In a collaborative campaign to compete with Microsoft in internet-delivered software, Google and Salesforce.com have become increasingly cozy.
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As Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) chairman & CEO Marc Benioff has said, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, so that makes Google my best friend.”
Earlier this month, the two companies announced that they had integrated Salesforce’s customer relationship management software with Google’s suite of online applications, which includes e-mail, word processing and spreadsheets.
Nine days later, Microsoft announced an online system called Live Mesh, which blends Windows programs with web-based services.
Google’s approach to online office apps - generally called Google docs - has met with less than stellar reviews from users. However, Microsoft’s customer management program lags behind Salesforce products. So the combination may help Google and Salesforce expand their share of online business customers.
If the approach is successful, Marc Benioff may feel a twinge of regret over the stock he has unloaded in recent years.
Benioff has used a a pre-arranged plan to steadily sell shares. Under what’s known as 10b5-1 trading plans, execs can set up advance schedules enabling them to buy and sell stock even if they acquire important insider information.
Benioff has sold 830,000 shares of salesforce stock thus far in 2008, for a total $47.8 million. The sales price ranged from $50.25 to $68.28.
He sold an additional 4.2 million shares in 2007 and 5 million shares in 2006.
Yet he certainly won’t suffer if the stock price continues its upward climb - or if Google decides to acquire the company. He still holds more than 14 million shares.
A former senior VP at Oracle, Benioff founded Salesforce in 1999. He once boasted that the company would become “the Microsoft of the 21st century.”
Google may have beat him to the top of the mountain, but Benioff knows how to pick his friends.
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