Google has partnered with Indian telecom major, Airtel, for providing Google Apps to its customers via the company’s new portal Airtellive.com.  The Airtellive.com site itself is built of and hosted on iGoogle platform.

All the Airtel customers will receive free access to Google’s communication and collaboration tools like GMail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and an iGoogle start page.

It is good move for Airtel, Google and the customers because of the following reasons:

Google - Gets to drive adoption for its Google Apps suite and Gadgets to a fairly large user base as Airtel has the highest number of broadband subscribers in India which includes small and medium business customers as well.

Airtel - Keep the customer happy by providing better solutions for communication and collaboration to its customers, especially SMB customers, who used to get boring Airtel web mail.  It will also be able to make money by serving ads and paid content and value added services through partnerships with content providers.

Customers - Easy, free and single point access to Google Apps and Gadgets, various value added services and customizable content.

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