Web-based accounting: Google's next service?
Google is making an aggressive drive into the software world with its slew of web-based offerings which, aside from its core search-engine & email service, now includes a word processor, spreadsheet and even 3D Mapping!This ZDNet article asks whether Google's next sights will be set on launching a web-based financial and accounting application to counter the likes of Intuit's Quickbooks and Microsoft's newly launched Small Business Accounting.
While a free service might be a boon to SME's, the issues of privacy and personal data integrity continue to haunt Google - especially when it involves companies' financial data.
Accounting & finance software is generally hard to mass market across different countries due to differing standards. Companies like Intuit and Sage have grown big because they succeeded in dominating their home markets (US & UK respectively) and expanded globally from that strong base - and even then, that expansion was largely fuelled by acquisitions of local software vendors (e.g. Sage swallowing up UBS in Malaysia).
In the virtual world, Google has demonstrated its capability to dominate in applications which are generic in nature and do not require too many degrees of customisation to make them work. According to the same ZDNet report, their foray into the cash register business with Google Checkout is proving to be a bit of a nightmare for them.
For now, it appears local accounting software companies can still rest assured that their increasingly-arcane way of selling boxed software will probably remain secure for some time. Even more so in Malaysia where SME's are still in the early stages of using the internet for business.
Technorati tag: Google, Intuit, Microsoft, Sage, Malaysia, SMEs
posted by hew @ 12:19 pm
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