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-mails to the cloud, GSA is the first to utilize a cloud-based system for e-mail agencywide.  The migration will result in a 50 percent savings over the next five years when compared to current staff, infrastructure, and contract support costs. GSA’s move to cloud-based e-mail and collaboration tools is part of a government-wide effort to utilize more agile, lightweight technology such as cloud computing and to shared services to limit the need for expensive, redundant infrastructure.

Google said that earlier this year its Apps platform “became the first suite of cloud computing email and collaboration applications to receive Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification, enabling agencies to compare the security features of Google Apps to that of existing systems.”

Not all government agencies are equally forward thinking and sometimes they need a little nudge. Google is providing that to the Department of the Interior in the form of a lawsuit for not considering Google Apps and only considering Microsoft software in a recent agency procurement round for its 88,000 employees.

One might wonder about security of government data in The Cloud. But human error probably remains a greater threat than the security of the involved systems. In November a GSA employee “accidentally” sent the names and Social Security numbers of all 12,000 of the agency’s employees to a third party email address, exposing them to potential identity theft.

Thanks to Gary Price for alerting us to this item.

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 Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (federal) could be considered. Google is now suing, saying that this decision violates the federal “Competition in Contracting Act” (CICA). Here’s a short summary of what CICA provides (from a US government report explaining the Act):

Any procurement contract not entered into through the use of procurement procedures expressly authorized by a particular statute is subject to the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA). CICA requires that contracts be entered into after ‘full and open competition through the use of competitive procedures’ unless certain circumstances exist that would permit agencies to use noncompetitive procedures.

There are a number of circumstances where CICA doesn’t apply or where exceptions exist. The question before the court will be whether the Interior Department’s behavior fell within an exception to the statute, in this case the “limited source justification.”

Regardless of the merits of the claim and potential outcome of the case, which will likely be settled with the government having to consider Google, the willingness to sue here seems to indicate Google’s seriousness  in competing with Microsoft for government (and education) business up and down the line.

It’s hard to get an exact sense of exactly how many users of Google Apps are out there; some have estimated it’s more than 50 million users. (If GMail by itself counts, then undoubtedly.) A Google post in March reported that 25 million people have “gone Google.” A more recent post in September said that the overall Google Apps number is over 30 million people and more than 3 million businesses.

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, after more than two years of expanding our ideas, our team, and technology, we’re very eager to return and see what the world might think. Today we’re giving developers an early preview of Google Wave.

A “wave” is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Google is now shuttering Wave:

We were equally jazzed about Google Wave internally, even though we weren’t quite sure how users would respond to this radically different kind of communication. The use cases we’ve seen show the power of this technology: sharing images and other media in real time; improving spell-checking by understanding not just an individual word, but also the context of each word; and enabling third-party developers to build new tools like consumer gadgets for travel, or robots to check code.

But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects.

Some of its features, as the Google post says, will live on in other Google products.

There was something very unfamiliar and even “avant-garde” about Wave to many, despite a range of virtues. People didn’t and perhaps couldn’t “get it” at a glance. The bottom line is that it just may have been to complex, ambitious and ambiguous for other than a small segment of techies.

Here’s what I said after using it a bit:

Wave has huge potential, but people will definitely need to use and experiment with it before they understand and see its benefits. There’s a clear learning curve and some complexity surrounding the product; it’s not entirely intuitive. Wave probably also needs to incorporate email in order to go mainstream.

Google could potentially have simplified Wave and scaled it back, or focused it on fewer core features. And Google also probably needed to do some more outreach and education around the product.

Google has historically been reluctant to favor products or promote them, preferring instead to let them sink or swim on their own. Google’s philosophy surrounding new products is not unlike what happens when sea turtles hatch on the beach: those that gain adoption organically make it back to the water and live. Those that cannot or are intercepted by predators don’t.

Google Wave obviously didn’t make it back into the sea.

Click here to view the embedded video.

See related posts:

• Google Broadening Wave Access With GMail-Like Rollout
• Google Expanding Access To Wave Soon, First “Hands-On” Impressions
• Google’s New Wave Of Ambition
• Live Blogging Google Wave

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 on tablets and potentially Chrome OS netbooks due out later this year — although there’s theoretically no “desktop” with Chrome OS because everything is browser-based.

