The Inquisitr » google apps

Google’s secret to taking over the world

Steven Hodson — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:36:44 +0000

There is no denying the fact that Google is a big believer in cloud computing and web based software. In fact much of their future growth is built on the principal of getting as many people as possible using their software whether it be Google search, Gmail or their Google Docs suite of office type programs. This of course is putting them in direct competition with Microsoft which means it has had to find different ways to get their software in the hands of consumers.

One of the principal ways that they have done this is to use the same tactic that Apple and Microsoft have been using for years – hit the colleges and universities. The first prong of their attach started over two years ago with them making the education providers an offer they couldn’t really refuse in a climate of growing IT costs. Google would provide them unlimited hosted email and other applications all of which would be branded by the institution for the price of – free.

With things like their browser, a possible operating system, and the in development Google Wave being added to this package Google has a chance to become an ingrained part of the student’s lives as they move from school to the business world. Right now Google is already providing services to some 4 million students and is providing serious competition to Microsoft for access to 17 million students on the more than 4,000 campuses in the US.

The campus push is part of Google’s broader bid to breed a generation of workers comfortable with the concept of "cloud" computing, and particularly Google’s version of it, where Google provides free web-based services in exchange for advertising dollars. "We want to build relationships with these users for life," said Jeff Keltner, Google’s business development manager for the program.

Source: Business Insider – Google’s 17 Million Built-in Chrome OS Users (GOOG)

The ability to offer colleges and universities a way to save millions of dollars a year in IT costs is making Google an almost irresistible force for these institutions while at the same time creating a constantly refreshing generation of Google users.

Let’s all get a woodie over removing a beta label

Steven Hodson — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:08:40 +0000

While the rest of the real world is sucking back all the Michael Jackson Memorial news it can those of us in the tech world are falling to our knees to report on how Google has removed the Beta tag from Google Apps and Gmail. When I fired up FeedDemon this morning to get started on my day I was inundated with what seemed like a flood of news from all the major tech blogs about this blogosphere shaking news.

Just to give you an idea of the coverage here’s a list of blogs that I follow who wrote about this monumental event

After five years, Gmail is ‘beta’ no more! – The Raw Feed
Wait. “Gmail Beta” Isn’t a Registered Trademark? – Digital Daily
Gmail and other Google Apps ‘Out of Beta’ – TheNextWeb.com
Google finally rips the beta label off Gmail and other Google Apps – VentureBeat
Google Apps Leaves the Beta Label Behind – GigaOM
Google Finally Peels The Beta Label Off Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and GTalk – TechCrunch

That it took a company like Google the better part of five years for Gmail and two years or so for Google Apps to figure out that corporate IT had a problem using applications marked beta across their networks is a tad on the ridiculous side. This was nothing more than a marketing and PR move as nothing has changed with any of these beta stripped applications that makes them anymore of a finished product than they were before.

While the beta labeling of their software may have provided them with some legal protection they are now acknowledging that these are indeed finished and complete software applications. So it will be interesting to see what happens the next time Google Apps or GMail suffers a massive outage or data loss.

I will admit though as pointless as this type of news is it is fun to watch how everyone literally falls over themselves to get those posts out there whenever Google does anything.

image courtesy of WorldGaming

Google gives Microsoft another jab and release Google Apps plug-in for Outlook

Steven Hodson — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:40:00 +0000

Well this should just get the Google fans all a ga-ga. This morning the web search giant and wannabe threat to Microsoft’s enterprise desktop dominance announced that it was releasing Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook (and they make fun of Microsoft naming of applications). This plug-in will let you use Microsoft Outlook with the Premier and Education editions of Google Apps.

Some of the key features are

Email, calendar, and contacts synchronization. For email, the plug-in uses the offline Gmail protocol, which is much faster than IMAP or other methods.

Free/Busy lookup and Global Address List functionality, which makes it easy to schedule meetings with your colleagues, regardless of whether they use Outlook’s calendar or Google Calendar.

A simple, two-click data migration tool which allows employees to easily copy existing data from Exchange or Outlook into Google Apps.

Here’s a 3 minute video to give you an idea of how it works

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And of course the typical ~~gushing~~ glowing third party glowing report of how much they like this new offering from Google. In this cae it a couple of IT execs from Genentech and Avago (prepare spin shields)

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Google Introduces App Status Dashboard to Deal with Downtime

JR — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:50:42 +0000

Google has unveiled a new Apps Status Dashboard following this week’s Gmail outage. The new utility lets you monitor the service status of various Google services, including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Google Docs.

Google Apps Status Dashboard

The new Google Apps Status Dashboard, announced in a blog posting late Wednesday afternoon, is touted as being a step toward greater transparency within Google’s services. Representatives directly tied its release to Tuesday’s Gmail outage, citing the need for better communication.

