Google’s three should-be M&A considerations

I wrote, earlier, Microsoft’s two should-be M&A considerations.

Eric Schonfeld writes Google Enterprise and makes the case that Google should get into Enterprise Applications.

If Google’s earnings miss tells us anything it is that it needs to find some serious new lines of revenue. For all of its cool products that it seems to launch every week, none of them outside of search ads are making much, if any, money. Here’s my latest column on why Google should become a platform for online enterprise software apps and take on SAP (which is about to launch its own online CRM service) and Salesforce.com.

Absolutely! In fact, Enterprise and SME are the places to go, and in both, Google has great customers already.

Here’s Google’s three should-be M&A considerations, all in Software-As-A-Service (SaaS) :

Salesforce.com : Hosted CRM, with a meagre $4.14B market cap.

Webex: Hosted web collaboration and conferencing, with a paltry $1.26B market cap.

Qualys: Hosted Security, still private, for sure less than a Billion.

That $20 Billion or so in lost market value that Google just suffered, would come rushing back, if they spend this miniscule ~$6-$8 Billion, and make a statement to the market that they understand the need to look beyond advertising, and SaaS is a perfect place to loiter into, next.