MAJOR Intuit / Google announcement!

Wow. I was quite taken aback by the announcement Intuit and Google made yesterday. The summary is that Quickbooks is going to call a number of Google services directly from within the product. Here is the short list:

• Google AdWords: Small businesses will be able to sign up for AdWords directly from the QuickBooks 2007 home page. New advertisers will get a $50 AdWords credit to advertise their businesses online.

• Google Maps: Data within QuickBooks will pre-populate a set of fields in Google Maps, to create an online listing for the business.

• Google Product Listings: Small businesses can automatically upload inventory information to Google Base. That way anyone shopping online will know that the business carries certain merchandise in their brick-and-mortar store.

• Google Desktop: The Google Desktop search capability has been integrated into QuickBooks. Users can easily search the data in QuickBooks.

Be sure to look at the screens at the end of the announcement -- these will make it really clear what they are talking about. I have to hand it to them, this is very future looking. We haven't seen anything this innovative from Intuit in years. Perhaps we should be thanking Microsoft for introducing Small Business Accounting and lighting a fire under Intuit.

Either way, I'll be excited to see if Microsoft has anything else in their bag of tricks as they come close to launching their new version of SBA.