Google may have landed a contract with General Motors

"Google throws them up against the wall to see if they stick."--Rizzo's rant seemed to be targeted at Google's policy of dropping support for older versions of browsers once a new version comes out. It presents a litany of sins against business by Microsoft, including Microsoft's ditching a suite of business services and replacing them with Rizzo's very own Office 365.

If you're looking for a reason for Microsoft's sudden ratcheting up of the rhetoric against Google, look no further than reports today that Google may have landed a contract with General Motors to provide the auto giant with online collaboration software.
"Assuming Google wins final approval," the Wall Street Journal reported, "the deal could be a watershed moment in Google's quest to challenge Microsoft Corp.'s dominance in application software, marking the largest deal since the Internet company began selling what it calls Google Apps in 2007."

The Journal reported.--Google Apps -- including such services as Google Docs and Gmail -- has been ramping up its competition to Microsoft in that sphere, though so far it's succeeded mainly in winning over small-to-medium sized businesses. According to a report published Friday by The Wall Street Journal, Google has entered an agreement with General Motors Corp. to provide its cloud-based Google Apps suite to more than 100,000 of the automaker's employees.
If the deal goes through, Google's e-mail and collaboration suite would replace an in-house version of IBM's Lotus Notes software. However, Google must meet certain requirements before GM ultimately decides to deploy Google Apps, the WSJ report said.

GM has neither confirmed nor denied that it is considering Google Apps. GM has not made a decision to deploy Google Apps," a company spokesperson said in an e-mail.--If GM were to deploy Google Apps enterprisewide, it would be a major coup for Google and a blow to Microsoft, which is trying to gain traction with its own cloud offering, Office 365, launched earlier this year. Both Google and Microsoft have competed heatedly for cloud messaging and collaboration wins.--Google claims over 4 million Google Apps customers, but the company does not break out how many run the fee-based offering versus the free service. Google recently received an endorsement from Gartner, which released a report stating that Google Apps is now suitable for enterprise deployment.