The Glaring Opportunity Google Is Missing

By Tim Beyers – Nov 28, 2012 at 8:31PM

NASDAQ: GOOGL

Alphabet

Market Cap

$1,968B

Today's Change

(1.27%) $1.98

Current Price

$158.26

Price as of April 23, 2024, 4:00 p.m. ET

Tasks is a lightweight and mostly meaningless tool

For all there is to like about Google's (GOOGL 1.27%) Apps alternative to Microsoft's (MSFT 1.65%) Office suite, Gmail compares poorly to Outlook when it comes to managing tasks and projects.

Gmail adherents will counter -- rightly -- that they've a choice of any number of third-party task managers, including Remember The Milk and Toodledo. Nevertheless, I find it weird that Gmail's relatively obtuse alternative is tucked away in a hidden tab. Ignoring this space has encouraged up-and-comers to seek gains from pairing task management and social collaboration tools.

Take Jive Software (NASDAQ: JIVE), which recently purchased team task manager Producteev1 for an undisclosed sum. Facebook (META 2.98%) co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and developer Justin Rosenstein have created a similar system called Asana2 while salesforce.com (CRM 1.05%) has Do.com. Why isn't Google taking this market more seriously? Find out more in the video below.

Fool contributor Tim Beyers is a member of the Motley Fool Rule Breakers stock-picking team and the Motley Fool Supernova Odyssey I mission. He owned shares of Google and Salesforce.com at the time of publication. Check out Tim's web home and portfolio holdings or connect with him on Google+, Tumblr, or Twitter, where he goes by @milehighfool. You can also get his insights delivered directly to your RSS reader.

The Motley Fool owns shares of Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. The Fool has bought calls on Facebook. The Fool owns shares of and has created a synthetic short position on Salesforce.com. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Salesforce.com, Google, and Facebook. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended creating a synthetic covered call position in Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors.