Editor's Note: Recently we announced the winners of our global Gone Google ad contest. Today's featured winner is Sharon Delia, Communications Director, South Carolina REALTORS® South Carolina REALTORS® )SCR( is the largest non-profit trade association in the state of South Carolina. With 14,000 professional REALTOR® members, and a staff of only eleven employees, our association depends on fast, efficient and reliable means of communication.

Today, Google announced Google Exacycle for Visiting Faculty , a new academic grant program that will provide 1 billion hours of computational core capacity to a small group of qualified researchers. These researchers are tackling a variety of problems that require massive amounts of computational power to advance their disciplines. In the future, we think that Google Exacycle could also help companies create new business opportunities in a variety of industries,

The benefits of Google Apps and cloud computing extend beyond just business communication and productivity. Today there are a growing number of cloud applications for virtually every aspect of your business through the Google Apps Marketplace. Hundreds of vendors now offer products and services through the Marketplace that integrate directly with Google Apps for business. So what do you need to start going 100% web,

Customers are switching from legacy systems to Google Apps at an astounding rate. In 2010, our customers migrated over 3.5 billion emails, over 100 million calendar events and 25 million contacts. Over 6 million )and growing( emails are migrated to Google Apps every day! To help make it easy for our customers to make the switch we've made several improvements and updates.

Editor's Note: We're pleased to welcome guest blogger, Joe Fuller, CIO of Dominion Enterprises. Dominion Enterprises is a leading marketing services company serving many industries including real estate, apartments, specialty vehicles, employment, automotive and travel. Dominion is one of the largest providers of targeted classified advertising reaching over 34 million consumers monthly.

100% web applications have many advantages over legacy and single tenant hosted technologies, and you consistently tell us that the ability to access improvements as they become available is one of the most important. With Google Apps, new features are available with a refresh of the web browser. There's no need to wait years for the next big software release or manage a complex set of installers, software patches, and hardware upgrades.

Today the Google Apps Marketplace turns one! In the past year, we've had the pleasure of collaborating with many of the best developers on the web, working to make it easy for you to extend Google Apps with great apps for your businesses or school. Our selection has grown from 50 to over 300 apps, and includes great apps for CRM, project management, customer support, finance, email marketing, and more. You've told us we're on to something...what else have we learned?

Editor's Note: We're pleased to welcome guest blogger Scot Adams, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Cadillac Fairview . With 40 offices throughout Canada and North America, Cadillac Fairview is one of the largest investors, owners and managers of commercial real estate in North America. With a portfolio valued at $19 billion,

Editor's Note : Guest authors Lynn Jaber and Romain Vialard work at Revevol, the first international service provider dedicated to Google Apps. Each day, they imagine new ways to improve their business processes with Google technology! At Revevol, we train clients' employees who have just migrated to Google Apps, to help them get the most out of their new system. The more Revevol grows, the more customer trainings we have to handle,

Editor's note : Over 3 million businesses have adopted Google Apps . Today we'll hear from Tom Dey, co-Founder of DeyFischer Consulting in Missouri. To learn more about other organizations that have gone Google and share your story, visit our community map or test drive life in the cloud with the Go Google cloud calculator . A typical day for a DeyFischer consultant doesn't often involve our corporate offices, and they're rarely in the same city as the week before.

Since we launched data layers in Google Earth Pro , we've seen strong and steady growth in use. To make the data even more valuable to our users, we're providing an update that greatly expands coverage for all layers. We hope you enjoy the data refresh! If you're new to Google Earth Pro, watch a video about the layers or download a free trial and explore the layers first-hand. Here's what's new: U.S.

Editor's Note: Since today is one of the more popular days for wining and dining, we invited Jeff Munsey, co-owner and Vice President of Pithy Little Wine Co., to tell us about his company's move to Google Apps . Learn more about other organizations that have gone Google on our community map or test drive life in the cloud with the Go Google Cloud Calculator . Together with my wife, Felicia, we started Pithy Little Wine Co.

Editor's note: Continuing our Gaining Altitude series, we've invited guest blogger Marsha Egan, CEO of InboxDetox.com and an internationally recognized workplace productivity expert and speaker. Named one of Pennsylvania's Top 50 Women in Business, her "12 Step Program for Curing Your Email E-ddiction" was featured in several publications and on ABC Nightly News and Fox News. Overwhelmed by your inbox?

The speed of innovation on the web is amazing, and Google's Chrome and Apps products capitalize on this speed to bring new productivity and security benefits to businesses. Join us for a live webcast where you'll hear directly from Google's Chrome Product Managers Glenn Wilson and Cyrus Mistry on how Chrome and Chrome OS are innovating for Apps for Business. You'll learn about the latest features and business customer experiences. Plus,

Editor's note: This is the latest in a series of posts on apps or topics in the Google Apps Marketplace that have caught our eye here at Google. We'll do this every so often as we see things we'd like to share. Look for the label " marketplace highlights " and subscribe to the series if you'd like to stay tuned. As we work our way into the new year, we recognize that tax season can be very difficult for businesses.

Editor's note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what's new and how your organization can benefit. Welcome to Picasa Web Albums Sharing and collaboration are central to Google Apps with over 30 million users in businesses, schools, and government already using products such as Gmail, Google Docs and Google Sites to work together more efficiently.

Back in August we announced Google Earth Enterprise 4.0 . This version introduced the new Google Earth Portable Solution, and a Google Earth Android Client, for enterprise use. Since then, we've been speaking with numerous customers about the release, learning all about the compelling ways they're using our portable and mobile technologies and listening to their helpful feedback. We've made additional developments based on that feedback,

100% web technologies have many advantages for customers over legacy software and server technologies, but the ability to access improvements without doing any work is particularly important. By simply refreshing the browser, new features just show up without any complex software patching or hardware upgrades. This is how software should "just work", and the power of the cloud makes it possible. Because of this rapid acceleration of innovation,

Editor's note: Over 3 million businesses have adopted Google Apps . Today we'll hear from Carol Dewitt, CIO of BI-LO . To learn more about other organizations that have gone Google and share your story, visit our community map or test drive life in the cloud with the Go Google cloud calculator. BI-LO is coming up on its 50th anniversary. We are a grocery retail chain with over 200 stores in the Southeast and have more than 4,

Today we launched the Chrome notebook Pilot program. Chrome notebooks will be great for businesses, schools and government agencies - especially Google Apps customers - because they deliver a faster, simpler and more secure computing experience, with lower total cost of ownership than traditional PCs. Learn more on the Official Google Blog and visit the Chrome notebook site to apply for the pilot . Posted by Cyrus Mistry, Product Manager,