Helping more businesses online with COSBOA

Last month, we celebrated the first birthday of Getting Aussie Business Online--as well as the news that more than 50% of Australia’s small businesses are now online. That’s something to cheer about, but it still leaves nearly half of Australia’s 1 million SMBs sitting on the sidelines of the digital economy.

That’s why we’re pleased that Council of Small Business of Australia (COSBOA) has announced they’ve joined the party by becoming an official supporter of the movement. Their support will enable the program to reach small businesses in COSBOA’s network of organisations and educate them about the importance of being online.

Small businesses are a vital part of our economy and communities. Together with MYOB, we’re looking forward to working with COSBOA to help businesses across Australia make the most of the web.

Posted by Claire Hatton, Head of Local Business

An Aussie’s Take on Google I/O

I spent last week at Google I/O, Google’s annual conference for developers held in San Francisco. This conference is all about making the web a better place -- the nuts and bolts of software development that most folks don’t ever think about when they add apps to their Android phones or when they log into their Gmail. What’s interesting about all these developers getting stoked about building the apps of the future is that they take one thing for granted: high speed Internet connectivity. That’s not to say they don’t recognise that sometimes connectivity is slow or erratic -- they do, and we’re all trying to find ways to make sure our apps can work in those situations. What I mean is that their starting assumption is that high speed connectivity is fast becoming like electricity or running water -- never far away when you need it, and plenty of it. I love this optimism -- and it’s this optimism that is bringing the National Broadband Network to Australia.

Out of all the exciting announcements that came out of Google this week, every single one of them relies on high speed broadband. YouTube movie rentals -- tick. Syncing your music library and movies from Android Market across your PC and your Android tablet and phone -- tick. Using a Chromebook, where your apps, games, photos, music, movies and documents will be accessible wherever you are and you don't need to worry about losing your computer or forgetting to back up files -- tick. These products will run on the networks we we have now, but just imagine their potential -- and the potential of the ideas of all the developers in Moscone Center and those around the world watching Google I/O streamed over YouTube -- when we have high speed Internet everywhere.

Most of us in the Sydney office wish we had a dollar for every time someone asked us about the NBN, “Yeah, but what are you going to do with all that speed?” or “What’s Google’s vision for how to use all that bandwidth?” I think we saw a taste of it at Google I/O.

Posted by Alan Noble, Engineering Director, Google Australia

Chrome is Ready for Business

This is a cross-post from the Google Chrome blog.

When we announced that Chrome is now used by over 120 million users and showed off some of its latest features last week, we saw a tremendous amount of excitement from both users and businesses. Many businesses asked how they can get the benefits of increased security, speed and the modern browser capabilities that Chrome offers with the configurability and customisations they need.



The good news is that businesses don’t need to wait any longer to deploy Google Chrome. Today, we’re announcing that Chrome offers controls that enable IT administrators to easily configure and deploy the browser on Windows, Mac, and Linux according to their business requirements. We’ve created an MSI installer that enables businesses who use standard deployment tools to install Chrome for all their managed users. We’ve also added support for managed group policy with a list of policies and a set of templates that allow administrators to easily customise browser settings to manage security and privacy.

By deploying Google Chrome, organisations can take advantage of improved security and web application performance without needing to upgrade other expensive software licenses or buy new hardware. Deploying Google Chrome also gives users access to productivity-enhancing HTML5 web applications. Since Google Chrome is the same as the browser on Chrome OS, admins considering Chrome OS for their organisations can start testing their mission-critical web applications by deploying the Google Chrome browser.



Support for these new administrative features is available to Google Apps for Business admins by phone and email as part of their Apps deployment. For those who are not Google Apps for Business customers, we’ve also posted documentation to assist administrators deploying Chrome inside their organisation.



Over the past few months, we’ve worked to test Chrome with admins in a diverse set of large organisations interested in moving to a more secure, modern browser. Organisations such as Vanguard, Boise State University, and Procter & Gamble (and Google!) have already successfully deployed Chrome to thousands of users. They’ve provided us with excellent feedback, and we’re continuing to work on the next set of features that they’ve requested.



What we’ve built is just the start of what we’d like to offer businesses with Google Chrome. We’re excited by the features built so far, and we’re working hard on polishing the next set of policies that will make Google Chrome even more customisable and useful to users in the future. Please give the new features a try and let us know what you think!



Posted by Glenn Wilson, Product Manager and Daniel Clifford, Software Engineer