Mathew's comments - Latest Comments in Zoho offline: Is being first enough?

Re: Zoho offline: Is being first enough?

Mathew — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 00:02:03 -0000

Thanks, Sridhar -- that's a fair point.

Re: Zoho offline: Is being first enough?

Sridhar Vembu — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 16:11:57 -0000

I agree being first doesn't confer any huge advantage - but it takes more than half an hour of programming time though!

The Zoho vision is to offer a comprehensive suite, with depth and breadth, and I think the market is big enough to support a decent business for Zoho, even if Google "wins".

Sridhar

Re: Zoho offline: Is being first enough?

Zoli Erdos — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 13:51:00 -0000

Mathew,

A year ago I asked almost the same question: Would You Rather Be First to Market or Better? - except in my view Zoho has always been on the "better", not on the "first" side :-)

(Fyi, I am now an advisor to Zoho, but not at the time of writing the above article)

Re: Zoho offline: Is being first enough?

Paddy Byers — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 11:45:13 -0000

I don't agree with the statement about half and hour; but

- implementing offline support for read-only probably is very simple;
- implementing offline support for read-write is probably considerably harder;
- Google is most likely waiting for the latter to be complete before releasing either;
- Google is probably prioritising Gears support for Gmail over Docs because there is certainly considerably greater demand for that.

I'm a little surprised that Gears support for Gmail is taking so long, but remember that Gears itself is really at "alpha" quality - making such a key product as Gmail dependent on it at this early stage is probably not a risk worth taking.