Google will be moving into the business software market as announced yesterday. But is this really a "move"?

Sure it is -- Google has released an actual web-based platform for some of its most popular products. Instead of re-packaging products like Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Talk, the company said that its web-based platform would actually host all of these activities for smaller businesses (at first), expanding into larger businesses and corporate environments soon.

Google appears to be going after a "managed hosting" approach to take many of its products beyond the consumer space and into the corporate space. "Google Apps", as the new business platform is being called, is meant to run email, instant messaging, calendaring and other applications for domain names (e.g., www.smallbusinessname.com) in an effort to offload all processing and data warehousing from local storage and servers to Google's expansive global infrastructure. In a sense, this furthers a concept that former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy has championed for over a decade -- "the network is the computer." Score: McNealy: 1 and Google: 1.

This is probably the most visible and blatant announcement with a hedgemonious overtone towards Microsoft by Google yet. Although it's hard to say if Google's set of apps have the features that Microsoft Office users require (Gmail is probably ready, but I'm not sure about the others), that's not holding the search leader back at all.

With Google able to supply a complete platform over the web -- meaning no installed software and patches -- this approach, when grown over time and with new product released in an instant -- may be a huge hit. Just ask Salesforce.com.