Google seems to be very serious about capturing the small business market. Only a few weeks ago, they introduced the somewhat clumsily named "Google Apps for Your Domain", a package of Google's web-based productivity apps for businesses. Today, the search king (or emperor?) announced a major partnership with software maker Intuit.
Intuit's most popular product QuickBook has a share of -- depending on the source -- 75-85% in the market for small business accounting software. In other words: it's for accounting what Microsoft Word is for word processing. And now Google's services will be fully integrated with this dominating product.
QuickBook users will be able to list their business in Google Maps, create AdWords campaigns and search their hard disk using a QuickBook-branded version of Google Desktop. Even more interestingly, they will be able to publish their product lists on Google Base, Google's still not terribly successful classifieds platform. Companies that don't have a web page yet (yes, there is such a thing) will get one from Google for free. And obviously, there will be a lot of cross-selling potential for Google's other nice products.
This partnership is a very smart move for both parties. Intuit can add value to its product and can be a little bit more certain that Google won't enter the market for accounting software any time soon (there have been some rumours about this). And Google gets almost immediate access to a huge customer base that is extremely difficult to reach with other sales strategies. I don't think Microsoft will be too happy about this...
However, I wonder what Google's international strategy will be to reach small businesses outside of the U.S. In most countries, there's no such clearly dominant player as QuickBooks, and the most important products are different in almost every country.