Android is not the best arena for the BumpTop UI/UX because of the small screen; moving things around your handset “desktop” is not going to be all that exciting or very useful. BumpTop is much more fully realized on a tablet or touch-screen notebook. Probably the best expression of the BumpTop experience would be on Microsoft’s Surface, which hasn’t really been very widely deployed.

Google probably bought the company, however, as much for its founder Anand Agarawala and his team as any technology it possesses. Google likely recognizes in BumpTop an opportunity to develop next-generation interfaces more generally, with some element of that being 3-D.

Another problem with the Android scenario is that Google’s two largest handset partners, Mototola and HTC, are busy deploying or developing their own proprietary UI overlays on top of Android (i.e., Motoblur, Sense). The general movement is away from a “generic” Android UI and toward OEM differentiation. So it’s unlikely that they’ll want to embrace a standard Android UI again — however sexy.

There’s also the possibility that Google sees the underlying technology or its successor as a potential UI for Google Docs/Apps.

Regardless of the likelihood of any of these particular scenarios, I’m sure Google sees multiple, potential uses for the technology. And $15 million is like lunch money for Google.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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 Google search works:

The second video is on Google’s search ad technology:

The final video is on how Google Apps works:

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 domain, these third-party applications work like native Google applications. With administrator approval, they may interact with calendar, email, document and/or contact data to increase productivity. Administrators can manage the applications from the familiar Google Apps control panel, and employees can open them from within Google Apps. With OpenID integration, Google Apps users can access the other applications without signing in separately to each . . .

Google’s partner slide at launch:

Google has enjoyed some momentum in the enterprise with Apps but adoption has been tiny relative to Microsoft’s installed base of software users. This however would appear to be a “game changer,” to use the overly used phrase, by bringing all sorts of creativity and new functionality into Google Apps. It also instantly creates a broader ecosystem around the offering that will drive interest and adoption.

As with other apps marketplaces users can search by keyword and refine for functionality (e.g., “payroll”) as well as see user ratings for apps:

Because all this is in the cloud, expect varying degrees of mobile integration.

We were invited but I was unable to attend and so didn’t get to explore specific questions and issues, such as whether this would become more consumer-facing or a parallel consumer version would emerge at some point. However, there is much more discussion of particulars on Techmeme.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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 enhanced security features or the ability to import contacts.” The article says Google will share sales revenue with the outside developers.

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 Sites. As a result you may find that from March 1 key functionality within these products — as well as new Docs and Sites features — won’t work properly in older browsers.

This is a major move by Google for several reasons, here are just a few:

(1) There are many companies forcing users to remain on IE6, those people won’t be able to fully utilize Google Docs and Sites.

(2) Many people who have no idea what a browser is, still uses IE6 – what do you think they will upgrade to when they are forced by Google to upgrade?

(3) Webmasters have been trying to kill IE6 for years, can Google make that a reality?

(4) Google is not saying not to use Internet Explorer, just don’t use IE6.

Here’s a promotional video (“campaign preview”):

Click here to view the embedded video.

The campaign seeks to establish the credibility of Google’s enterprise offerings by naming companies that have adopted them, that have “Gone Google.” And, yes, it’s about stealing customers from Microsoft’s more traditional software products. But that’s obvious.

What’s more interesting to me is that Google is now much less inhibited about doing traditional media advertising, which it has done for Maps, Transit, the LBC, Chrome, Book Search (court-ordered) and AdWords/AdSense. There’s also a ton of advertising going on for Android phones, of course, although that’s being paid for by Google’s partners: T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint, HTC, Motorola and others. Every ad for Android is indirectly an ad for Google.

Now that Google acknowledges traditional media spending and promotion are often important to build awareness, we’re likely to see the company do more of this sort of thing in the future. In my mind, it marks a significant change in Google’s attitude toward media and advertising. It’s also consistent with the “maturation” of the company.

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 this from Google, in addition to them advertising AdSense on radio. But if one thing is clear, Google has been using traditional forms of advertising to promote Google Apps, Chrome, Google Maps, and even AdSense.

I will be driving by one of the billboard locations that this ad should appear on. I am not sure if the ad will be there today, but if it is, I will do my best to snap a picture and post it here.

For more information, see google.com/appsatwork.