Is Google Going After CRM?

I recently returned from the Web 2.0 conference held in San Francisco at Moscone West and have some interesting news to report. While I was wandering the expo hall, I came across a booth by a company named Etelos.

They have an interesting product (which they just announced today) called CRM for Google. This product is an attempt to integrate the functionality of a full scale CRM system with the user interfaces of both cool apps and Google personalized home pages.

I saw their product demo and it looked pretty promising for small businesses who are looking for the Google look & feel. It’s essentially a Google homepage with custom Etelos widgets which for some, might be just enough. According to Etelos, they have over 1,500 businesses who have already requested a beta account.

Etelos’ core business model revolves around providing on-demand, customizable Web applications. Salesforce.com also offers a similar market place which they call the App Exchange.

I’m predicting that at some point later this year or early next year, Google will acquire Etelos and/or Salesforce.com (which I blogged about in another post Will Google Buy Salesforce.com?) CRM is a big components for business applications and fits right into Google’s business suite. It would be a nice complete package offering from e-mail to spreadsheets to CRM.

Oh, and the best part about Etelos’ booth — they provided free beer.

4 Comments Already

Andrew Said,

April 22nd, 2007 @6:48 pm

Not too far-fetched…

http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/47501.html
http://strategyst.com/wordpress/2006/12/27/2007-the-year-of-crm-20/

Brandon Said,

April 30th, 2007 @11:07 am

Seeing as Google is trying to get their hands into pretty much everything at this point, (The New Microsoft) I would say that this is a very likely scenario.

CRM Guru Said,

April 30th, 2007 @2:28 pm

Yes, you are both right Andrew and Brandon. It’s just a matter of time before Google has an entire Business Suite including CRM and other key “business” products. We’ll see later this year!

Janny R Said,

June 9th, 2007 @1:14 pm

salesforce.com is a sales automation system that is being retro-fitted/jury-rigged/band-aided to attempt to get it to morph into a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. For instance, try to get it linked to your accounting system to populate Customer purchase history - so your reps can pull up an account in salesforce.com and see a summary of activity including what the Customer bought in the last year, say. It was a nightmare working with an Appexchange vendor to get this to work. Too many complex steps by the sales people and the accounting people to get the purchase data to show up in salesforce.com. (vendor was great, salesforce.com system too clunky). Google should buy salesforce.com to get the customers and then rewrite the entire platform from scratch so that it truly is a CRM platform. Speaking of Customer Relationship Management - it’s something salesforce.com should try. That is, build long-term relationships by supporting their product and customers. Instead the only time salesforce.com talks to its customers is when they’re aggressively upselling products.