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The new suite, announced Thursday, replaces the set of programs previously known as Google Apps for Your Domain, which included the Start Page feature for creating a home page at a specific domain name, Gmail Web-based e-mail services, the Google Calendar shared calendar program, and Google Talk for instant-messaging and voice chat. The new Google Apps Premier Edition is comprised of those programs in addition to the Google Docs & Spreadsheets software.
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News.Commentary Low-cost alternative to Microsoft Office  While Google Apps Premier Edition isn't yet on par with the dominant productivity suite, the Google mystique and the $50 price count for a lot. |
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The announcement of a revamped business application suite from Google had been anticipated for some time, as reported by CNET News.com.
Businesses can subscribe to Google Apps Premier Edition for $50 per year for each user account. While all of the applications are available in a free, ad-supported form to consumers, a subscription to the enterprise version offers enhanced customer support features, 10 gigabytes of storage per user, no advertisements and a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) designed to help companies' IT professionals further customize the service. Additionally, Google has assured business users that they will have the privilege of 99.9 percent reliability--an important point for the company to stress, as Google Apps outages have occasionally irked its consumer base.
In addition, with the launch of Google Apps Premier Edition, mobile Gmail access is now available for BlackBerry handheld devices. This is available to all BlackBerry users, not just those who have access to a subscription of Premier Edition.
"We're extremely excited, and we think this is something that will be good for the market," commented Matt Glotzbach, head the Google Enterprise Product Team. "Our goal is to provide an application that's a pleasure to use for the end user. All too often, we hear users, especially in larger companies, say, 'Why can't it just work like Google?' and that's what we want to provide: Google applications in a business environment."
The inclusion of the Docs & Spreadsheets applications raises the question of whether Google, which already boasts a business user base of approximately 100,000 small businesses and universities, is aiming to eat into the market share of productivity suites like Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org. But Glotzbach insisted that the collaboration and mobility functionality served up by Google Apps, accessible from an Internet browser rather than an installed piece of software, makes it a different set of applications entirely.
See more CNET content tagged:
Google Apps, Google Inc., productivity suite, Google Docs, Google Talk
Google Apps v1.0 may not have Microsoft too worried, but I bet they'll be sweating plenty by the time v 2 is released.
If a business doesn't want to pay for MS Office, OpenOffice is a better choice.
So I don't get why this was introduced now... are they going to start following the Microsoft model? (Release 1.0, improve, release 2.0, improve, release 3.0 - competent version)
It seems like they should have done more to integrate the JotSpot acquisition first. One, it has some great offerings in its Spreadsheet not found in Google Spreadsheets or Excel. Not to mention their Wiki product.
And there's no mention of integrating AdSense or Google Checkout.
They should also buy Gliffy to add a Visio competitor. And form some kind of Customer/People Management software. (GMail's contact system leaves a lot to be desired!!!!!!!!) And some simple bookkeeping/money tracking software. I'd love a replacement for Microsoft Money that I could access from any web-enabled computer. It'd be much easier to get all my family's receipts entered and all my bills paid.
Small business really have no incentive to use it either. Everyone has standardized on the Office format, and then there is the ol' learning curve. Large businesses already have an IT infrastructure in place and they also prefer to keep their files on their own servers.
Google trying to get into the Office app environment reminds me of Netware buying the Wordperfect suite. It makes no sense and only distracts the company from their core business.
I'm hearing, "It's all I need and I don't have to email documents back and forth to my office".
- It's the future
- by t8 February 22, 2007 1:35 PM PST
- Our kids will laugh when we tell them how we use to install software on a disk and fight off viruses. Their world will be a place where files and services just work via the Internet.
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- They all said we'd have paperless office by now
- by bobby_brady February 22, 2007 4:29 PM PST
- I think most offices are anything but paperless.
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