Google Apps

Google Apps

A suite of online applications from Google that includes mail, calendar, word processing, spreadsheet and presentations. The free Standard Edition also features a newsreader and mail with a gmail.com address.

The paid Premier Edition eliminates the newsreader but adds video sharing and Web site authoring. Designed to present a business face to users, Premier supports the customer's domain. Rather than a Google MyName@gmail.com mail account, e-mail is MyName@MyCompany.com, and the customer's logo is displayed on the page. In addition, the Premier Edition guarantees 99.9% uptime for e-mail and offers technical phone support. See Google Docs.

A Web-Based Office Suite
In 2007, Google combined its Google Docs business suite with its Gmail and calendaring into free and paid products. By offering a paid suite of primary business applications with support, Google threw its hat squarely into the office software arena. The significant difference is that Google Apps is Web based, whereas software suites such as Microsoft Office and WordPerfect Office are installed locally in users' machines. Users routinely switch back and forth between Office and Google Apps depending on their requirements and locations. See Microsoft Office, WordPerfect Office, Lotus SmartSuite, StarOffice and OpenOffice.org.