Google Gives NonProfit Organizations More Free Apps
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Perhaps in order to promote its committment to upholding its social responsibility, Google is extending premium tools of its online communication and collaboration tool, Google Apps to registered NonProfit organizations in the U.S. Google hopes to make more impact in the noncommercial arena with the free access to its tools and applications. These premium tools [...]
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Openads, a supplier of free  software used by Web sites to manage online ad campaigns, has  received $5 million in initial funding, bolstering it to  prepare for increasing competition globally with Google Inc.
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By Brandy A. Lee Deseret Morning News  A national nonprofit organization has unveiled a Web site that allows residents access to up-to-date local public-safety news and information.  All of the information is state-specific with the help of Google.
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(InfoWorld) - Google is pushing further into the communication and collaboration applications market with a major upgrade of Google Apps, a hosted suite for organizations of all sizes that analysts say could soon become a real competitor to Microsoft Office. On Thursday, Google will introduce a Google Apps version that, for a fee, offers guaranteed uptime, IT management tools, technical support, increased e-mail storage, andÂ integration with the Docs & SpreadsheetsÂ word processing and spreadsheet applications, as well as BlackBerry support for Gmail. With a cost $50 per user per year, Google Apps Premier Edition becomes the third and most sophisticated version of the suite, which was launched in August with the free Standard Edition and Education Edition versions. Like the original editions, Premier will have services like Gmail Web mail, Calendar shared scheduling, and Talk instant messaging. The suite was until today called Google Apps for Your Domain, because organizations offer these Google hosted services using their own Internet domain and branding. The Standard edition is used by over 100,000 small businesses, and the Education edition by hundreds of universities. SF Bay Pediatrics, which has two medical offices in the San Francisco area, implemented the Premier edition in January for most of its 25 employees, which until then had used individual e-mail accounts from providers like AOL. "We had no control over e-mail, and supporting it was a nightmare," said Andrew Johnson, the company's chief information officer. With Gmail, the performance and management e-mail problems disappeared, he said. While SF Bay Pediatrics employees use Microsoft's Office suite, they also use Docs & Spreadsheets to store their files on a central server and collaborate on them, Johnson said. "I don't see us going fully software-as-a-service yet, but maybe in the future," he said. Indeed, Google Apps represents a new, hosted approach for productivity suites, a market ruled by Office, which is mostly desktop software. Despite security and privacy concerns over storing applications and data on a third-party datacenter, organizations are increasingly adopting hosted models, because the vendor stores applications on its own datacenter and thus frees IT departments from spending time and money on hardware and software maintenance. Forrester ResearchÂ isn't telling enterprises to drop Office, but it is recommending that CIOs give Google Apps a serious look, in large measure because Office's price is high, said analyst Erica Driver. Today, Google Apps is a cheaper alternative to the core Office applications, but eventually it could be a replacement option, as Google grows its capabilities and CIOs get more comfortable with software-as-a-service, she said. "Microsoft has a chance to respond, but this changes the game," Driver said. Microsoft says Office has steadily gained hosted service components for years, and it believes this combination with the core PC software is the right approach. Beyond native Office services,Â Office Live, with about 250,000 subscribers, offers a set of hosted services for small businesses, like Web site creation and hosting, while Office Online, with 70 million monthly unique users, offers Office online resources. "We're very committed to both [hosted] services and [PC] software," said Kirk Gregersen, director with Microsoft's Office team. On the issue of Office's price, Gregersen pointed out that Office customers have had less expensive alternatives, even free ones, for years, but that when deciding to buy Office, they have traditionally taken other factors into account beyond cost. Still, some Office users, like Prudential Preferred Properties in Chicago, feel the price sting, which for this real estate firm in Chicago is between $350 and $400 per license. "We have instances in which the Office license was more expensive than the PC it's on," said Camden Daily, Prudential's technology director. Google Apps found its way into Prudential, which has 450 employees, as the salvation for an outsourced e-mail service that constantly malfunctioned. Prudential has been using the free Standard version but Daily said that the Gmail service alone is worth the price of the Premier edition, which the company will adopt. "Everything on top of that is just a bonus," he said. Prudential will evaluate carefully how Docs & Spreadsheets compares with Excel and Word. Google acknowledges that Google Apps doesn't match the broad set of features currently in Office, which has an installed base of about 450 million users. Google Apps needs a presentation application like Office's PowerPoint, and to boost its support for offline work beyond its basic capabilities to import and export files from Docs & Spreadsheets, analysts say. Still, Microsoft must better articulate the value of Office Live, which lacks hosted versions of core Office applications like Word and Excel, said analyst Rebecca Wettemann of Nucleus Research. With the improvements in Internet connectivity, it's natural for organizations to evaluate hosted suites like Google Apps as alternatives to packaged software like Office, she said. In a recent survey, Nucleus found that 51 percent of organizations use some on-demand applications for things like CRM (customer relationship management), project management, content management, e-commerce, and collaboration, Wettemann said. Those that sign up for Google's Premier edition will get 10GB of e-mail storage per user, compared to 2GB in the Standard edition, a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee and phone support for IT administrators. It also includes APIs (application programming interfaces) to integrate the suite with business applications and data. The Standard and Education editions are also getting enhanced with the Docs & Spreadsheets integration and the BlackBerry support for Gmail. "This is a very big step forward for Google Apps," said Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager of Google's enterprise unit. The company plans to add several more applications to the suite before the year is out, and theÂ JotSpot wiki serviceÂ is a likely candidate, he said. Google believes the Premier edition can be a good complement to Office, and it sees a big opportunity in organizations that haven't been able to justify the cost of offering e-mail to some employees, particularly in retail and manufacturing, he said. Google also plans to create an ecosystem of partners and developers around Google Apps. Â
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Google is hosting potentially copyrighted videos, including recent full-length movies and concerts as well as broadcast and cable TV programs on Google Video, a nonprofit group is charging.
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Google is beta testing a new type of ad with a select number of its clients that allows them to take advantage of the rise in popularity of the widget.
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After losing its Facebook bid to Microsoft, Google will on Thursday introduce OpenSocial, development tools for numerous sites.
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Google Inc. released free software yesterday that lets people simultaneously search the Web and their personal computers for information, a move analysts described as a potential blow to rivals Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. in the race to woo more searchers.
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Google is introducing an online business software package designed to make it easier for people in the same organization to share documents and information.
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Google on Monday added details of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) environmental projects to its popular global online mapping service.
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Unlike most charities, GoogleÂs new philanthropy will be for-profit, greatly increasing its range and flexibility.
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Google will add a presentation application to Google Apps lineup by year-end.
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Free applications can search through more than 200 different types of files.
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Google Inc. on Friday will join the crowded field of services registering Web site addresses in a move aimed at encouraging more usage of the online search leader's free software products.
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A nonprofit group charges that Google hosts potentially copyrighted videos on Google Video.
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Google is investing time and energy into promoting an open-source character recognition platform, which likely will be used in Google's library scanning project.
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United Way and Orbitz's Cheaptickets.com unit have joined forces to create a Web site to help people plan vacations in places where they can do volunteer work for charities.