Not only has it added key business applications -- a word processor and spreadsheet -- to Google Apps, but the company is offering the kind of support corporate IT would expect: IT management tools, technical support, and service level agreements for uptime.

Even all that, however, does not tell the entire story or give the scope of Google's plans.

In its press announcement and in an interview with a Google executive, Dave Giroud, vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Unit, Google made it clear that it will offer APIs for business integration, thus creating a business platform not unlike what Salesforce.com offers with AppExchange.

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If that happens it could become the center of an application ecosystem that leaves traditional desktop applications in the dust.