Today the Financial Times is reporting that Google is in fact about to pull out of the Chinese search market as talks have reached an apparent “impasse”:

Google has drawn up detailed plans for the closure of its Chinese search engine and is now “99.9 per cent” certain to go ahead as talks over censorship with the Chinese authorities have reached an apparent impasse, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking.

In a hardening of positions on both sides, the Chinese government also on Friday threw down a direct public challenge to the US search company, with a warning that it was not prepared to compromise on internet censorship to stop Google leaving.

The signs that Google was on the brink of closing Google.cn, its local search service in China, came two months after it promised to stop bowing to censorship there. But while a decision could be made very soon, the company is likely to take some time to follow through with the plan as it seeks an orderly closure and takes steps to protect local employees from retaliation by the authorities, the person familiar with its position said.

Google will likely have other operations (e.g., research) still in China on a smaller scale. And the closure of Google.cn will not affect Android or its presence in the world’s largest mobile market. Motorola previously said that it would put Bing on its Chinese Android phones. Baidu, the leading Chinese search engine, is also a choice of course. Presumably Apple will do something similar with the iPhone which is reportedly selling reasonably well in China.

Google will likely still have some search visibility in China as people find ways around Chinese government filters to gain access to Google.com and maybe even Google.cn if that domain continues to operate for Chinese language speakers.

Even though this is not the outcome that many wanted, I believe Google should be congratulated, assuming this story is correct, for taking a bold and uncompromising public position and sticking with it. Chinese government censorship is “evil” and Google has clearly lived up to its mantra in this case.

I’m here at SXSW waiting for the Can the Real-Time Web Be Realized? panel to begin. I’ll be liveblogging what happens, so stay tuned.

Search engines have certainly jumped to add in ways to find real-time content. This panel features reps from three of them talking: Google, Microsoft and Collecta. Plus, you’ve got real-time guru Marshall Kirkpatrick in the mix. It won’t all be search, I’m sure, but it’s going to come up.

Our speakers, pictured above, from left to right:

• Marshall Kirkpatrick, ReadWriteWeb
• Jack Moffitt, Collecta
• Brett Slatkin, Google
• Scott Raymond, Gowalla
• Dare Obasanjo, Microsoft

Marshall to panel: What are some of your favorite use case of real time?

Jack: Communication has changed a lot from postal mail to telephone. To internet, closer to zero. More yells from the audience that people can’t hear. We’re getting more real time feedback about the session, heh. Giving latency down to zero gives new applications like instant messaging, Gowalla.

Brett: Future use cases, data interchange is interesting. Amazon has great inventory system to track all they have. For many people, especially in SF, painful to buy because you don’t support your local community. So a barcode scanner that did a feed that connected to local supply chain? You could get scale better than large corporations can do on their own and help local businesses compete better. That’s one of the promises of real time web, turning competition around. Smaller players can compete better.

Scott: Top of his mind are trending spots, tying in geodata with real time web. Where’s the hotspot right now? Then the tide will shift, so how do you track it. [This is what Gowalla does, track hot areas, I guess -- I need to try it. Can't Foursquare and Plancast and Gowalla just all get together?]

Dare: One way is make web pages real time, interesting if you can make parts of pages real time. Good example, hash tag for this conference. Type that in to a search, you get a stream but not pages. Getting more and more pages doing this rather than people would help. And now hard to hear him as we get bad speaker feedback. And I’m like in second row from front. Echo, echo, echo. It’s real time echo, and I can’t hear. Being able to actually analyze the flow of information is also interesting. Lots of patterns about good movies, friends.

Dammit, I wanted more c0ncrete examples. Nice try with the question, though, Marshall.

Marshall: One of his favorite things is something Brett said, that the system is being designed to support unplanned use cases (which if you think about that, is pretty awesome if it really works, how do you plan for things you don’t know?).

Jack: Lucky that first problem is solved, that publishers will give them the data. Second problem, still wrestling with, to figure out what the data formats for real time info will be. If you want to enable the real time web, need a way to push to say there’s data here, so come get it. PubSubHubBubGlub that no one can pronounce is one example of this. It so needs a better name — that’s me thinking that, but I’m not alone.

