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Salesforce.com Feb. 1 acquired project management software maker Manymoon, which shot to fame courtesy of its high profile on the Google Apps Marketplace in 2010.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
Google’s Apps Marketplace launched in March 2009 as an online store to help smaller Web-based software companies sell enterprises business applications that integrate with Google Apps.
The platform seemed destined to challenge Salesforce.com’s own AppExchange platform for enterprise customers, but now Salesforce.com is buying companies Google has taken under its wing via its Marketplace.
Manymoon integrates with Google Apps to let knowledge workers do such things as attach Google Docs to tasks, projects and events; add project information to shared Google Calendars; and implement a gadget for collaborative task management in Google Sites.
The result is that businesses will save thousands of dollars on “expensive and cumbersome project software” they would ordinarily buy and install to trigger project collaboration.
Manymoon said more than 50,000 business are using its software via the Google Apps Marketplace, LinkedIn and the Google Chrome Web Store, platforms with which Manymoon will continue to work.
“We’re looking forward to even more growth in 2011, and are thrilled to now be part of salesforce.com, the leader in enterprise cloud computing, to continue to deliver an amazing social productivity application for everyone to use,” Manymoon said in a statement.
Manymoon said its team will remain intact and will operate as a separate business within Salesforce.com. Moreover, the free Manymoon Standard suite will continue to be available for current and new customers, while premium features, subscriptions and price points will stay the same.
What will change is the scale with which Manymoon can grow on the back of the prodigious cloud computing platform Salesforce.com has constructed over the past 12 years.
Google Developer Advocate Don Dodge congratulated Manymoon in a blog post, noting how Manymoon came to be one of the most popular apps on the Google Apps Marketplace. Now Manymoon is selling its applications for Google rival Salesforce.com.
“We are thrilled to see Salesforce.com’s intentions to invest in growing Manymoon on the Google Apps Marketplace, giving Salesforce a new way to work with Google Apps,” Dodge wrote.
Google and Salesforce.com are still rivals. What happens when Salesforce.com decides to buy a Google partner and rips its software from the Markeplace?
Google Apps Marketplace won’t be seen as a cloud enabler so much as an incubator for Salesforce.com to grow bigger in the enterprise, an area where Google is trying to expand.
These are things technology officers such as CIOs must consider when weighing Google Apps versus other solutions in the future.
Then again, what helps Salesforce.com hurts the on-premises software giants such as Microsoft, SAP and Oracle. There is some symbiosis to Google providing a support vehicle for companies Salesforce.com can buy.
Insightly, SlideRocket, Aviary, Tungle, Gist, Smartsheet, and other players are all enjoying the increased platform the Google Apps Marketplace affords them. Where will they land? The guessing carousel goes round and round.