Google confirms Google Apps users will gain Google+ access
The recent release of Google+ has since launch seen Google Apps users screaming out for access. Now thanks to Google's president of enterprise, Dave Girouard, we know its coming.? — Girouard confirmed via Google+ that the Apps access was in the works:
Context & Ripple Effects
Google+ launched to consumer buzz and early-adopter dissection on Twitter, but its biggest locked-out constituency turned out to be paying one: Google Apps customers have been loudly demanding access since day one, and GigaOM argued just days ago that the network could find a real home in the workplace.
Dave Girouard, Google's president of enterprise, has now confirmed via a Google+ post that Apps access is in the works — answering the demand without giving a date. It extends a two-year pattern of folding more into Apps accounts, from the September 2010 test of full-featured Google Apps to the November 2010 expansion that added ten times more applications via the Apps Marketplace.
First-order effects
- Millions of Google Apps users at businesses and schools move from locked out to queued up — Girouard's confirmation means domain administrators can plan for Google+ rather than work around personal accounts.
- Google gets a clean answer to the loudest complaint about its new network within days of launch, announced on the platform itself by the executive who owns the enterprise relationship.
Second-order effects
- If Google+ lands in Apps domains, IT administrators become gatekeepers for a consumer-born social product inside corporate accounts, forcing decisions about sharing defaults and employee profiles that didn't exist when the network was consumer-only.
- The workplace angle GigaOM flagged puts Google+ in competition with incumbent collaboration and intranet tooling on turf where Google already has billing relationships through Apps.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the line between Google's consumer products and its paid Apps suite keeps dissolving — each consumer service eventually becomes an enterprise feature, and Apps evolves from email-and-docs bundle toward a full workspace.
- Enterprise social networking shifts from a category sold separately to a checkbox bundled into productivity suites, pressuring vendors whose collaboration tools are standalone purchases.
The trend: Google is systematically collapsing the wall between consumer services and paid Apps accounts, turning enterprise productivity suites into delivery vehicles for everything the company launches.