“The Google Apps Status Dashboard represents an additional layer of transparency that we believe will be particularly useful for our business users, and it’s also relevant to users of our consumer products,” writes Tessa Prescott, a member of the Google Apps sales team.

The Google Apps Status Dashboard also provides additional tools for paying Google Apps customers to monitor their services’ functionalities.

Google has yet to release any type of explanation for Tuesday’s Gmail outage, though representatives did issue an apology for the inconvenience. The outage was Gmail’s sixth period of extended downtime in the past eight months.

Google

Central Desktop Gets Social Integration

JR — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:07:49 +0000

Collaboration platform Central Desktop is launching a new social integration tool today. The company will announce its so-called Customer Network this morning with hopes of increasing engagement for its 200,000+ users.

The new Customer Network will link the platform to sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Delicious, and Flickr. Users will be able to search and share within any of those services and will also be able to access new discussion threads and user forums from the program.

Central Desktop, a competitor with such tools as Google Apps and Microsoft Sharepoint, is geared toward small- and mid-sized businesses. It allows employees to interact and share data from multiple locations.

The company has been around since 2005. It is based in Los Angeles.

Central Desktop

Gmail Suffers 15-Hour Partial Fail

JR — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:17:56 +0000

Gmail is recovering from a fairly long-lasting partial fail.

Many users were locked out of their accounts for almost 15 full hours Wednesday night into early Thursday morning. InfoWorld first picked up on the story, finding the discussion forums full of frustrated users — many of them, evidently, paying Google Apps subscribers who rely on Gmail for their corporate or educational mail access.

“For a company with your reputation, I’m absolutely shocked at the apparent absence of customer service,” one user wrote.

To Google’s credit, an advisor did post regular updates to that forum. The company also set up a second, read-only announcement board with occasional updates. The first posting came at 1:06 p.m. Wednesday:

“The Gmail Team is currently aware of a subset of users being affected by the 502 error on login. Our engineers are actively investigating the issue, and we will provide updates as soon as we have them. We appreciate your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

After two more postings indicating progress, the final message came at 3:43 a.m. Thursday:

“Users who were temporarily affected by this problem should now be able to access their account. Thanks for your patience while we worked to resolve this issue.”

Comments in the forums indicate a similar issue arose a couple of weeks ago, in mid-July.

It’s not clear how many users were affected in either instance.

Central Desktop Ups the Ante on Web Collaboration

JR — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:54:50 +0000

Central Desktop is boosting its Web 2.0 collaboration platform with a handful of new features announced today.

The utility — a clear competitor to offerings such as Microsoft SharePoint and Google Apps — adds a database API, time tracking options, and an integrated help desk feature into its summer release. Existing features such as e-mail, instant messaging, and interactive calendar functions remain constant from previous versions.

“We do feel that a lot of customers really want a lot more functionality within a single app,” CEO Isaac Garcia told The Inquisitr.

Central Desktop is trying to carve its niche by focusing on the small- to mid-sized business markets — the area Garcia believes SharePoint is leaving behind as it targets larger enterprises.

“I don’t think we’ll move nearly as high enterprise as they are. We see lots of opportunity in that mid-market area,” he explained.

Central Desktop first launched in 2005 and is headquartered just outside of Los Angeles.

Our vote: Central Desktop offers a strong alternative to the big players in this field. As the relative underdog in the competitive landscape, the company has to fight to pull customers from the marquee names — and its efforts are apparent. The database API strikes us as the most significant of the new version’s additions, with its ability to build custom searchable fields and also to integrate and dynamically link to third-party data. For smaller businesses not connected to a massive corporation, Central Desktop is an option well worth investigating.

Google Grabs New Australian Agreement

JR — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:52:24 +0000

Google is gaining new ground in Australia.

The search engine has signed an agreement with Netregistry and Devnet to bring a specially tailored version of Google Apps to the country. The customized suite will be marketed as a complete communication solution for businesses, boasting features such as local domain integration, email, calendar functions, and corporate instant messaging.

“The agreement … allows businesses without an existing internet domain to acquire an Australian domain (.com.au) when they sign up to Google Apps,” explains Google Director of Sales for Asia Pacific and Latin America Paul Slakey. “We’ve been thrilled with local businesses’ response.”

“Businesses all over Australia will have access to a range of applications that are powerful, simple to use, and deliver real productivity gains,” added Devnet CEO Craig Deveson. “Google has delivered a clearly differentiated product and we are confident business will get on board.”

The companies says their agreement marks the first time the Google Apps suite has been used in such a way in Australia.