New app lets users check email with Outlook or Gmail
Google is looking to best Microsoft on many levels. Google already rules the search market leaving Microsoft scrambling to find ways to compete. However, on other fronts, it is Google scrambling to compete with Microsoft.
One of the fronts that Google finds it hard to compete against Microsoft on is in office productivity. By far the most popular productivity suite is Microsoft Office. Google offers a full spectrum of online offerings that are free or cost much less than Microsoft's software, but the search giant is still struggling to get users to make the change from Microsoft software to its online only applications.
This year Google has been working to remove some of the barriers that are preventing many enterprise users from using Google applications like Gmail. In January, Google announced offline Gmail -- the lack of offline availability was one of the major reasons many users cited for not using Gmail instead of Outlook from Microsoft.
Google has announced this week that it has removed another barrier that prevents some users from taking advantage of Google emails service. Some users like the Gmail interface, others want to use Outlook to get email.
Google has announced a new feature called Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook that lets users continue using Outlook to manage their email and other functions like calendars and still take advantage of Google's cloud-based email service.
The application lets Outlook users connect to Google Apps for business email, contacts, and calendar on their computers and when away from the office the same data can be accessed via the Google web interface.
Key features of the new offering include email, calendar, and contacts synchronization. The plug-in uses the Gmail offline protocol, which Google says is much faster than other methods like IMAP. A data migration tool is also built in that allows users to migrate their data form Exchange or Outlook into Google Apps with two clicks. Users can also schedule meetings with coworkers using Outlook Calendar or Google Calendar.
