Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop or why Google has nothing to worry about

Yahoo! is the, if not one of, provider of email to the world.
They also have a pretty good calendar and not so bad contact management. A lot of it has to do with people sticking by them because Yahoo! was there early on despite the lack of true innovation in those applications. Now Yahoo! has a chance to do great things and sadly misses the boat.

Yahoo! is probably not blind to this Web 0.9 quality of the services and a year ago they acquired Zimbra, one of the market leaders in the world of AJAX-based Web productivity applications. Zimbra Office, like Google’s office suite and Zoho Office and others seek to migrate people away from Microsoft Office to web-based alternatives. Among other things, Zimbra was selling its web-based office application server so you could manage the applications internally, retaining confidential information without reliance on a hosting vendor.

Yahoo! still appears to be doing that but in a relatively low key fashion, they released a product called Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop as a free download. Maintaining a very high cool factor, the application runs inside the Mozilla Prism container that lets web applications run and work on the desktop whether connected to the network or not. What was especially promising was the fact that Yahoo! finally lets its users access Yahoo! mail accounts outside of the browser. Normally, only paying users of Yahoo! mail can achieve this feat. Additionally, like a regular email client, you can connect to your plain-jane email account that use the POP and SMTP protocols. And like a Personal Information Manager it has a contact manager and calendar. So what is so cool about yet another email client? Well, how about putting the bull’s-eye on Microsoft Exchange?

Exchange (or Lotus Notes if you still believe), is the de facto ruler of all things enterprise communications. It centrally manages email, contacts, calendars, notes, and if you are really cool, workflows and other processes. Exchange’s face to the world is Microsoft Outlook. Outlook is pleasant but will have a really hard time coming across as trailblazing. Then there’s the issue that Outlook is slow – so slow that a great plugin like Xobni is making converts out of anyone who uses (including Bill Gates) because it has better search and information organization than the Outlook application it lives in. In short, the world uses Exchange but there is no passion or fire around it outside the thriving consulting community it nurtures.

What if Yahoo! actually took the effort to not only connect Zimbra Desktop to email but actually to its own Yahoo! calendar. Never mind the calendar, but not even hooking Zimbra Desktop up to the Yahoo! contacts application?! Are you supposed to import your Yahoo! contacts into Yahoo!’s own application using CSV imports? Elegant? I think not. Clearly there is the well-founded notion that Yahoo! needs to make money and they do it by showing advertising on their applications on the web. Then conceptually, is it better to let something mediocre out the door than nothing? What will tarnish your image more – boring or nothing? I will take nothing, all the more in light of the way Google manhandles anything they touch having seen Yahoo! doing bad or not investing in.

I use a Blackberry. An ugly but helpful 8700c. Google’s applications for the Blackberry not only work, but they constantly improve. Yahoo!’s Go – which again – holds the same promise of bridging gaps between my contacts and the ones on the Blackberry, not only does not improve, but became worse in the latest release.

If I am sad it is because Yahoo! used to be that great company. It is because if the folks at Yahoo! put their heads together they could do so much and become relevant again – through resources and users they already have! I used to be a Yahoo! fan as most often they came up with great ideas that Google only then picked up and made truly awesome. These days I am feeling that the Google KoolAid is that much tastier; that the morsels Google gives developers are just so great, that Yahoo! is just not interesting. Maybe, just maybe, they can make it but I doubt it more and more.