AND ANOTHER ONE...

Google has bought Postini... Here's an analysis from eWeek that suggests that the mothership may be unhappy about this acquisition.

I'll turn the mic over to reporter Renee Ferguson:

Google's July 9 acquisition of Postini is another clear sign that the search giant is staking a claim in the on-demand enterprise applications market and ratcheting up the heat in the already sizzling software as a service sector, especially against Microsoft.
 
With Postini, which began as an e-mail filtering company and evolved into compliance technology that enforces a communications policies, Google can now address the perception that its nascent portfolio of e-mail and messaging applications aren't quite ready for prime time.

What's more, Google can take advantage of Postini's huge customer base—35,000 customers and 10 million users—to become a contender in the desktop applications market where Microsoft lives.

"Basically this is [Google] throwing the gauntlet down to Microsoft and saying 'we intend to compete with you in your core market,'" said Shar Van-Boskirk, an analyst with Forrester Research. "And if that's the case we will see Google compete with Microsoft's broader set of back office applications."

The question is whether Google's $625 million acquisition of Postini will make enterprise IT buyers feel secure enough to adopt Google applications?

Postini press release here.