Google + QuickBooks: Big Deal for Small Businesses?
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | September 14, 2006 | Share This
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Google & Intuit have joined ranks, annoucing today that “Google Marketing Tools” will be included in QuickBooks 2007. From the Google press release:
“For the first time, small businesses can use QuickBooks to market themselves online by listing their businesses on Google Maps™, creating and managing advertising campaigns with Google AdWords™ and posting their products for sale on Google through Google Base™”
The “strategic alliance” will strengthen Intuit’s core set of business services, while establishing Google as the preferred search marketing tool of small business owners. In theory, Google could acquire between 2 – 4 million new Adwords clients, based on estimates between current QuickBooks customers and expected sales for 2007.
This is not, however, Google’s first stab at a difficult market. An Access Markets International (AMI) survey reports that only 50% of small businesses even have a website. Google Checkout, Local Business Ads, integration into Salesforce.com, Google Print Ads, and the recent release of Apps for Your Domain are all former Google attempts to reach the small business audience. Tech bloggers have mixed feeling over the effectiveness of Google’s efforts. Says Donna Bogatin on ZDNet:
“Google has been unsuccessful to date in capturing the small business advertising market on its own and in collaboration with a direct sales partner; Its alliance with Intuit does not present itself as a sure fire way to improve its track record. Contrary to Schmidt’s beliefs, savvy small businesses are not waiting impatiently for Google to give them a turnkey icon on their desktop so they can get sucked into the Google-centric AdWords raise your bid continuously auction scheme.”
Financial analysts, on the other hand, have different expectations. “Thomas Weisel Partners’ Christa Sober Quarles called the new relationship a “major land grab” for Google in the small-to-medium business market. Cowen & Co. analysts estimate Google could earn as much as $2 billion a year from the relationship by 2011.” (from Market Watch).
Search marketers have said little since the deal was announced, except that this is “huge for Google” and “kind of scary.” One thing neither Google nor Intuit mentions in their press releases is the fact that the integrated software will give Google access to a huge amount of private data. From another Bogatin post, :
“Google CEO Eric Schmidt unwittingly made a telling remark during the conference call announcement today of Google’s direct integration into Intuit’s QuickBooks:
‘All of your (QuickBooks user) critical data stored in a server in the Google cloud.’”
Taking that quote at face value, it sounds as if Schmidt expects that sensitive information such as contractual agreements, tax returns, assets, liabilities, insurance policies, sales records, and more will be stored in the “Google cloud” for analysis and archiving. While Google already has much of this information from other services (notably: Gmail), the thought of consolidating it for such easy retrieval is still unsettling. Could privacy issues further deter local businesses from venturing into internet marketing?
Adoption of the Google Marketing tools will probably boil down to a usability issue more than anything else. QuickBooks is already a complex program – albeit, an extremely powerful one – and if the Google toolbox requires a high learning curve, it’s unlikely to take off with already overworked small business owners. Then again, Adwords has enormous revenue potential for local businesses, and its incorporation into a software product as ubiquitous as Quickbooks will undoubtedly make the program more visible to smaller companies.
Topics: Advertising: Distribution |
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Hosted services and solutions is a hot issue right now, seeing that even Google is doing it now. I actually write from Apatar, cause we’ve launched a hosted version of the application as well (http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/detail_overview.jsp?id=a0330000005kn33AAA). The purpose of it is to synchronize data between Salesforce and QuickBooks. We expect to add more various solutions to the list. So Google has set a good example in terms of companies wish to experement with different projects and ideas.