Google & Salesforce Clouds Collide over Redmond

The widely rumored mating of Salesforce.com and Google Apps has taken place.

There is now something called Salesforce for Google Apps; Google’s productivity programs have been integrated into Salesforce’s CRM suite – so data in one can be moved into the other and vice versa – in hopes – or so it is said – of creating a thunderhead that eventually rains all over Microsoft’s parade.

Salesforce already includes Google Adwords in its applications under a deal cut last June and the new deal has reignited talk about whether Google will buy Saleforce.

It would cost better than $7 billion, more than the $3.2 billion Google paid for DoubleClick.

Salesforce for Google Apps, which includes separate packages of Salesforce widgetry with Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Talk, also leverages Salesforce’s Force.com platform-as-a-service and Google’s APIs.

That should create more web apps and every web app is a poke in Microsoft’s eye. And they can be sold via Salesforce’s AppExchange.

A so-called Google Calendar, offered as part of Salesforce for Google Apps, was actually built by Appirio and is offered as an example of possible partner extensions to Salesforce for Google Apps.

Salesforce for Google Apps is free but come summer Salesforce will also be offering something called Salesforce for Google Apps Supported, which includes integrated phone support, unified billing and provisioning, enhanced platform APIs, additional third-party applications and advanced Google Apps functionality for $10 a user a month, less than the $50 a seat a year that Google charges for its premium kit.

The financial terms between Salesforce and Google were not disclosed.

Salesforce.com, with sales now close to $750 million a year, has about 41,000 customers or roughly a million seats in mostly small and medium-sized businesses and the deal, which gives Salesforce something of a better competitor against Microsoft’s upcoming hosted Dynamics CRM 4.0 – which is integrated with Office – also gives Google a channel it didn’t have before.

Remember even Google admits its programs can’t touch Office.