Google Apps goes global

Posted by Sanjay Raman, Google Apps Product Manager

Our mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Note that twice in this eleven-word mission statement, we mention that this is a global effort, not just a problem we're solving only for English-speaking users in the U.S. That global focus is critical, because fully 65% of Internet users around the world speak a language other than English. In fact, the Internet's top 10 languages still only account for around 85% of users -- and the remaining 15% represents almost 200 million people.

As part of our broader effort to make Google accessible to more people in their native languages, we're announcing a number of updates for Google Apps, our customizable package of hosted communication and collaboration applications for businesses, schools, and other organizations. Several features and components previously available only to English users and administrators of Google Apps are now available in other languages, too. Here's a quick rundown of what's new for non-English speakers:

• Google Apps Premier Edition for companies and organizations needing an uptime guarantee for email service, 10 gigabytes of email storage per user, integration APIs and multi-lingual telephone support for critical issues (support experts are available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and Dutch). Also, for a limited time, you can try Premier Edition for free for 30 days.
  
• Google Apps Partner Edition for ISPs and portals that want to offer Gmail and other applications to their subscribers.
  
• Google Docs & Spreadsheets, which lets Google Apps users create and collaborate in real time, right from their browsers.
• The Start Page, a central place for Google Apps users to preview their inboxes, calendars and documents, access their organizations' essential content, and search the web.
• A more user-friendly control panel interface for Google Apps administrators.
• Mail migration tools for administrators who want to switch from a different email system (available with Premier and Education Editions only).

Not only are we adding these features to the languages Google Apps already supports; we're also rolling Google Apps out in six more languages. Here's the full list: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Turkish, Polish, Ukrainian, Czech, Russian, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Thai, Vietnamese, Arabic, Hebrew, Indonesian, Hungarian, UK English and US English.

Google Finance in Canada - for real

Posted by Dion Loy, Google Finance Engineer

Though it was noted a bit earlier, now we're really pleased to introduce Google Finance Canada, a localized version of Google Finance tailored specifically, as you might guess, for Canadian investors. Canadians are the second largest group of Google Finance users, and as a Canadian myself, I'm excited to see Canadian financial information presented in the familiar easy to use Google Finance format. This new edition includes:

• Top financial news from Canadian sources
• Search with a preference for Canadian companies
• Front-page high level economic data from the Bank of Canada
• Portfolios in Canadian currency (or the currency of your choice)
• Equity data from the Toronto Stock Exchange, TSX Venture Exchange, and Canadian mutual funds

In addition, stock quotes and charts for Canadian-listed companies are now available through the Google.com web search.

Now there's Google Finance for Canada-update

Posted by Dion Loy, Google Finance engineer

Oops. We hit the button too soon. Watch for news about Google Finance in Canada next Tuesday.