Former Microsoft evangelist Don Dodge on Google vs. Microsoft (Q&A)

December 18, 2009 by Edwin Wang
Filed under: Others 

At Microsoft,  Don Dodge was known as the software giant’s ambassador to an at-times skeptical startup community. When he was laid off in November, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington declared, “This is a huge mistake,” but Dodge quickly moved over to Google, where he’s taking on a similar role. (TechFlash has even nominated Dodge for best hire of the year.)

Now that he’s starting to settle in, Anthony Ha at Venture Beat interviewed Dodge about how Google compares to Microsoft, how he’s enjoying Google products like the Google Phone, and what’s coming in 2010.

Some Notes about the Q&A here:

VB: It sounds like your job at Google is pretty similar to what you were doing at Microsoft, namely trying to convince startups to use your company’s platform.

DD: It is, Anthony. The difference is, at Microsoft my group was focused entirely on startups. Now I’m doing the same thing, but I’m also talking to small and medium businesses and large enterprises about moving to Gmail, Google Apps, and App Engine. I’m helping businesses of all sizes make use of Google platforms.

VB: When you announced the move, you said you were switching from Microsoft products like Outlook to Google products like Gmail. How’s that going? Do you have a favorite?

DD: Oh, it’s Gmail. The thing that surprised me is the Gmail that consumers use is the same email that every Google employee uses.

I’ve found Gmail to be just terrific, particularly the threaded discussions — it’s just so much easier to keep track of discussions and email threads. That’s the first thing. The second thing is, links not attachments. With an email that’s just a link to a Google Doc, you always have the latest version. The third thing was offline Gmail. Now you can go on an airplane, go anywhere offline, and you’ve still got your email and attachments.

The final observation I would make is, over my career, my first email thing was Vax Mail, which was awesome at the time, it was revolutionary. I went from Vax Mail, to Outlook, to Lotus Notes when I was working for Ray Ozzie, then back to Outlook again, and now Gmail. Email is a pretty straightforward application. They have basically the same features, it’s all a question of user interface. I’ve found the transition to Gmail simple, easy, and in many ways better, particularly due to the threaded discussions.

So with a lot of the religion people have [about different products], I’d make the same point about spreadsheets. A lot of people that are my age started with VisiCalc or Lotus 123 and moved to Excel, now we’re moving to Google Spreadsheets. It’s just the next era, the next transition.

VB: In moving from Microsoft to Google, has your perspective on the startup world changed?

DD: No, I wouldn’t say it’s changed. I would say, if anything, it’s more relevant now than it was. At Microsoft, I was very interested in the next big thing, and at Google the platform groups are very interested in catching the next wave.

I think Google has really placed some big bets on the future. There’s Chrome OS — we all spend the majority of the time in the browser compared to client applications, and Chrome OS is a platform to build applications to run in the browser. Android is another big bet. When it comes to mobile applications, I think in the future, you’re going to go into your office, you’re going to have a flatscreen and a keyboard, and you’re going to take your phone out of your pocket and dock it. And you can decide which applications and data are relevant on your phone and which are in the cloud. The third one is cloud computing itself — Gmail and Google Apps are just providing packaged applications on the cloud. App Engine as an infrastructure to build new applications in the cloud.

Those three areas are the big bets for the future. That’s the future of computing.

VB: What do you think about the free, web version of Office?

DD: Yeah, I haven’t seen it, I don’t know too much about it. But I think Microsoft faces the classic innovator’s dilemma. You know, their business model and huge revenues and profits come from the traditional Office. It’s almost cannibalistic of them do a free version or web version. They’re putting their toe in water, but I don’t think they’re going to put a lot of effort behind it, a lot of support behind it. It’s one of those checkoff items when customers ask, “Do you have a free version?” they can say, “Yeah, we have that too.” But I can’t imagine that they’re going to really push that or promote it.

To read the full Q&A about the interview, please go to: VentureBeat

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