Google Apps Now At 3 Million Customers and 30 Million Users

Google unveiled that it has now launched a two-step authentication system for Google Apps, the paid editions. But within that announcement, Google also revealed that it now has over 3 million customers and over 30 million users for Google Apps.

The numbers are nothing to sneer at, but Google still has a long way to go before even becoming a blip on Microsoft's radar as its Office suite continues to sell in the hundreds of millions and Microsoft Exchange enjoys a very solid market share.

"Today we’re hosting more than 300 CIOs and IT professionals from around the world in Paris at Google Atmosphere, our annual European event dedicated to cloud computing—web-based applications that are built on shared infrastructure and delivered through the browser," Dave Girouard, President of Google Enterprise, wrote.

"This year, the discussion at Atmosphere is focused on how companies can benefit from the breakthroughs in productivity and security that cloud-based applications are uniquely capable of delivering," he said.

"This event also marks some major milestones, as of today, more than 3 million businesses have gone Google, and over 30 million users within businesses, schools and organizations now depend on our messaging and collaboration tools," he announced.

And Google's numbers, while impressive at first sight are, in fact, a bit underwhelming. Because it means that Google Apps customers, on average, have just 10 employees.

Google has been showing off examples of companies with tens of thousands of employees migrating to Google Apps, but the numbers paint a different picture.

While there may be a handful of giant companies or local administrations "going Google," the vast majority of customers is either small companies or are just testing the tools with a very small number of their employees.

Along with the new security measures, Google has also said that it plans to make more apps available on mobile devices, most notably the Google Docs suite.