“What happens when the world’s largest advertising business tries to sell productivity software on the side?” Microsoft asks users in its new Googlighting video. “Beware the Googlighting Stranger.” In response to what is undoubtedly increased pressure from Google’s cloud-based productivity suite, Microsoft has launched an all-out assault on Google and its cloud-based Google Apps product. According to Microsoft, Google’s productivity suite is a joke — a sad side p...

New details emerged recently in the battle between Microsoft, Google, and the U.S. government’s choice of default software. Here’s the rub: Google filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government in November 2010 alleging that the Department of Interior didn’t give its Google Apps Premier a fair shake before choosing to use Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite-Federal for all of its employees. That’s the tip of the iceberg, as the story gets a bit more complicated. See, in o...

Google has announced an update to its Google Mobile App for iOS that adds several new features and gives the application a shorter name. Henceforth to be known simply as Google Search, the new application adds Google Apps shortcuts, gesture support, and a new toolbar, that make hunting down that nugget of Internet gold even easier from your iPhone or iPod touch. The application is available for free in the App Store immediately. There is a video demoing some the new features after the break. (more…)

Google has stated that it is in the process of restoring data to accounts affected by a bug that wiped out email and chat history for some Gmail users. The number of user accounts wiped out by the bug has also been revised down again, this time from 0.08% of Gmail’s user base to 0.02%, or roughly 36,000 accounts. Google apologized for the mishap and the company insists that no data was lost as a result of the bug. Some user accounts have already been restored, the company said, and the remaining account...

Google confirmed on Sunday that a major bug has mysteriously deleted the entire contents from within roughly 150,000 Gmail accounts. Google initially reported the problem to be more widespread, but it revised its initial estimate down from 0.29% of total Gmail user accounts to 0.08%. According to user reports, email correspondence from within affected accounts was deleted earlier this past weekend. Affected users were initially unable to log in to their accounts, and then found that their data had been delet...

Forrester Research, “an independent technology and market research company,” surveyed 115 American and European companies, in an effort to create metrics of the office software landscape in enterprise. The results of the May 11th report are in, and the winner, by a landslide, is Microsoft Office 2007. Of the companies surveyed, 81% are currently using MS Office 2007 with with a lowly 4% using the free, online alternative Google Apps. Also of note: 78% of those running Microsoft Office 2007 indicat...

There are two sides to the proverbial “cloud coin” for small business owners. You can view cloud services, like Google Apps, as a time and money saver, allowing you to focus on your core business as opposed to IT needs. Or, you can view them as your worst nightmare, and shun the thought of having all your business data stored on third-party servers. For those whose views align more closely with the former perspective, Google wants to offer you greater flexibility and options for your cloud data. Y...

Technology companies are scrambling to jump on the application store bandwagon which has blossomed in the mobile arena and is now moving into the netbook and desktop computing realm. The latest app store venture may be originating from Google, which is rumored to be developing its own suite of business applications designed to compliment its Google Apps service. Google already offers a solutions marketplace with tools and add-ons for Google Apps, but this new business pursuit would expand upon this solutions...

For some, there is quite a bit of anxiety involved in switching from one email system to another. What will become of all your old emails from family/friends, your precious email attachments containing hundreds of hours of video featuring LOLCats, or the 400 copies of that one chain letter your partially senile grandfather forwards you every two weeks? Well, it looks like if you’re a Mac user ready to jump over to Google Apps, there is no need to panic, because the Big G is looking to alleviate this anx...

First announced at WES 2009, Google’s Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server has finally gone live after missing its promised July launch. Free to Google Apps Premier and Education Edition users, Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server allows Google Apps to integrate with BES while eliminating the need for Exchange. Here are the highlights:Messages sent to your Gmail inbox are pushed to your BlackBerry within 60 seconds. Emails read/deleted on your BlackBerry are marked as...

Up until this morning, we would have confidently put big money on Gmail maintaining its beta status for the next hundred years. Seriously… Has a more widely used and reliable service ever held onto its beta tag for so long (that was rhetorical)? To our shock and amazement however, Google has officially removed Gmail from beta status along with Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk. Both consumer and enterprise Google Apps categories are now out of beta in fact, and the latter is certainly the mot...

So the keynote didn’t deliver what most people were counting on (read: anything exciting for the average consumer) but nonetheless there was still quite a bit of neat stuff to see. After the keynote, a few meetings with RIM VPs and Managers and a few cans of Diet Pepsi in the press room, we made our way out onto the Solutions Showcase floor to take a look at what the best and brightest third parties had to offer. Here’s a quick recap of some of the stuff that excites us the most. (more…)