Google India is offering students a prize for convincing their respective schools to adopt Google Apps by December 15th. What's the prize? It's certainly not a cash grant, or expensive hardware. Nope, it's naught but illiquid honor.

Can Google charge for a service it mostly gives away — and that doesn't always work? That's the experiment it's conducting with Google Apps. Gmail, the email service at the heart of Google Apps, went down three times earlier this month, and Google has sent a note to customers who pay for its "Premier Edition" — typically colleges and small businesses. As Fortune notes, Google hasn't had much success breaking into the large business accounts where Microsoft rules. The tone of Google's apology speaks volumes. It's mostly apologetic, but there are overtones of Stanford-comp-sci huffiness:

CNET's supertelegenic Natali Del Conte got a Microsoft-sponsored visit from Entourage star Jeremy Piven to talk up Office Live Workspaces. But as Natali said in an email: "They don't use Workspaces. Microsoft just got them to say that they will. I don't understand why Microsoft would have such a non sequitur way to promote this product. The product is good. Why bother with this nonsense?"

The New York Times spent an epic 3,800 words on a truth known to everyone in Silicon Valley: Google is competing with Microsoft in email and productivity apps. Steve Lohr got lots of time with Google CEO Eric Schmidt — but attributes his failure to get any good quotes from Schmidt to Schmidt's caginess. Here's a version that skips the useless talking points from Microsoft and Google and just gets down to the scant few numbers Lohr managed to assemble. Bottom line: Microsoft doesn't have much to worry about. Yet. Lohr doesn't note this stat: 73 percent of consumers surveyed by NPD have noever even heard of Google Apps.

As widely 'gasmed-over round the net, Google announced the enterprise version of its Google Apps today. Rolling email, word processing, and spreadsheet functions into a hosted suite of office software, Google Apps Premier will cost a piddling $50 per user; service agreements guaranteeing "99.9% uptime and 24x7 tech support" are also available. What's it all mean, dad?

Certainly it's the first swipe at Microsoft's Office dominance; it's $329 to upgrade to Office 2007, and even site licenses are unlikely to approach Google's cheapie $50-a-pop rate. MS Office offers more programs and more complex versions, but honestly, those more elaborate functions (with the exception of Powerpoint) are not utilized by 80% of Office users. However, the real ripple of Google Apps Premier (or copycat systems) could be drastic reductions in corporate IT departments, as tech installation and support moves out of office. You may hate Microsoft, nerd lord, but their buggy products have kept you in cheese doodles and caffeine for the past 20 years. Best start looking into that phone support gig at Google.