Google guarantees 99.9% uptime

06/11/2008

Google is aiming to attract more businesses and gain more search marketing customers by guaranteeing that they will get 99.9 per cent uptime from its Google Apps Premier Edition.

If the firm does not meet these pledges and customers have managed to fulfil all their obligations, clients will get service credits based on the amount of downtime, reports Ecommerce Times.

Customers must contact Google within one month to receive the credit which will not exceed 15 days every 30 days.

Firms involved in search engine optimisation may be interested to learn that the service level agreement (SLA) covers components such as Google Apps, Gmail, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Calendar.

Daniel Golding, vice president and research director for Tier1 Research, said: "SLAs have nothing to do with performance - they are really just marketing tools. Any payout under them would be a marketing cost."

In a blog entry on AuctionBytes.com, Ina Steiner suggested that Google may soon make inroads into the ecommerce sector through targeted advertising.