Google Apps | Michael Hart

27Oct/09

City of Los Angeles Goes Google for $7.2 Million

It looks like those Going Google billboards are actually good for something, as the Los Angeles’ city council has just unanimously approved a Google Apps deal worth $7.2 million.

According to CNET, LA would become one of the largest government agencies, outside the District of Columbia, to make the switch to using hosted Google email and application services.

However, security concerns over storing information in the cloud did factor into the process and have yet to be 100% aleviated. Apparently the deal hinges around an agreement with Computer Sciences Corp, a contractor who would need to agree to pay a penalty should there be a security breach.

If the deal does go through it would be quite the coup for Google and their Going Google campaign. With both the US Government supporting the initiative and the city of Los Angeles joining the Google team, Google is building up an arsenal of large and impressive customers that should make it easier to attract more top dollar enterprise clients.

Image from Peter Kaminski on Flickr.

via City of Los Angeles Goes Google for $7.2 Million.

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Tagged as: City council, City of Los Angeles, Going Google, Gone, Google, Google Apps, Government agency, Los Angeles No Comments

3Aug/09

Google sets new target: Microsoft Office

We all know that Microsoft and Google have recently declared a cold war. It's true; Google's talking about a Chrome OS, Microsoft plans to make the next Office suite web based, then Microsoft's deal with Yahoo, and then... Google launches a campaign, intelligently called "Going Google," to make things only more interesting. The new campaign has 1 Microsoft product in cross hairs: Microsoft Office.

The campaign will feature a series of advertisements focused around why some 3,000 organizations are "Going Google" every day. The most interesting part of this campaign, however, is the billboards that will be displayed in 4 locations. They will be updated every day for a month describing why those 3,000 organizations have decided to switch to Google Apps.

Going Google - Day 1

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7Jul/09

Google drops ‘beta’ tag from Google Apps products (Gmail, Google Docs, etc.)

After 5 years of officially being in 'beta', the company finally seems to have dropped this tag (officially) from the products in their Google Apps suite. Now all of the companies that feared using the products (Google Mail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Google Talk) because of that one little word (which has become meaningless online; although for Google, it had more internal meaning than anything) may now enjoy the array of benefits that you can only find at Google.

Over 1.75 billion businesses are currently using Google Apps, according to Google. Also, Google has made it clear that they will "continue to innovate and improve upon the applications whether or not there's a small "beta" beneath the logo".

Read the original article at Google's Official Blog.

Of course, if you happened to enjoy seeing that little Beta tag, Google feels for you! They've included a labs tool entitled "Back to Beta" which is described as "Soothes the soul by putting the familiar beta sticker back on the Gmail logo." Be sure to enable that to make the transition on your own terms Heh.