This is a rejected article from Web Worker Daily. I was late to the punch since Judi Sohn already posted an excellent overview of the service first thing yesterday. And the powers that be (quite correctly) didn't feel that there was enough uniqueness here to make it worth another post. Because my schedule is extremely crazy lately I took the leftovers, threw them in the formatting microwave, and present them here as a poor excuse for nutritious brain food. Bon appetit.

Yesterday Google announced Google Apps Premier Edition, a priced bundle of its productivity applications. However, if you read any coverage of the ‘event’ you’d think it was the tech equivalent of driving to Redmond and egging Microsoft’s house. Yes, Google has denied for years that it was going to compete directly with Office and yesterday did represent an about face. But are the sensationalistic and combative headlines just an easy angle for an otherwise boring story? Is this just marketing sizzle? Where’s the beef?

As announced, the Google Apps Premier Edition is a collection of email, instant messaging, calendar, word processing and spreadsheet functionality; in other words the bundle doesn’t include any new features that weren’t previously available. For the $50 per-user-per-year price tag there are a few bones thrown in: migration tools are nice and the bump from 2GB to 10GB for email is welcome. Also included is round the clock tech support and 99.9% email uptime. But when was the last time you looked at a Google application’s help file? And if your email was only available 98% instead of 99.9% of the time would you notice? Further, support for email gateway seems very much like what is already possible with some setting changes in the free version of Google Mail. I’m also disappointed by the biggest selling point: somehow “single sign-on”, something fundamental to any company with multiple web facing apps, has become a ‘business level’ feature.

Google has spoiled us. First with search, then email, maps, etc. the Mountain View based company has released a number of applications that have redefined the product category. They repeatedly reset the expectations of an online application’s usefulness. But yesterday’s announcement of Premier seems more like a marketing announcement than a productivity one. The merits of which, unfortunately and at this time, seem to benefit web workers little. The suite is aimed at small business comfortable with online applications - if that doesn’t describe most readers here I’m not sure what does.

What am I missing?