Yesterday Google guaranteed 99.9% reliability for Google Apps like Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, and Google Talk. This stemmed from a similar guarantee the company made for Gmail.

Now Google is upgrading Google Apps APIs. "Organizations using Google Apps can take advantage of our APIs to make Google Apps fit their unique businesses processes and technology environments," says a post at the Official Google Enterprise Blog. "Customers have pulled off some useful customizations, like synchronizing Google Calendar with Microsoft Exchange and updating email preferences for all of their users. Today we’re making our Google Apps APIs even more powerful."

First up is Google Docs. They’ve improved upon this so that now the API lets you update, share, and move documents in and out of folders programmatically. The Google Docs API lets you:

- Upload the word processing documents and spreadsheets on your computer to allow you to back them up or collaborate online when editing.

– Find all of your documents that contain specific keywords.
 
– Get a list of spreadsheets which can be accessed through the Google Spreadsheets Data API.

Another thing Google is doing with APIs is making them more versatile. Google explains:

Domain administrators can now use OAuth authentication to access GData feeds for users on their domains. This lets admins do things like integrate with document management systems, enable third-party workflow applications, centralize backup of documents and contacts, and monitor document sharing inside and outside of the company. Using OAuth, administrators can enable this type of functionality for end-users without any end-user involvement. Premier and Education Edition admins can enable OAuth in the Authentication section of the Advanced Tools tab of the Google Apps administrative control panel.

If Google Apps are indeed worthy of that 99/9% guarantee, businesses are more likely to start using them more in the future, and the added versatility will no doubt lend to more widespread business use.