Google, which implemented an internal Weblog system behind its firewall about 18 months ago, has seen tremendous benefits from it and might in the future consider providing blogging tools and expertise to interested corporate clients, a Google executive said.

Google deployed an internal blog for its employees shortly after acquiring the blogging service Blogger in early 2003, and since then Google staffers have found many useful and creative ways for using the internal blog, says Jason Goldman, Blogger product manager at Google.

"Since then, we have seen a lot of different uses of blogs within the firewall: people keeping track of meeting notes, sharing diagnostics information, sharing snippets of code, as well as more personal uses, like letting co-workers know what they're thinking about and what they're up to," Goldman says. "It really helps grow the intranet and the internal base of documents."

Google executives have talked in the past about the company's internal Blogger implementation, called Blogger in Google. Asked if Google would be open to providing software and consulting to companies interested in deploying an internal Blogger version, Goldman was non-committal but didn't close the door on the possibility. "Sure, it may. If the right business relationship existed, that could be a great opportunity. But it's not something we have specific plans around right now," he says.

It's unlikely that Google will develop a version of Blogger that would compete head-to-head against enterprise document management products, but it's very possible Google will give Blogger some features to make it more attractive for business use, says Allen Weiner, a Gartner analyst.

Ultimately, vendors will approach the emerging enterprise blogging market from two angles, Weiner says. First, there will be the enterprise document management vendors and the enterprise publishing software vendors tweaking their industrial-strength products to support blogging features. These companies will cater to organizations that need security, rich functionality and IT control. Second, there will be more-lightweight products such as Blogger, which will suit organizations that approach blogging from a more casual perspective.

What is undeniable is that businesses increasingly are interested in blogs as business communication tools, particularly among IT departments. "The mandate of IT organizations today is to do more with less, so the better they can communicate and share things, the more efficient their operations will be," Weiner says. "There's a huge benefit in blogging for companies implementing IT projects. It's going to be a growing trend over the next couple of years."