Scott: Right now, you can send messages from Buzz to Facebook, but you can’t replicate data for easily. I guess share at once to all of them. It’s really, really hard to hear, sorry. I guess everyone in the back can hear now. Maybe I can lip-read. What about corporate data policies that prevent integration from happening, and is it in the best interest of users. Or business deals that give some but not all of info. IE: Facebook, Twitter, Google, the data’s not yours to buy and sell for just your own benefit.

Dare: Common pain we all have today. Too long to get updates to Buzz from other services and so on. We hve to go about getting those services.

Brett: Standards are an issue. If you want to put monetization or business policies into a feed, you’re messing things up. Think that’s what he was saying, sorry. I’ve said it’s hard to hear, right?

Marshall: How about privacy?

Scott: We would love it if everyone was completely open with the world, makes things more valuable. But the user perspective, there’s marginal value in providing all your data. But it’s probably better to stay selfish with your own data. So trick is how to you find the right encouragement to help the business but let users stay in control. There’s a whole lot of work to be done but hasn’t been solved yet. Gowalla trying to give some incentives, like with gaming, so have to be willing to share to win.

Jack: Did we have these issues when phones came out. They decided to be public about numbers (actually, didn’t we all have to be public by default, because of party lines?). Lots of firehoses of data from MySpace or Twitter or Flickr. The level of support these streams have for deleting a post is bad. If you yank something off Flickr, there’s nothing in the Flickr data stream that tells others to delete this post. MySpace has some of this built in.

Brett: Lots of work to do on what do you share, how do you share. Then by addressing these problems together. The “oh shit” problem, oh I didn’t want to post that.

Marshall: Haven’t users already figured out where they want their real time stuff to be private, if they choose what to share or not at places like Facebook?

Jack: MySpace is a really different site than Facebook. In Facebook, you don’t have as much control over the user experience. Dare: If everyone on Twitter had a private feed, there would be no business model. So Twitter’s interest for people to be less private.

Scott: Similar to Amazon, they’ve never asked if they can analyze my data, but they just do it.

Question From Audience: Lots of Twitter and Facebook bashing. What are your companies doing right?

Marshall: Rephrases, what are your specific examples of good use cases?

Brett: Favorite problem is what’s on Google Buzz right now. Thing doing, encouraging competition in the community. Until now, people like Facebook have owned your data. Buzz is encouraging competition, you can pull in feeds from other sites.  Make a rich stream. Then expose it to the world without you knowing. No! He didn’t say that last sentence, you all just thought it. How do you deal with the challenge of different user groups. Today on Google Buzz you can link up sites to your profile (when it works, it’s still pretty lame with me), then next step back, if you host your own blog and that got pulled into Buzz with comments, then my comments there on Buzz, can it go back to your blog. Does that help people regain ownership they may feel about their content, get their comments back (maybe, but kind of good luck with that. it’s like saying you want to pull all the real world non web discussion back into your own living room). We don’t want to own anyone. At end of the day, competition will be the best for all of us.

Scott: Love to see more sites think about what’s the first 10 seconds of users experience.

Dare: Bing Twitter which is interesting way to zoom in on a location and see what’s being said (I think that’s Twitter on Bing Maps). A lot of work went into trying to find trending topics. Other thing interesting at Microsoft, Windows Mobile 7. He has four apps he jumps back and forth to find out what’s going on. I go to Fourquare to Twitter to Facebook. The thinking is that’s its not about going to 5 7 or 10 apps but as a person, I know Rob — here’s what Rob’s doing. Moving away from notion of status update and have people who are your friend get info to you.

Brett: But with Buzz, a criticism was we show ads. So how do you monetize that. Something like people Buzz, if you break down the barriers, lose the monetization for the brands that build the feeds, who’s going to do this. Specifically in the case of ?peoplehub peoplebuzz? dammit it’s so hard to hear.

Dare: I like to start from what’s the best experience for the customer. Doesn’t mean you have to lose the monetization. [Now moved to sit directly in front of speaker, maybe I can hear better that way]

Jack: Something like Twitter is doing, charging for their content, is that more of what you mean.

