When Google held its And good for small business too.
My company sells and I write about small business technologies frequently and many of the same names keep popping up: Microsoft, Intuit, Apple, Amazon, Google, etc. But when I look at my clients it’s Google’s technologies that seem to be popping up more and more. They are almost always free (or close to it) and for the most part Google’s stuff just...works. I know many who run their companies on Google Docs, Drive, Gmail and Calendar. There are countless thousands of small businesses who generate revenues through Google AdWord and AdSense. And there are just as many who are developing communities on Google+ as the social media service continues its relentless creep on Facebook.
Want more proof how Google will be transforming your small business? Just take a look at the announcements from last week’s I/O conference. I counted, at a minimum, six new initiatives that will benefit my company and so many others like mine over the next few years. So get ready!
1. Android. The company announced that there have been 900 million Android activations to date, with 48 billion apps downloaded. You may think that Apple owns the mobile market, but did you know that 75 percent of all smart phones sold in the past quarter were Android based? The Android operating system allows a business to have a uniform look and feel across many devices from multiple manufacturers and synchronize contacts, calendar and other data among employees. The system is arguably more open for developers to create new custom applications for a business. And a Galaxy tablet, for example, is about the same cost as an iPad Mini so equipping your employees with different Android devices from different vendors is an easy proposition for a business with many people out in the field. The Android platform continues to become more flexible, reliable and cost effective for small businesses.
2. Developer Tools like App Translation, alpha testing and Android Studio. Like me, the typical small business owner is not a developer. But my developer friends tell me that new announcements made at last week’s conference are fantastic for them and for their clients. App translation will let them get localized services right in their development console, which significantly speeds up their programming efforts. New tools to help application testing will allow developers to pick a percentage of users who will get an update for testing purposes instead of sending it out to all users which is a big help. And a new developer environment, named Android Studio, is being launched to also improve the time it takes to develop apps. Finally, the company’s push messaging service, Google Cloud Messaging, has been enhanced to support persistent connections, upstream messaging and notification synchronization which means that your company data used by any Android app will synchronize faster and better. Less time means less money spent with outside developers, not to mention more flexibility to design that perfect app for your business.
3. Forty-one new Google+ features. Google+, with 190 million users, continues to eat into Facebook’s social media dominance. And with these kinds of numbers, small business owners can’t ignore this community any more. As we turn our attention towards Google+ many of us are finding ourselves chatting, messaging and conducting events on Google Hangouts. In fact at last week’s conference it was announced that Hangouts would now be the primary messaging service for holding one-on-one or group conversations across multiple devices. And Google isn’t standing still. Their new features will include enhancing the Hangouts and Photos section, along with updates to the overall Google+ interface (it’ll have a more Pinterest look and feel). The company continues to integrate Google+ with their applications and services, including search, so it’s only a matter of time before most of us are working within this community daily. If your business is not on Google+ it’s clear to me that you better start moving in that direction.
4. Payments via Email. At the conference, the company also announced a new way for customers to make payments via Gmail (they can receive money even if they don’t have Gmail) with Google Wallet. After downloading the application, your customer will be able to “attach” a payment (similar to attaching a document) to an email with the amount indicated and send it directly to you. Once things are setup on both sides you can get paid faster and easier than ever before. Google plans on rolling out this service over the next 18 months or so and it could have an enormous impact on small businesses like mine. And don’t worry...Google is assuring 100-percent coverage of the transaction.
5. Online buying/paying enhancements. And speaking of payments, Google announced new initiatives to push forward their technologies that will help individuals and small businesses pay their bills electronically. At the conference they announced an API (application programming interface) for Instant Buy to help developers create a more streamlined process for visitors buying (and paying for) items from a company’s ecommerce site. Google also announced it will support other companies’ loyalty cards when making payments via Wallet too.
6. Google Maps. Small business owners like me, who spend much time on the road, have grown to rely heavily on Google Maps and Navigation. And more changes are planned. A new version that will run on the iPad was alluded to and there will be greater improvements for reporting traffic incidents and making re-routing suggestions. On the desktop, look for better imagery and 3-D views, with images from Google Earth and Street View all in one place. Many of my clients who are in the roofing, repair and contracting businesses use these tools to create estimates without even leaving their offices so the enhancements planned will have an enormous impact on their ability to better cost out jobs.
I’m not even mentioning some of the other goodies announced, from “conversational search” to the quickly growing Google Now to new tools that could make Google Chrome the operating system of choice for many small businesses. And then there’s YouTube. But I’m likely missing others, right?
OK, I’m gushing. And here’s the main reason why. For decades, small businesses like mine have been forced to deal with different software running multiple databases on disparate machines. We’ve watched Microsoft fight with Apple, Dell battle HP and Intuit wage war on Sage. We don’t care. We just want to enter data once and have it populate all of our applications without any further effort. We just want software that will relieve headaches, not create more. We want to work faster so we can make more money.
With Google, we have a company that is quickly building a unified platform for applications and services that talk to each other and help us do our business faster and more profitably. We have a CEO that says “we should be building great things that don’t exist.” And we have a company that’s not afraid to innovate, fail and keep innovating. And because of this attitude, we have new technologies that will transform our businesses in the years to come.
