Google has been offering their free Google Apps software for a while now, and for limited applications it is actually quite useful.  However, it has not been seen as a serious contender to Microsoft Office because of a lack of certain features that business users require, including technical support.

All that is about to change.  Google Apps will now be available in a Premier Edition , costing $50 per user per year, and offering "10 gigabytes of storage per users, APIs for business integration, 99.9 % uptime, 24x7 support for critical issues, and Gmail for mobile devices on BlackBerry", among other things.

Could this be bad news for Microsoft? 

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