Dare: There’s no one size fits all. Some companies feel if you get content out as much as possible, that drives content. Hitwise stats show Facebook drives Foursquare the most traffic. Should they pull out unless paid? I don’t think so.

Audience member asks question on privacy:

Scott: We provided some basic degrees of control. If you go more fine grained, it becomes a user experience challenge. It’s a design problem more than anything. We’re working on it, and I definitely believe it is solvable, but I think the trick is to always be explicit with the user and show them where it is going.

Jack: I don’t think users have figured this out. Has friend with 12 year old daughter who had party at house, got busted, forgot her dad follows her. Write about your teacher, but it gets back to her. People have to figure out the potential repercussions, and I don’t think we’ve even figured these out. When our children have these experiences each day, then we can figure out the technology maybe [or it's not a tech issue but maybe teaching kids you don't share everything].

Brett: Not just tech issue. Part of what doing to set your preferences overall. Webfinger designed to set common privacy sharing, so you don’t have to remember and say how you want sharing to work everywhere [yeah, good luck with that, when like at Facebook, there's so much you shared in a granular fashion]. Every provider has different settings and models, and that’s wrong. The user should just say this is what’s important to me.

Jack: I don’t think users will understand the ramifications of those decisions. If I say it’s OK to share my Flickr photos to the world, there are still the ramifications.

Brett: But that’s because your privacy settings are inconsistent. That’ll change. So you get a job, you change those settings. We need consistency first.

Scott: Skeptical, with fine grained issues, touchy feely issues, so many shades as gray. I think it will be as successful as to have cross site identity, like OpenID, which has failed.

Dare: Same, hard to be consistent, that type of solution won’t work. Facebook model is different than Twitter follower model, how do you describe all these things that are different. What I tend to suspect are two things. One, users want privacy controls. Wehn you ask them, they have some expectations. But if you do introduce those, it produces friction. People don’t go into the sharing box and say this tweet is NSFW, so I will share it with only a few people. They just don’t share it. Even if you give them the functionality, it’s too much work. They don’t do it.

Another audience question, didn’t catch it, will dive into answers.

Jack: When you have a ton of info, like this blog post appears first, then this came second, you can dedupe and fight some spam. The real descrepancy is betweent different sites. Each Twitter ID is unique, you can tell. But if you put it on Facebook, harder. And Facebook has internal duplication because not all things open [think that's what he said].

Brett: Tech solutions trying to do. If Buzz hits Twitter, then Twitter hits Buzz, its gets worse and worse over time. Algos help, but not easy for little guys to do. Using Atom source [think he said] as original content producer can help. Also cross post extenstion from Six Apart to link feeds that are similar but still slightly different, to tell if you posted in multiple places.

Jack: Still going to be a hard thing no matter what. We have to make sure people actually do things.

Marshall: Thanks for joining us!

Google took the high ground in response to coordinated attacks on its servers in an effort to gain access into Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The Chinese government has been indirectly linked to the attacks by several security firms and other sources, though the Chinese officially deny any involvement. That lack of definitive proof that the Chinese themselves were behind the attacks has allowed officials to maintain a strident and indignant line vs. Google.

Censorship in China is one of the core positions of the government — one that is critical to their maintenance of political control — and it was perhaps naive of Google to think that there would be any change in that position or exception made for the company. Indeed, China’s no-compromise-on-censorship position was reiterated by a top-level Chinese minister yesterday, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal:

At a press conference Friday, Li Yizhong, Minister of Industry and Information Technology, was asked by a reporter how China would react if Google does stop censoring Google.cn. “I hope Google can respect Chinese rules and regulations,” responded Mr. Li, whose ministry is one of several that regulates China’s Internet. “If you insist on taking this action that violates Chinese laws, I repeat: you are unfriendly and irresponsible, and you yourself will have to bear the consequences.”

The challenge now for Google is how to find a compromise position and remain in the country, as CEO Eric Schmidt and many of Google’s shareholders would like to do, but not appear to have betrayed the admirable principles asserted in January when the company said this:

We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Given that the Chinese aren’t going to back down, how might Google remain in China and still save face in the West?

