Future Product Releases for Google Apps

I stumbled across this blog this afternoon written by Michael Arrington at TechCrunch, and it spotlights cutting-edge upcoming plans at Google. Portal giant Google seems to a pioneering the movement to innovate Web 2.0 technologies within the enterprise. First off, Google is planning to launch Google Sites, which will be based collaboration tools featured on Jotspot, to allow businesses to create extranets, project management systems, as well as intranets.

Another announcement that I find particularly interesting is the expectation that Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs will soon work offline via Google Gears. This prediction has been heavily awaited, and I’m personally delighted to hear that it is currently in the works. Editing docs, presentations, and spreadsheets offline will soon be made possible, even if the document is being edited by another user on the online version. Changes will simply be made based on chronological order.

This is definitely a starting point for Google in the long road of constant updates in Enterprise 2.0 applications. Google is leading in collaboration efforts for now, but it will be interesting to see if other search engine giants like Yahoo and MSN will begin to mimic Google’s model.