Tioga Venture Blog

Google Chrome secret to beat Microsoft IE

 

It is no secret that over the last two years, Google Chrome has been stealing significant market share from competition, both from Firefox and Internet Explorer. Over the last 2 years, Google Chrome has reached 20% market share.

Why is that? First, and foremost, Google Chrome is a good browser: it is simple and fast and offers most of the functionalities proposed by competition. On top of that, Google marketing machine has been pushing very hard this product over the last 2 years, for instance:

• In 2010, they had a major advertising campaign in the French market with TV advertising, billboards in the metro, banners on major websites …
• On Google search homepage, the advertising to download is constantly present (if you are using a different browser).

Looking at the details with our team, we noticed that one of the most striking features of Chrome is its release cycle. Google releases one major version every other month when Microsoft releases a major version of Internet Explorer every other year. The following graph maps this phenomenon quite well. At the time of its release, internet explorer is roughly at par with chrome in term of performance (here load time to keep it simple), except chrome will then release 2 or 3 major versions in the following 6 months creating a new performance gap. Beyond the capabilities at a given time, the real differentiation of Chrome is the way the development is managed more than an absolute level of performance. In the end the learning is faster and the quality perceived by the consumer is better. Interestingly, Microsoft has mostly stuck to its old ways of doing things releasing a version every two years. This way of working is an asset when working with enterprises as they don't want constant upgrades but not so much when you're addressing the consumer markets. Once again Microsoft is on the enterprise side of the business whereas Google has a consumer side to it.

 

We believe that this applies to many software products, especially targeted at consumers. Fast release cycle end up creating a better product and a real advantage on the market place.

What do you think?

 

Frederic HALLEY

 

Google+: strong growth but the jury is still out

Google+ has been launched a few weeks ago and the numbers of its staggering growth are released weekly, pointing to a much faster growth than facebook or twitter.

 

The comparison is intriguing but mostly meaningless. Google+ is a service released by the most powerful internet company in the world with a user base of close to a 1bn, including hundreds of millions of gmail accounts. At the time of their launch, facebook and twitter were unknown start-ups among hundreds vying for internet users' time. They were targeting only US users or even a subset (top US universities for Facebook). On the contrary, Google has deployed a massive PR and marketing effort to convince its user base to try its service. So far, it has managed to convince 1% or 2% of its users to try Google+. Quite good but not earth shattering.

The real question for Google+ is whether it will be able to cross the chasm or not. Early adopters and geeks tend to love most products launched by Google. At its launch, Google Wave had good reviews from the tech enthusiast. The issue came when real people started trying the service and didn't see the point. As far as Google+ is concerned, I don't think that is the risk. It is a very nice service with a clean and efficient user interface. This time, I don't think there is a real risk of average users not enjoying Google+.

However, for a social network, being good is not enough. It needs to be significantly better than existing solutions (i.e. Facebook) to justify users switching. The staggering figures for Facebook is not so much the number of users (it is still very impressive) but even more the time spent per user. The stickiness is such that in many countries, Facebook is the number one website in term of time spent. The stake for Google is to have people try Google+ but beyond that, have them switch a major part of their digital life (friends, games, photos …). So what we are seeing is just the beginning of the battle between Facebook and Google who are know the major competitors in internet: they are fighting for same advertising dollars and eyeballs time.

Google+ is very good social networks and is a real alternative to Facebook but the fight for time (and not only users) is only starting.

Frederic HALLEY

Microsoft European Bizspark summit : B2C vs B2B

Last tuesday was the 6th Microsoft Bizspark European summit on growth and entrepreneurship. It was located in the Microsoft campus in Paris and was hosted by Guy Kawasaki. Among the different presentations, the major one were :

• presentation on innovation by Guy Kawasaki
• a keynote of Jean Philippe Courtois, president Microsoft International. Presentation videos here.
• a startup competition featuring 18 companies
• a presentation on Web Api by Douglas Purdy
• A general discussion with Bernard Liautaud

Comments were unanimous : the event was a major success! Great organization (maybe except the food that was a little scarce), good networking with many of the European Venture Capitalists present, as well as many entrepreneurs and Bizspark network partners. The different Microsoft presentation illustrated the amazing scope and network that Microsoft has developed to push and support innovation and startups. In a few years, what started as Idees in France with 40 startups, has become a worldwide program covering 30 000 companies.

Among the startup presenting, a few standout by the quality of the presentation of the business momentum they already have. I am fully in line with jury on the two best companies of the day :

• kobojo, a social gaming company in the line of Zynga and Playfish. Great execution on an extraordinary market.
• Artesian, a Saas solution complementing traditional CRM solutions to provide relevant data to salespeople.

Among the other companies presenting, here a couple of personal pick :

• Captain Dash, with a great demo on visual mining, data analysis,
• moneydashboard, a UK me-too of Mint
• Sordu, a turkish elearning platform
• Time cockpit, a time management software

Overall, few stellar breakthrough new ideas or concept but a group of solid companies with interesting ideas or technologies.

Most interestingly is the split of the companies between B2B and B2C companies. Most companies driving innovation, and getting funding, are B2C companies. Social media and gaming have first taken up as B2C play before getting into the B2B space. That is what we call "the consumerization of innovation". This trend started several years ago and has continuously accelerated since that. At the Microsoft Bizspark summit, only 4 out of 18 companies were B2C companies. This is probably representative of the Bizspark companies where B2B are predominant. This also reflects the current Microsoft business which is heavily tilted to B2B with B2C a somewhat a lesser business. It is also clear what B2B startups would gain from being in Bizspark : access to technology, credibility toward prospects and customers, being part of the Microsoft ecosystem. For B2C startup, the value is much less clear.

For more information, here are a few fellow bloggers reporting on the event :

• Olivier Ezratty, Opinions Libres (FR)
• Pierre Olivier Carles (FR)

Frederic HALLEY