Google is working with a limited number of retailers for the time being but is inviting others to apply to become part of the program. There are data quality and location quality requirements that Google identifies and links to from its blog post.

Product Manager Paul Lee told me that this was only mobile for now but eventually would make its way onto the PC. He said that this offering made the most sense, in Google’s collective mind, for people on the go who had an immediate need for an item.

Here’s what the experience looks like on the Safari browser on the iPhone. It is also available for Palm’s WebOS and Android. It’s available from mobile Google.com results or via Google Shopping in mobile.

Several years ago Google operated Froogle Local, which offered the same proposition and received data from StepUp (now owned by Intuit) and ShopLocal.  Google discontinued that service after roughly a year or so.

This time Google is working directly with retailers and not third parties and, according to Lee, has been helping them to clean up and prepare their data. The group of retailers currently involved are: Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn and West Elm stores.

In testing out the program Google apparently utilized “mystery shoppers” to test the system and go into stores to see if the search data were accurate. Paul Lee said, “We were very surprised and pleased and how well it worked.”

There are several other shopping sites that to varying degrees do a version of this today, including Milo.com, TheFind, PriceGrabber, NearbyNow (partners) and Krillion and its partners (including PriceGrabber). But Google’s visibility and clout will start to make real-time inventory data all but imperative for shopping search engines and related sites (at least in mobile) that want to remain competitive.

I asked Paul Lee about advertising angles here and he declined to comment. But I would image that where an advertiser is a also one of the partner retailers, we’ll start to see the blue dots appear in sponsored search results. But this may be some distance off.

This program will also yield very interesting, with a capital “V,” consumer data including some that should help further document the not-well-appreciated connection between Internet research and offline purchase behavior.

Below are the top five sites that drive traffic to Bing, or “upstream” to Bing, as Hitwise calls it:

MSN is by far the top source, the last site visited by 42.7% of Bing users before they went to Bing. That’s not surprising. MSN — Microsoft’s portal — has long been a huge search driver for Microsoft. In fact, the company recently said that half of all Bing queries come from MSN.

Bing is also the default web search engine for Facebook, so Facebook makes sense as the number two referrer, at 4.6% of traffic.

Windows Live Mail — that’s another Microsoft property that ties into Bing search — so it’s another one that makes sense logically. It’s at 4.4% of traffic.

But Google as the fourth largest referring source, at 4.1%? Google, which competes against Bing? How’s that happening? Probably two ways.

First, Bing buys ads on Google, like this:

You can find Bing ads showing up on searches at Google for bing, cashback, search engines, flight comparison and image search, to name some examples. Interestingly, Bing doesn’t appear to be buying ads against its tagline, that it is a decision engine.

Bing also does a lot of TV advertising. TV ads are known to drive search queries. So there’s a good chance that when someone sees a Bing ad, they decide to google Bing and discover what they’ve just seen!

All this also applies to Yahoo, which drives 1.9% of traffic. Bing advertises there, and TV ads probably generate queries on Yahoo for Bing, as well.

It’s clear people do search for Bing by name on Google. Using Google Trends, we can see the growth of this over the last year. Here’s the search volume of those seeking Bing on Google:

Still, that’s nothing compared to the number of searches that happen for Yahoo on Google. Here’s the Bing chart again, this time with searches for Yahoo on Google added in:

Oddest of all, currently more people search on Google for Google than for Yahoo or Bing. Here’s the chart:

Here are the comScore “expanded” search data:

Meanwhile over on the other side of the globe Motorola has made a very public statement that whatever happens with Google in China, it will be working with Bing search on its Android handsets there. This comes from the press release out yesterday:

Motorola, Inc. today announced a global alliance with Microsoft Corp.  to deploy Bing services on Motorola devices powered by Android. This new offering, launching in China on smartphones in Q1, will provide consumers a choice when using search and map functions on their Android-based devices.

With this collaboration, consumers will enjoy a pre-loaded Bing bookmark on their mobile browser and an enhanced search widget with Bing integration. By enabling users to customize their devices and select their own Search provider, Motorola, with help from Microsoft, is expanding the capabilities and range of services currently offered in the marketplace and opening the doors for increased personalization.

