Can Google go Enterprise?

There’s a growing opinion that the answer to that is no. Om Malik got stuck into gmail last week.

How is one supposed to run a business on such an unreliable platform? The integration of Google’s services remains a distant dream, reminding us of the limitation of its competence beyond search and advertising.”

Today Phil Wainewright posted about Sergey Solyanik, [a?] development manager at Google who has gone back to Microsoft because “he values reliability far, far more than coolness”.

Sergey point according to Phil is that Google’s emphasis

[is] on building Web properties that are popular, but which “primarily help people waste time online,”

Its interesting how we pidgin hole companies. Google is a technology company for sure, but they are a technology company that does online advertising really well.That's it.

Is it even reasonable for us to expect them to be able to deliver on-demand business grade services?   I rather suspect that for Google to deliver other (any?) applications is a stretch because of the same barriers that all entrenched, incumbents face. Culture, resources, big revenue levers getting attention etc., etc.

The evidence seems to be growing that Google is lacking something when it comes to building business grade, on demand services.