FT on Google Grand Strategy

One of my inaugural posts on this blog - Google Docs and the Future of Computing - was about how I ditched Microsoft Office in favor of Google Docs, and how Google is shifting computing from users' PCs to company servers. The Financial Times summarizes exactly how this plays into Google's larger mission:

Gmail, its web-based e-mail product, has become a development focus for the Silicon Valley company, with a stream of innovations leading to its promotion by influential early adopters.

With links to Google Docs, Calendar and other web-based services, Google appears to be making Gmail the centre of an online productivity suite that could eventually challenge the dominance of Microsoft’s Office collection of programs.

Google has two motives for pushing harder into e-mail. First, Google makes money from advertising placed inside e-mails. But the service is also valuable for its “stickiness” in increasing users’ dependency and time spent on other Google products.

Microsoft has its own array of Windows Live and .Net products to rival Google, but the integration of Google's free library of applications to the central Gmail platform is what sets it apart.