So what’s going on here? There is both text and subtext (not so sub in this case).

Motorola isn’t pulling out of China and has bet the farm on Android. Thus it wants to ensure that it has a viable search option if Google exits the Chinese search market. But more interesting is the fact that Motorola is pushing back very hard on Google with this. Arguably the only thing missing in Motorola’s statement is an expletive.

Note carefully the use of the language “global alliance.” Motorola is putting Google on notice that it may use Bing wherever Motorola handsets are sold. And in the US Motorola remains, ever so slightly, the largest handset OEM with just over 22% of the market.

This is a response to what Motorola may see as a kind of betrayal or strong arm tactics by Google with the Nexus One and its general behavior around dictating the software and user experience on Android handsets. Motorola would never come out and publicly say this — indeed Motorola was present at the Nexus One launch — but the company was caught off guard by the Google-branded handset.

This follows AT&T choosing Yahoo as the default search provider for the Motorola Backflip in the US.

Android is supposed to be an open system and allow for these kinds of alternative choices. However Google largely sees Android as its own platform and a way to grow Google services and search share in mobile.

Bing has very smartly uncoupled itself from the struggling Windows Mobile platform and done mobile deals with Verizon, now Motorola and maybe Apple (rumored). There’s also the successful Bing iPhone App.

Google remains, far and away, the mobile search leader on smartphones around the world. That’s mostly been about the iPhone and increasingly about Android growth and penetration. However this new Motorola-Bing “alliance” is an effort to put Google on notice that it doesn’t “own” Android and that all Android devices won’t equally be Google search devices going forward.

It also single-handedly boosted the profile of all of AdMob’s competitors. As an almost direct response Apple, which was rumored to have been an unsuccessful bidder for AdMob, bought rival ad network Quattro a couple of months later for $275 million.

Here’s what I wrote immediately after the “GoogMob” acquisition was announced last year:

The fact of Google’s intended acquisition and the price tag ($750 million) help validate mobile (display) advertising in a number of ways. It’s the third largest acquisition price Google has paid, after YouTube and DoubleClick. It also shows how serious Google is about mobile advertising in general. According to an interview with Bloomberg, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, “Our mobile revenue is growing faster than our regular revenue . . . All of the signs indicate a great success in this space.”

And rather than being publicly upset by the acquisition, AdMob’s competitors and others in the mobile ad universe are all but rejoicing. I was sent a link to a “facts” page Google had put together in support of the deal . . .

Late last year the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) decided to take a closer look at the deal. Interestingly, AdMob’s immediate competitors (e.g., JumpTap, Millennial Media) weren’t complaining about the lack of competition or a negative impact on their market — quite the opposite, they saw it as a big boost for their businesses — but long-time Google critics argued in favor of blocking the GoogMob deal.

At the time of the acquisition Google’s own mobile display ad business was generally weak, which partly explains the transaction, while AdMob was one of the leading independent mobile ad networks. However now it appears that there may be some problems for the acquisition. According to Bloomberg, the FTC scrutiny may be a bit more than routine:

U.S. regulators are seeking sworn declarations from Google Inc. competitors and advertisers as part of their probe of the Internet company’s bid to buy AdMob Inc., indicating the government may challenge the deal, said people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The potential issue here — I’m not sure this is relevant to the immediate anti-trust analysis — is not that “mobile display advertising” itself would be harmed; there are at least 10 mobile ad networks with some scale in the market. The potential issue that arises is how the AdMob transaction may give Google a more complete and compelling mobile ad offering (search + display) than its main competitors: Yahoo, Microsoft and maybe Facebook — although Facebook will eventually emerge as a significant mobile ad platform in my opinion.

Yet those competitors have substantial mobile assets themselves. Yahoo operates one of the largest mobile ad networks in the market and offers mobile search advertising as well. Microsoft is also quite formidable, with mobile search reach soon to include Yahoo’s and a massive search and display ads deal with the largest US mobile carrier Verizon, which has 91 million subscribers. For its part Facebook already has 100 million daily mobile users, and half of the company’s 400 million users have accessed the site via mobile devices.

