The US General Services Administration announced that it was moving to Google Apps and The Cloud for email, etc. It becomes the first federal agency to do so. The GSA said it will save more than $15 million over five years. The contract is worth just under $7 million and being implemented by Google partner Unisys Corp. The government said the following in its press release about the rationale: The contract provides for an easily accessible suite of services, including e-mail and collaboration tools, to facilitate a more mobile work force.  While agencies have moved sub-entities’ e-mai [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Business Issues | Google: Enterprise Search | Google: Gmail | Google: Legal

Google has been on the receiving end of several investigations and complaints from US government agencies. Now Google is taking the offensive and is suing one of them, the Department of Interior in this case, for reportedly not considering Google Apps and only considering Microsoft software in a recent agency procurement round for its 88,000 employees. The complaint alleges that Google unsuccessfully tried to engage the Interior Department in discussions surrounding consideration of Google Apps. However, the agency later put at a request for quote (RFQ) that apparently specified only the Mi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Docs & Spreadsheets | Google: Legal

Last May Google Wave was unveiled as a new communication platform and positioned as a successor to both email and instant messaging. It was also a powerful, real-time collaboration tool. It did other things too. Perhaps that was the problem; it offered too many possibilities. Beyond that people didn't necessarily see the need for Wave, even if it was more productive and efficient than more conventional tools. Here's what Google said when Wave launched: After months holed up in a conference room in the Sydney office, our five-person "startup" team emerged with a prototype. And now, aft [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Enterprise Search | Google: Gmail | Google: Other | Top News

Google has bought BumpTop, a company that makes 3-D desktop UIs for the PC (Windows and Mac). The purchase amount was not disclosed of course, although the company had only raised a small amount of investor cash, less than $2 million. So figure the acquisition was less than $20 million -- probably more like $10 to $15 million at most. On to the speculative "what will Google do with BumpTop" scenarios. All the posts feverishly written last night predominantly assume that BumpTop will be used to "sex up" (as the British would say) the Android UI. There's also discussion of how it might work o [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Acquisitions | Google: Apps For Your Domain

Google is trying to show the public how transparent they are, especially since the EU antitrust investigation. First, the Google European Public Policy blog had a post from Matt Cutts on Google's transparency. And now I see Google has made a landing page at google.com/howgoogleworks. The new landing page has three videos on how Google's search technology, search ads and Google Apps work. It also contains links to more information about Google. The first video is on how Google's search technology works and Google's Matt Cutts did a video, with hair, to demonstrate that. Here is how [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdSense | Google: AdWords | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Business Issues | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Google: Web Search

Taking a page from Salesforce.com, last night Google formally launched the anticipated Google Apps Marketplace at its "Campfire One" developer event. In short it allows companies and developers to gain access and sell into Google's "2 million businesses and 25 million Google Apps users." The marketplace launches with 50 partners including Intuit and competitor Zoho. Google controls billing for paid apps and gets a 20 percent cut of the revenue. All of the apps will potentially integrate with existing Google tools and services. According to the Google Blog: Once installed to a company's dom [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Docs & Spreadsheets | Google: Enterprise Search | Google: Mobile | Top News

It's no secret that what really sets the iPhone apart from other smartphones is its App Store. Google appears to be betting that an app store will help set Google Apps apart from Microsoft's office and business software. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google might announce the Apps app store as soon as next month. A Google spokesperson told the Journal, "we have nothing to announce at this time." The article quotes "people briefed by [Google]" and says the store "will sell business software designed by outside developers to integrate and add capabilities to Google Apps, such as enh [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Apps For Your Domain

On Friday afternoon, Google announced they will be discontinuing their support for "very old browsers." They said, they will stop supporting Internet Explorer 6, commonly referred to as IE6, on many of their applications. Starting on March 1st, Google Docs and Google Sites will no longer be officially supported on IE6. Google said: Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers. We’re also going to begin phasing out our support, starting with Google Docs and Google [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Docs & Spreadsheets

Google has decided to extend and pick up the pace of its "Going Google" (Apps and enterprise products) traditional media campaign. The ads were first launched in August in four cities with billboards. Now Google says the campaign will be expanded globally to "the U.K., France, Canada, Japan, Australia and Singapore" and appear "in train stations such as Paddington, La Défense and Shinagawa, and at airports in Singapore, Toronto, Dallas and beyond . . ." Here's a promotional video ("campaign preview"): [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP2oWfDMvqc[/youtube] The campaign seeks to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Business Issues

Google is launching a billboard campaign in four major cities named "Going Google." There is a ton of buzz around the campaign, being that Google typically does not conduct traditional forms of advertising and that this is a direct shot at Microsoft. First, here is a video of some of the billboards: As you can see, this is promoting Google Apps in a major way. Not only does this drive to the core of Microsoft's products, but it is also one of the few times Google using traditional means of advertising. It is funny to see Microsoft advertise Bing on TV and at the same time to see [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Marketing

