Google Apps Displaces Microsoft at Newspaper Chain

Yes, we're fully aware of the irony here -- or, at least, we think we are. Google Apps has unseated Microsoft's productivity suite at a company with about 8,500 employees, in part because the firm in question, McClatchy Newspapers, found that Microsoft's BPOS was, indeed, a POS. (Office 365, we suppose, never had a chance.)

So, that's one fairly large customer -- by cloud-suite standards -- that has made the relatively cutting-edge decision to move its operations to Google Apps, a new and arguably disruptive technology floating in the cloud. And that customer is...yes, a newspaper chain.

There's something deliciously ironic about that, isn't there? Or are we employing the extremely loose Alanis Morissette definition of irony here? (Don't click the link unless you actually want to hear her sing about rain on your wedding day. We at RCPU didn't watch the video.) The modern equivalent of a buggy-whip maker, a newspaper chain, is saving money by moving to a fairly avant-garde, Web-hosted set of applications. McClatchy is embracing the very technology that is killing its most prominent product.

OK, we don't actually know how McClatchy is doing financially, and we're sure the company has more than just print properties in its portfolio. (We're frankly not interested enough to actually look all of this stuff up right now.) But it's kind of funny that an organization that still puts ink on paper (as we do at Redmond Media Group, but not every day) and has the word "Newspapers" in its name is making a fairly revolutionary move in its in-house technology selection.

This could turn out to be a really weird reference customer for Google, the company many media firms have cited as destroying the media business. But, hey, a win's a win, right?

Posted by Lee Pender on June 22, 2011 at 11:57 AM