even drive to visit their data if they wanted to.  Such is the fragility of human psychology.

There are similarities here to other more mature IT sectors such as Content Management Systems, for instance, where it is frequently commented that buyers remain ‘stubbornly’ nationalistic and ISVs that you would have expected to be wiped out by commoditised services several years ago are still growing strongly.