Salesforce / Google Announcement on June 5?

According to ZDNet, Salesforce.com will be holding a press conference on June 5 with a “leading Internet company based in the Bay Area”. Makes sense that this would be Google.

Lots of theories exist on what the partnership/acquisition will be about. My guess is that it’s a partnership (not an acquisition) and it’ll be a deep integration of Google Enterprise apps with Salesforce.com. I think this could include:

  • Google Apps gMail: Similar to the Outlook Edition, you’ll be able to add emails to Salesforce from Google Apps gMail. Hopefully, email to case is all integrated into this too.
  • Calendar sync: I think this is the least likely of all features.
  • Docs & Spreadsheet: Create Google Docs & Spreadsheets from within Salesforce so they are auto associated with your records. Also would include the ability to upload a document and have it uploaded to Google Docs & Spreadsheet rather than just being a file in the Documents tab. When turned on, this functionality will be native in the Documents section of Salesforce.com rather than an AppExchange application that uses all new functionality
  • Data indexing: Have Google index your Salesforce.com data in a secure environment and replace the Salesforce search with Google Search
  • Google for Adwords tied in with Google Analytics & Salesforce.com Campaigns
  • All of this will cost extra $$$

If it’s something like the above, I think the announcement will be a bit anti-climatic what with all the speculation about an acquisition. However, it would still be pretty cool.

My idea is all pure speculation, but its fun to think about. Applying Google technology to the Salesforce.com platform could make for some very exciting capabilities.

2 Comments

  1. David Claiborne Said,

    May 30, 2007 @ 1:09 pm

    What is really needed is a way to mailmerge from salesforce.com records into Google Docs documents. Then you coulld design templates in Google Docs that could become invoices, quotes, reports, anything you can create. These documents could be stored in the Google space (10GB of storage for $50 per year), but accessible from salesforce.com.

    Also, a way to send a customer a Google spreadsheet that could be completed (for example, a loan application). When the spreadsheet is returned, it can quickly be used to create/update records in salesforce.com.

  2. Ronin Marketeer - Boston Edition » Blog Archive » Google to purchase SalesForce.com? Said,

    May 31, 2007 @ 5:51 am

    […] rampage, the latest rumor is that something might be announced between Google and SalesForce.com on June 5th. There has been some chatter about this giving Google a complete package for small businesses of […]

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