What is it? Google's answer to Twitter? Email and IM replacement? Personal communications and collaboration platform? These were questions and characterizations that emerged as Google announced Wave at the company's May developer event in San Francisco. (Here's a bit more context from my related post at the press conference.) It's a shapeshifter, a new species and something of a rorschach test for people because it crosses boundaries and isn't easily defined. Google Wave's API has recently become available to developers. And now some first "hands on" impressions are out. Ben Rometsch wr [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Chrome | Google: Labs | Google: User Interface

Watching Google and Microsoft lately has been like watching a tennis match: Each company seems to be taking turns hitting back at the other with new announcements, new products, and so forth. The latest volley isn't strictly search-related, but it's very notable: Microsoft announced "lightweight" versions of its Office products that will be free and web-based -- a direct competitor to Google Apps. The free products will include Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote, and will be available to anyone with a Microsoft Live account. Just last week, Google got into the OS business when it anno [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Business Issues | Microsoft: Business Issues

I was setting up a new domain last year, something I'd done countless times and could do with my eyes closed, when my hosting provider suddenly started pushing several Google products on me. Did I want to use Gmail for my domain? Did I want to use Google Apps for Domains? Well, no, but thanks. I think. I found out later it was Google pushing those products via the "Google Webmaster Tools Access Provider Program," which gives web hosting companies easy access to integrate Google products into their hosting services. Google has announced this week that the program has been expanded to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: AdSense | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Custom Search Engine | Google: Marketing | Google: Webmaster Central

VentureBeat reports Google has launched a reseller program for Google Apps. The program is aimed at developers, hosting companies and others to take on the responsibility of billing, support and training, in exchange for a twenty-percent discount on the services. In short, Google will charge you 20% less of the standard fee and you can go to your client and charge them the price you see fit, for managing, billing, supporting and training them on Google Apps. To be a reseller, you need to find customers to sell Google Apps to, then setup and deploy it for your customers and handle the bill [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Apps For Your Domain

Last night Google released Google Moderator, a tool to organize "tech talks" or question and answer sessions. It is a free service that Google used internally, but now made public. Matt Cutts said Google calls this application Dory "after the fish who asked questions all the time in Finding Nemo)." To me, this seems like a more interactive version of Yahoo Suggestions, which is actually a closed tool to just Yahoo feedback. Matt Cutts said Google may be using this tool for future Webmaster Chat sessions. It will allow people to submit questions and then have those involved in the sessio [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Moderator

NeeTeeVee reports Google is going to be adding video sharing tools to Google Apps for businesses this coming Monday. Paid users of Google Apps will be allowed to upload videos with no time restrictions but a maximum size per upload of 300 MB, for a total of 3GB per account and unlimited video views. The tool is not going to give Google App users live video broadcasting or video conferencing capabilities, but users can tag, star and comment on videos. Video creators can also thumbnail important parts of the video, in order to highlight key points in the video. In addition, the videos can be [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Apps For Your Domain

The Google News Blog announced that they have launched a special interface for the iPhone. To access it, all you need to do is go to Google.com on your iPhone or iPod Touch and navigate to the news section via the "more" link at the top right, or you can easily just go to http://news.google.com on your iPhone or iPod Touch. In addition, Google rolled out the iPhone interface globally to 33 new markets and 16 new languages. This includes a Google Apps launch for the iPhone, where all you need to do is go to http://www.google.com/m/a/YOURDOMAIN on your iPhone (replacing YOURDOMAIN with your d [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: News | Google: User Interface

It appears that Google is having major issues with their email server. In the past 15 minutes, I received a few phones, tons of twits, and found a fast growing Google Groups thread about Google removing IMAP from their email settings options. This seems to be a major issue, where hundreds of Gmail users can no longer use Gmail or their email on Google Apps. If you login to your Gmail account and click on "settings," you may notice that the IMAP option is gone. Here is a screen capture: Also, Rudd sent me a screen capture of errors he is receiving via Outlook when trying to connect to G [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Gmail

The final quote in Miguel Helft's NY Times article on the deepening alliance between Google and CRM software provider Salesforce.com says it all, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend, so that makes Google my best friend." It's attributed to Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com. Basically, in a deal announced this morning, Salesforce is integrating Google Apps into its platform so that enterprise users can access the latter directly. Here's how the press materials distributed by Google describe the integration and its capabilities: [Google and Salesforce.com are making] it easy for companies o [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Partnerships

Last night, at Campfire One, Google launched an Amazon S3/EC2-like product named Google App Engine. For non-techies, Google App Engine will allow you to host your web sites and applications on their infrastructure. Not only that, this service will automatically grow in resources and capacity, as your application or web site requires. If you launch a web site and it spikes in traffic from being mentioned on Oprah, Google App Engine (and products like it) will automatically scale up to provide more server resources to handle that traffic and usage. The features include: Dynamic webserving, [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Apps For Your Domain