Google: We Have Stronger Products Than Microsoft

We worked closely with our pilot resellers as well as with our internal sales and channel team, and we have worked closely to set up the incentives both on the channel partner side as well as on the internal team side such that our internal teams as well as our channel partners are encouraged to work together in a seamless way around going after business.

Will your direct team get compensated for partnering with a reseller?

We have worked such that the incentive plans align the objectives so our internal folks are encouraged to work with partners.

It sounds like Google direct sales reps are not paid a full commission for every channel sale that goes through the territory. Is that the case?

We are not actually specifying the degree and level. But the incentive structures are aligned so that the resellers are encouraged to work with our direct teams and our direct teams are encouraged to work with our resellers. We expect to see joint, healthy sales pursuits on both sides. And we will continue to listen to both channel partners and the internal team to make sure those incentives continue to be aligned.

What requirements do you have around training or certification?

There is a specific qualification process that we work through with potential resellers around getting trained and demonstrating expertise with the products, and then [we are] therefore also running through a finance check and extension of credit terms based on the nature of the company and of course the human evaluation specifics. Channel teams on our side evaluate [potential partners] based on a number of other criteria.

What are your strategic goals from this in terms of overall market share, revenue, disruption of some of key other players?

At the high level this is to serve customer demand. If we look back at the year 2008 is the year in which the product really matured and many of the major first customers started to come on board and we started to see acceleration on the customer side. We look at 2009 as the year that the business is really poised to accelerate. And in order to meet the customer demand around the world we expect -- millions of new business users -- it is essential for us to work with partners around the world.