Google Hopes App Users Want to Team Up

The new Team Edition of Google Apps lets users work on the same documents and calendars at the same time.

Google is ratcheting up its competition with Microsoft for the online application market by introducing new collaboration features to Google Apps. The new Team Edition of Google Apps enables users to work on the same document or calendar at the same time—even from a mobile phone—without having to sort out who’s working on what, or figure out what’s changed in complicated file attachments.

Google Apps Team Edition will be available for free; Google is targeting traditional businesses, as well as offering a special edition geared towards students.

According to Google, more than 500,000 businesses have signed up to use Google Apps since their introduction about a year ago; some businesses pay $50 per user to access enhanced versions of the applications, but so far the business does not represent a significant addition to Google’s overall revenue.

Announcement of Google Apps Team Edition comes on the heels of an Update to Google Spreadsheet that enables users to create simple forms in a Google Docs spreadsheet, and send a link to the form out to anyone with an email address. The new feature makes it simple for Google Docs users to ask a simple series of questions and automatically tabulate the answers, without all the complications of sharing an online spreadsheet document.