Some good info has surfaced about 2008 plans for Google, which is a little unexpected from a company that’s almost as unforthcoming about future product releases as Apple. The discussions in which Scott Johnston, VP for Product Development, was participating were concerned mostly with Google Apps.

First, Google Sites is apparently an upcoming evolution of the (somewhat lame, IMHO) Google Page Creator. Sites will be based off of tools from JotSpot, a company Google acquired, and will allow businesses to create intranets, extranets, and (hooray) project management tracking. I can only assume that such project management tools would integrate with the your Google Calendar, which I already use and love.

The other big piece of news is that Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and Spreadsheets will all soon work offline via Google Gears, a technology that can transparently store a web application on your computer so you can use it when you don’t have an Internet connection. In the case of Docs’ and Spreadsheets’ collaborative capabilities, it sounds like it will use a smart versioning system to integrate the changes into the group document once you come back online. Very cool. If you’ve never used Google Docs before, you should check it out. For most people, it’s all the Word and Excel they ever need — and it’s free, and it stores your stuff online so you can access it form anywhere. It also allows you to easily share documents with others, and even (as mentioned) have them make additions or revisions.

For those not aware (and I always like to tack this on, because not enough people are), Google Apps is one of the coolest free things on the ‘net. It allows you to use all of Google’s services — Gmail, Calendar, etc — but with you own domain name. For example, all of my whatever@rogersmj.com email addresses use Google Apps. It gives you the power and reliability of Google’s systems for your own domain. It’s much better than any lame mail service offered by your web host. And it’s completely free. Get your own domain name for less than $10/year, and then you can have Google handle your mail. Imagine how cool it is to be able to hand out a totally unique email address, and know you’ll never have to change it again because you graduated/got a new job/changed ISPs.