Google has got over 17 million users already even before the launch of its popular and much talked about Google Chrome. This is because of sheer goodwill and reputation which Google has gained from more thank a couple of years. These 17million Chrome OS users are a result of those efforts which google took two years ago by approaching college students and providing them with unlimited facilities and web-services free of cost.
The main motto behind google’ strategy is building a long-term relationship and a feeling of trust among its users. This strategy is just a step further in developing a bunch of developers who are comfortable with the all new Buzz of Cloud Computing
Google’s main competition on campus is Microsoft,
and while the market isn’t lucrative for either, it represents a bit of a backdoor raid on Microsoft’s core business. Google and Microsoft have taken big swings at each other; Google by building an operating system for netbooks for release next year, and Microsoft by committing billions of dollars of investment to its search engine, Bing.
On campus, Google is making inroads. In its annual study of the role of technology on campus, the Campus Computing Project found that two-fifths of participating campuses had either migrated to outsourced e-mail and services or planned to. Of those, 56.5% opted for Google, 38.4% for Microsoft and 4.8% for Zimbra, an open-source software maker owned by Yahoo.
Microsoft is taking the threat very seriously. Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner told Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference Wednesday it is increasing partner spending from $2.9 billion to $3.3 billion this year to beat back the threat of Google Apps to its enterprise software business.
Google doesn’t even insert advertising into the services, as it does in Gmail for non-campus users. E-mail is branded by the university and incoming students can keep their Gmail addresses and can add a campus address. Google considers the market so important it would gladly provide (and pay for) hosted applications for all universities in the U.S. and elsewhere, if it could.
The University of Massachusetts, with its 19,000 students, just flipped. So far in the third quarter, Google has signed up Wake Forest, Cornell, the University of Alabama, Boise State, Clemson, the University of Minnesota and Temple. It has also just expanded the program to recruit K-12 school systems.
There have been some hiccups. The faculty at Canada’s Lakehead University contested the school’s switch in court, alleging it would expose university communications to U.S. anti-terrorism law, but an arbitrator ruled against the challenge.
The perceived danger of shifting services to the "cloud" was illustrated by the hacking of the accounts of several Twitter founders, revealing confidential documents and business plans. Notre Dame’s Ms. Rose said that doesn’t change her view on the security of Google services. "We have strong password policies and password aging policies to protect information appropriately," she said. "It’s up to the company to make their policies adequate."
The benefits, she said, are hard to ignore. Notre Dame saved an estimated $1.5 million by not replacing their old e-mail system, and help-desk calls are down 20% among the university’s 12,000 students and 6,000 faculty.
What we get to know is Google is always working hard in making its users comfortable and helping them out from time to time. This is yet another reason for Google’s success in the IT scenario apart of its awesome technology and Innovation.
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