Google is set to make an interesting announcement today to bring its Google Apps platform into the enterprise. According to our ex-colleague and good friend Elinor Abreu at Cnet, Google will be introducing today Google Apps Team Edition, "a free service that lets people within the
same e-mail domain collaborate easily with Google Apps, a package that
includes Docs, Calendar, Talk, and Start Page".

The idea is to get more co-workers using collaborative software on projects, the kinds of things creative netizens are using for free to dress up their web sites, blogs and promote greater participation among friends and like-minded souls. As Abreu rightly points out, the biggest drawback to using free web-based apps in an enterprise environment is the security risk. Google claims to have sorted this all out by giving the administrator full control over how the employees employees use these applications.

No word yet on whether they’ve worked out the incompatibility issues between so many of these apps and the Mac OS. Still, we’re hoping this move by Google will prove inspiring, getting companies to collaborate on some interesting applications of their own.

– Bernhard