David Sacks, CEO of Yammer (and former COO of PayPal) had some things to say about chatter.com, as it is a direct competitor to Yammer. "Chatter is Yammer circa 2009," he tells WebProNews. "There are no features we didn’t have two years ago. Obviously we’re on to Yammer 2011, so they’re pretty far behind. From an innovation standpoint, the launch of Chatter.com is a total non-event."

Yammer launched back in 2008 at the TechCrunch50 event, where Sacks says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff was a judge. "Benioff having been a judge at TC50 is the reason there is a Chatter," Sacks tells us. "He raved about Yammer at the time and now he’s trying to copy it."

He also tells us that Yammer has approximately 2 million users, and is in 80% of the Fortune 500 and more than 100,000 companies.

Salesforce has an ad campaign for Chatter.com set to launch on Super Bowl Sunday, with ad spots directed by will.i.am. 

A representative for Yammer told us in a previous email, "If there was any kind of innovation or newness, the product would be able to stand on its own and Salesforce wouldn’t have to invest in SuperBowl ads with will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas."

So, yeah, there seems to be a little animosity there. Yammer is claiming better functionality to back up its position, however. For example, the rep said, "Chatter.com gives the first person to sign up on the network the power to moderate it, including deleting both posts and users. With Yammer, this function is fully decentralized — all users can police the network, which is also valuable in the event that the moderator suddenly leaves the company."

It’s still going to be hard to compete with a Super Bowl spot as far as getting people to take notice, but Yammer certainly seems up for the challenge.

Sure, it’s easy to suggest that Google has become too big, too arrogant, and has lost its original focus, but Fortune’s (long) article does a great job digging down and explaining why many are saying just that.

There were two things that really stuck out to me.

First, even Google’s biggest partners are concerned that the company is a one-trick (AdWords) pony. Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff puts it perfectly:

"What they need to do is build a full portfolio of revenue, as Microsoft has," says Benioff. "They have a fantastic cash cow. They need a goat and a chicken."

Second, the company is having trouble retaining its top talent. It seems Googlers would rather leave the company and struggle with a start-up, than use their 20% time to help Google find new revenue channels. More concerning is the apparent nonchalance of CEO Eric Schmidt:

"We’ve been hiring on the order of 100 people a week," he says. "So in one week we hire more people than the people you just named."

Wow! Yeah, but the people you lost include your CIO, CFO, head of ad sales, and its head of PR. Doesn’t that concern you Eric?

Google faces the huge issue of scaling its business. At it grows, it becomes less able to retain the "start-up" attitude that made it so successful–which is why Googlers would rather go it alone.

Last word goes to "Dean" who sent me the Fortune link and has this to say…

"I use this as exhibit A in my argument that Google will never see $2,000/share…or anywhere close. They are a big boy company now whose biggest challenge might be itself. Unfettered growth along with an unstructured culture will ultimately lead to a whole lot of inefficiency – my own experience at [a start-up] showed that unmanaged growth is the pathway to failure. With the 20% rule they are practically begging top talent to incubate their own start-ups and leave. All of this will lead Wall Street to put their foot down and demand that Google fall in line. I.e. Contain costs, drive efficiency, and steer away from unprofitable ventures. Not sure when tat will happen, but it will be sooner rather than later."

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