News

Google Apps Get a Facelift

• By Jeffrey Schwartz
• November 18, 2010

Google said today it is bringing its various cloud productivity apps offering under the Google Apps branding infrastructure.

The company said it is classifying its Google Apps under four key brands: the free Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Google Apps for Government and Google Apps for Education.

Focused on small organizations, users of the free apps can utilize them in groups of up to 50 individuals. Google Apps for Business, still priced at $50 per user per year, comes with 25 Gigabytes of e-mail capacity per individual, comes with added security support and telephone support.

Google Apps for Government complies with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and is intended for local, state and federal agencies. Google Apps for Education is similar to Google Apps for Business but is offered free of charge to schools, universities and qualified non-profit organizations, Google said.

Also looking to extend its Google Apps brand, the company said its portfolio of apps, such as Alerts, Blogger, Feedburner, Earth, News, Picasa, Voice and Wave, are among 60 that the company is bringing under the Google Apps umbrella.

"Existing customers can transition at their own pace over the next couple months to the new infrastructure supporting these applications from the administrative control panel," the company said in the Google Enterprise Blog.