Approval or challenge will turn in part on how the market is “scoped” and defined. Opponents will probably try and argue that while mobile display itself remains competitive if such a deal goes through the larger competitive outlook for digital advertising generally is potentially adversely impacted because it gives Google even more reach and scale overall vs. competitors. But that’s a challenging argument to successfully make for some of the reasons I’ve already articulated.

Does Google buying AdMob remove a competitor from the market? Yes; Google and AdMob were display ad competitors in mobile, despite Google’s arguments to the contrary. But the mobile display segment remains vital and highly competitive nonetheless.

This is a strange case: the deal’s principal opponents would not appear to be AdMob’s immediate competitors, who benefit from the publicity around the transaction, but general Google critics who don’t want Mountain View to become any more powerful than it already is.

Hitwise shows Bing gaining share for the third straight month, and its 9.7% share of searches in February was up 4% over its January numbers.

For the month, Google dropped slightly and Yahoo remained static. That’s two consecutive months of slight drops for Google, according to the Hitwise numbers.

Greg Sterling recapped the comScore numbers earlier today, which showed Bing growing from 11.3% to 11.5% share of searches.

Googlers convicted in Italy. The biggest news in Europe in February without a doubt was the conviction of three Googlers in Italy. They were convicted to a suspended sentence after the company had allegedly failed to respond quickly to an uploaded YouTube video over a year ago which showed Italian youngsters harassing a young boy with Downs Syndrome.

Yandex sees income growth. Russian search giant Yandex reported that 2009 was a good year, with earnings up 14% on total revenue of 8.7 billion rubles (about 205 million euros). The number of advertisers grew 55%.

Bing reduces search data storage in Europe. Microsoft agreed to cooperate with the European Commission by reducing the amount time it retains Bing search data to six months. The European Commission had put a lot of pressure on the software giant to adjust the privacy policy to comply with EU regulations. Up to now Microsoft had been holding data for 18 months.

EU approves Microsoft/Yahoo search alliance. The EU, as well as the US, has given clearance to Microsoft and Yahoo to go on with their search alliance. The EU sees no restrictions, which means they can go ahead and implement the partnership immediately.

Anti-Trust claims against Google. Google faced several anti-trust claims this month. European antitrust regulators are looking into complaints from three European companies, Ciao.de, Foundem and French legal search site EJustice.fr that Google is unfairly lowering ranks of competitors’ results in searches. Two of these companies, Ciao.de and Foundem are closely connected to Microsoft.

EU Wants Google to keep Street View images no more than six months. The European Union urged Google to provide people advance notice when its Street View vehicles are roving European streets to take pictures and asked that these images be deleted after six months.

Microsoft beats Google in UK brand competition. Microsoft has replaced Google as the number one in the Superbrands annual business survey in the UK. Number one last year, Google now is in fifth place. Microsoft number one spot is explained by the release of Windows 7 this year.

Google.fr most visited site in France. Hitwise France calculated that Google.fr is the most visited site in France this month. Wit 10.4% of the visits it beats Facebook (6.8%), Windows Live Mail (3.2%) and YouTube (2.4%). Hitwise also found social networking is a more popular activity in France than in the UK, but online shopping less so.

Facebook dominates UK mobile web. UK mobile web users are more often using Facebook than Google when surfing on the mobile web. Facebook accounted for almost 40 percent of page impressions from U.K. mobile devices. Google “only” had a 29 percent share.

Yandex partners with AlterGeo. Russian search giant Yandex has announced a partnership with AlterGeo for improved location-based search. AlterGeo is a hybrid positioning startup. Yandex will use its technology to add location-based features to the company’s maps and toolbar web applications.

Spanish publishers want to see money from Google. Carlos Astiz, leader of the Spanish Publishers’ Association (AEPP) asked Google to pay “a proportional amount” of the income it obtains on-line by using material from various Spanish publications. The Spanish publishers haven’t put a price tag on their demand yet but in the Spanish press it is said that it could get up to the 1.2 million euros per year which the Germans demand from Google.

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.