Google are launching a paid and supported version of their online hosted applications.

Inside Googles web services you can:-

Email, Calendar, Talk, Spreadsheets and Write all online. Presentation software is comining.

These are all hosted on the internet both the software and your data. They offer 99.9% Uptime.

This is a paid service of $50 per user, per year and comes with telephone support.

So what does all of this mean. Well not a lot actually. Its far too early in the game and I for one would not trust a 1.0 product hosting the business that feeds my family.

Other things crop up like, if You have no internet connection and you want to work (say your on a train or a plane with no internet connection) what are you supposed to do?, use Notepad and Calculator.

However this move is significant, both Google and Microsoft will now let you host your office data and applications online and charge you for the pleasure.

Its only a matter of time, say the next 3 to 5 years that this kind of online hosted solution will have matured and be a viable option and the issue of “offline” is addressed.