In cloud computing their is one real dominate company in the market. That dominate company is Google. Google started out as a search company but today they are the masters of the cloud and offer many great cloud applications. They are in social media,email and even word processing.
A lot of this technology Google has not developed. What they have done is purchase companies which have developed great technology and re-branded it as their own.
Google has many great offerings as follows:
1. Gmail
Gmail is Google’s killer application. This is their email client which can be accessed from anywhere. The
nice thing about gmail is it support’s many different platforms. Gmail is available on a traditional pc as well
as Windows Mobile, The IPhone, The Blackberry and the Android.
What helps with Gmail is that you can sync your data from the cloud with your mobile device and your
pc using a large variety of free software which Google provides.
This is all available for free for the basc email which is the most that people need. Gmail also allows you
to use free pop3/smtp and imap. All for no charge.
2. Google Docs
Google now has a word processor and a spreadsheet available for free all online. If you are on a netbook
this is a great way to access basic features. Google docs now accesses Office 2007 files with full
compatibility.
3. Picasa Online
Picasa is Google’s online photo storage on the cloud. I use it for storing all my photo’s on the Internet. In my opinion it is the best Photo storage application on the web. Picasa interfaces with desktop client’s as well as mobile phone client’s.
4. Google Voice
A number of years ago Google bought a voice application called Grand Central. The nice thing with Google Voice is it stores your voice mail messages in the cloud. It allows people to contact you using one phone number and it is fully portable. Unfortunately all the features are not available yet in Canada.
5. Blogger
Blogger is Google’s blog platform. I used it before I moved to a wordpress site. It is easy to use and very popular.
6. You Tube
You Tube is Google’s cloud based video sharing/storage application. I personally find YouTube easy to use and easy to search. Google is very popular especially with the younger crowd. My son watches more You Tube then tv these days. He is 17 and at that age. I can even watch You Tube on my IPhone.
7. Google Wave
It is interesting to see how this pans out. Google Wave will be Google’s biggest social media application. Where Google Wave pans out is to be seen since it is still in Beta.
These are just the tip of the iceberg. Google is king in the cloud application game. In the next year Google will eventually expand it’s cloud application base to even possibly include Twitter.
A really good source of information for finding about Google in the cloud is the Google’s Blog
