Google Enterprise Fragmentation

I am writing this in Google Docs, something that I generally stay away from as it certainly does not have the features necessary for a complex document, but will suffice for a blog entry.

However, this is an example for the dilemma that Google presents to its user set.  The tools seems to be there, but there are significant limitation or exceptions when you stray only a little-bit outside of their larger application set or environment.

In this entry, the focus is on the differences between the Google-based environments that I use, or try to use everyday.  Google apparently wants these environments to look the same, but any Enterprise user finds out quickly that they are not.

My company uses Google Apps primarily for email and some level of document exchange.  I personally have a Windows-based PC as well as an Android-based Tablet.  These two Google environments that center around the Chrome browser can lead to moment of “what was Google thinking” exasperation.

Up until recently (I don’t know exactly when), Google Apps, such as Document and Spreadsheet appeared quite differently in Chrome on the PC and the Tablet.  I just checked this morning, and now there seems to be some convergence of the look-and-feel.  Part of this was the release of Chrome for Android, which has now become my default browser on both platforms.

But, right now, Chrome is a tease.  On my PC, viewing a PDF is done quite differently than on the Android tablet.  Chrome works directly with nearly all PDFs and displays as a native format within a browser window.  On the tablet, loading a PDF causes a traditional download event that then requires the launch of a separate program to view the document.  Maybe this is a bit of nitpicking, but if Google wants the Enterprise space, then differences like this must be resolved.

Another more immediate tease occurred this week.  Chrome Remote Desktop, out of beta, appeared as a capability sent from heaven.  I was about to travel and did not want to take my desktop-replacement laptop on the journey.  I was able to quickly fire-up Remote Desktop on my laptop and another laptop and voila a remote desktop that worked remarkably well.  I then got my tablet and quickly determined that there was no Android Chrome client available, thwarting my mobile remote desktop access plans.  It is not even clear if Google is working on such a capability.

This got me thinking about the same-but-different environments that Google provides.  There are Google Chrome applications that you get from the Web-store and there are Android applications.  With the common denominator being Chrome, you would think that this would be the services convergence environment, at least for Enterprise services.  Alas, but no, at least not yet.  Because of this, I am not sure that I would consider a Chrome OS Laptop as I fear this introduces yet another environment with limitations and differences that are not necessarily foreseen until encountered.

Microsoft is certainly attempting their convergence approach for Tablets, Phones, PCs, and even the Xbox.  The eventual cleaner, easier to use, more uniform, and (of course) secure environment will likely dominate the emerging mobile Enterprise.