Google Ad Campaign Champions Google Apps

That would be Google Apps, Google claims, in a comparison scenario that only prospective Google customers, journalists and analysts have been accorded to this point.

It's a safe bet the billboard campaign won't include any anecdotes about the myriad outages Google Apps has faced since its launch a few years ago. Like the claims about Google having zero marketing or advertising support behind Google Apps, those outages have served as additional cannon fodder for detractors to Google and the cloud overall.

Users can learn more about the campaign at Google's new Apps At Work Website. There Google will underscore the message of how 3,000 businesses every day are signing up to choose the infrastructure-less approach of cloud computing over the server and maintenance requirements associated with traditional software packages from Microsoft, IBM and other collaboration software providers.

To date, that's more than 1.75 million businesses, schools and various organizations, including Motorola, Serena Software, Genetech, University of Notre Dame, the Mercy Corps, Valeo, Capgemini and plenty of others.

Why the marketing campaign now? Google launched Google Apps Premier Edition, its paid version of Google Apps in February 2007. As the numbers attest, the company has seen a steady adoption of companies migrating to Google Apps from Microsoft Office and Exchange server or Lotus Notes and Domino server.

However, Google realizes it has barely scratched the surface penetrating Microsoft's voluminous market share of more than 90 percent of Office and Exchange software installations in the world.

Moreover, Microsoft this year is also moving into the cloud with Office Web, which is designed to keep cloud-curious customers from switching to Google Apps. IBM, meanwhile, offers IBM Lotus Live as its SAAS (software-as-a-service) option.

Google's first enterprise ad campaign shows the company is becoming more aggressive in tackling Microsoft and IBM in the office.