UVU Summer University Google Blog

Google Apps

A brief history http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/google-apps-grows-up.html

While Google Apps might not be considered an application in and of itself, it is perhaps one of my favorite offerings from Google. Google Apps allows you to brand many of the Google applications with your own domain name, logo and color scheme. From what I have been able to gather, Google offers this service in three flavors: Standard Edition (for families, clubs and community groups), Premier Edition (for businesses) and Education Edition (for educational institutions).

Google Docs

Official Website: http://docs.google.com/
Official Blog: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/

After Search and Gmail, Google Docs is the Google tool that I use the most. I use Google Docs in a variety of different ways: a collaborative tool, a thumb drive, a budgeting tool, and an email attachment viewer to name a few.

Google Docs is not as full featured as a desktop Word Processing application or spreadsheet application, but the average user will probablly not miss many of the features that are lacking. As a basic word processing or spreadsheet application, Google Docs performs very well.

The two major advantages the Google Docs offers me are collaboration and portablility. I often work on different computers and it is helpful for me to know that I am always working on the most recent version of a file so long as I am working through Google Docs. This is also very helpful when working on a team. We know that we are always looking at the same document.