Early Tuesday, Microsoft officially released Office 365, its new cloud-based Office product designed to compete directly with Google Docs and whatever Apple might decide to put up in conjunction with iCloud and the revamped Mobile Me expected later this year. The Office 365 suite, which has been in public beta for a while, is being mostly targeted at small business and the enterprise with plans for the entire suite costing between $6 and $24 per user per month, depending on features.

The small and medium-sized businesses that choose the more cost effective $6 option will only get Office Web Apps and Microsoft Exchange. Of course, any option you choose with Office 356 is still more expensive than the $50 annual fee Google charges each corporate user for access to its Google Docs suite. The service also included integration with devices such as Windows smartphones and iPhones.

I guess Microsoft must feel that people will be willing to pay a bit more for its suite of products that include Word, Excel and Powerpoint as well as Exchange. In truth, some companies pay quite a bit just for hosted Exchange so this may end up being a bargain for many businesses, especially those who want to stay in the Microsoft world but still try to cut costs.

We’ll see if this one takes off.  For more, check out the full press release from Microsoft after the jump.

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If you’ve been using Google Docs because you’re looking for a collaborative platform to work in that resides in the “cloud” or you just hate Microsoft and its Office products, then this post is for you. This week, the search giant announced a series of updates to Google Docs which are sure to make fans of the cloud-based service very happy indeed.

Some of these updates included the documents editor, which received additions such as a margin ruler, tab stops, comments, a re-worked system for placing and maintaining bullets and numbers and support for real-time collaboration of up to 50 people. In addition, spreadsheets now allows for cells to be edited from the formula bar, the use of auto-fill and the dragging and dropping of columns.

Plus, the system is reportedly going to be much faster, smoother and more intuitive. In truth, there are so many improvements announced by Google that it would almost be a disservice to them to try and list them all. Besides, why read about something when you can watch it instead, right?

Fortunately, Google has put together a little video highlighting the changes and we’ve got it right here for you after the jump. Check it out.

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People said it would never happen and it hadn’t for several years. In fact, before today, we would have bet money that this change would never come. Google seemed perfectly content to keep its Gmail and Google Apps services with the “Beta” tag forever. That is, until today.

According to Google’s “official’ blog, they have removed the “Beta” status from Gmail and Google Apps (which consists of Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk) as of today. Both consumer and enterprise Google Apps categories are now out of beta in fact, and its pretty likely the enterprise version of Google Apps was the driving force behind the change. With 1.75 million companies currently utilizing Google Apps (including The Flickcast), the “Beta” moniker seemed a bit ridiculous, not to mention odd, at this point. Plus, if I’m a business guy trying to sell my boss on a “Beta” service, even a really useful and cool one like Google Apps, I’m probably not going to get very far.

Google obviously agreed. . . finally. Unfortunately, even with this momentous news, Google didn’t actually change or enhance the services at all to make the move out of beta. They probably feel that removing the beta tag is enough for one day and will no doubt add features down the road. They certainly were not shy about improving GMail and Google Apps while they were in beta, so there’s no reason to think they won’t continue the trend now that the “Beta” is no more.