Google has just introduced an online business software package designed to make it easier for people in the same organization to share documents and information.

The free “Team Edition” version, released today, shows the Internet search leader’s latest attempt to attract more users to free applications, which makes Microsoft quiver because of their costly word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and calendar programs.

Most likely Google chose to release the software this week due to Microsoft offering a bid to buy Yahoo Inc. in an attempt to stop Google’s lead in Internet search and advertising.

Microsoft’s bid, said to be $44.6 billion, is from the profit of software.

Google knows that giving away free software cloaks how they make a profit. By users clicking ads on search result pages.

At this time more than 500,000 businesses have signed up to use Google’s applications, according to Google. Some businesses pay $50 extra per user for more features, but the fees are measly compared to Google’s $16.6 billion in annual revenue. Google makes $181 million for software sales.

Box.net has joined Google in offering more collaboration features. The well known online file storage service Box.net has added a new invite collaborators button that makes it easy to share a folder with other Box.net users.

This feature is great for users that have images, documents, and any other files they want to share with another user, all they have to do is just right-click and enter the email addresses of the receiving user(s). The recieveing user will then be able to access the contents sent. There is a feature that lets users specify if the receiving user may edit the folders contents or just view it.

In the future we hope Box.net will offer applications for editing documents and spreadsheets, like Google Docs.

Via Box.net