One of the virtues of using Google’s products are the connections you get to the search giant’s other applications. For example, I love that my Gmail account can connect to iGoogle, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, and other products in the Google family, making the transition between applications seamless and easy. Google is now planning to bring this interconnectivity to Google Apps.
Google says 9 of the top 20 requests from Apps customers are for their accounts to work with more services from Google. Currently, Apps works with Gmail, Docs, Chat, Groups, Video and Calendar. Later this year, Google will roll out functionality with Apps for Picasa, Google Reader, AdWords, News, Finance, and other products. Users won’t need to switch between their personal and work account to interact with these products from within the Apps interface.
Google says that all “Standard, Premier and Education Edition customers will be moved to the new infrastructure that enables this change in the fall, and customers who would like more control over the timing of this change will be able to make the switch voluntarily during the summer.”
This is a huge bonus for the functionality of Google Apps considering the popularity of the applications that it will be integrating. It certainly ups the ante in the ongoing Microsoft-Google productivity suite wars.