Google and Microsoft seem to be facing off against each other with increasing degrees of fierceness as of late; Microsoft launched Bing a while ago to compete against the search giant, and have recently partnered with Yahoo! to do so. Google has, since then, announced their operating system, dubbed "Chrome OS", as another competitor against Microsoft"s Windows. Now, however, as TechCrunch is reporting, Google has fired another round... in the form of an advertising campaign, called "Going Google."
The aim of this campaign is to show companies of the benefits that switching to Google"s Apps can bring; they"ve introduced a website dedicated to this here, displaying the ways that businesses can be helped out. As TechCrunch states, the advertising campaign has set a rather obvious target of Microsoft Office. They"ll be showing the reasons as to, "how and why some 3,000 organizations are signing up to use Google apps each day," although they aren"t stopping there. Google are going to have billboards on four major highways in the United States, which will have a new message about Google Apps each day, for a month. As a note, Google says that the materials used for said billboards will all be recycled and environmentally friendly.
Google"s taking their message online, obviously, as well; they"ve set up a Twitter account for the campaign, which will post stories about companies that have "Gone Google." In addition to the previously mentioned website, Google have one that is more about spreading the word, rather than being about the apps themsevles, which you can find here.
If you"re a company that has fulfilled Google"s desires, if you produce a Google Doc describing your experience, you could win prizes throughout August. This campaign is probably Google"s way of trying to get in before Microsoft launches Office 2010, which will have a fully supported cloud computing section, as the search giant"s one is. We"ll see how Microsoft reacts to this rather shortly, we expect.