Users are getting the same email that other Gmail users have been receiving throughout the past week. Admins are getting a different email, however. Here’s what it says:

Dear Google Apps administrator for YourSiteHere.com,

We’re getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that’s a lot shorter and easier to read. Our new policy covers multiple products and features, reflecting our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience for your users across Google products.

As always, Google will maintain your data in strict compliance with the confidentiality and security obligations provided to your domain.

We’re excited about the improvements we are making across our products and appreciate your support. You can view the new privacy policy at http://www.google.com/policies. These changes will take effect on March 1, 2012.

Google Apps boasts 4 billion businesses.

More coverage of Google’s privacy changes:

Your Grandmother Will Love Google’s New Policy Terms

Google Privacy Changes: What Do They Mean To You?

Can Consumers Opt-Out Of Google’s New Privacy Policy?

Google Privacy: “The Real Story”

Google’s Policy For Government Contracts Unchanged

Google’s Privacy Approach With Danny Sullivan and NPR

More Backlash From Google’s New Privacy Policy

Yes, Virginia, Google’s New Privacy Policy Lets You Opt Out Of Sharing Your Data

These include: improved email compliance footers, approved/blocked sender lists and file attachment policies.

“These capabilities help our customers address compliance requirements and effectively manage email traffic,” says Gmail Product Manager Adam Dawes. “Previously, Google Apps customers used Google Message Security, powered by Postini, to provide these capabilities.”

“With this new release, we’ve improved these features and designed them specifically to meet the needs of our Apps customers,” says Dawes. “Admins will manage the features natively in the Google Apps control panel (localized in 28 languages), leverage our granular policy framework to customize settings for different types of users, and join multiple rules together to address very targeted use cases.”

The features fare now available globally for Google Apps for Business, Google Apps for Government and Google Apps for Education editions.

Google will no longer offer Google Message Security (GMS) to Google Apps customers. Customers will need to migrate to the new features.

BBVA has 110,000 employees in 30 countries. That’s a lot of people that will now be using Google Apps for work.

In a guest post on the Google Enterprise blog, BBVA CIO José Olalla writes:

At BBVA we see technology as a key sustainable competitive advantage, and staying at the forefront of technology and business practices is key to our success. Today we’ve announced that we’re migrating our business to Google Apps to increase efficiency and to help our teams to collaborate more easily, regardless of location.

With Google Docs, for example, we’re excited about the real-time collaboration benefits – and we expect to increase productivity by removing the need to constantly update different versions of a document. We are developing our new global intranet (we call it High Performance Desktop) taking advantage of Google’s collaboration tools, changing it from a corporate communications and process management site to a place where all employees will be able to share, contribute and manage knowledge globally.

Initially, only 35,000 BBVA employees will be on Google Apps, but the company intends to have it rolled out to 110,000 by the end of the year.

It was actually just less than two weeks ago that Google+ itself got integrated with Google Apps, so it’s good to see they’re launching Apps integration right out of the box.

“We wanted to help you get your business, school or nonprofit on Google+ as soon as possible, so we’re opening the field trial for Google+ Pages to everyone today,” says Google+ Pages Product Management Director Dennis Troper on the Google Enterprise Blog.

“A Google+ page is your organization’s identity on Google+,” says Troper. Your business, school or nonprofit can post updates and news, send tailored messages to specific groups of people, and engage in conversations with customers and followers.”

While it’s been pretty well established that Google+ would play a significant role in a business’ search performance based on various factors, especially +1’s, part of today’s announcement is that businesses will be able to tie their +1’s from their Pages to those of their site, to create one number. So it stands to reason the bigger number that is, the bigger the signal it sends Google when it’s deciding how to rank your site.

Also part of the announcement is the Google+ badge, which businesses will be able to place on their sites to allow users to easily add them to their Circles.

Now, it shows more of a timeline format that is updated as time goes on, as opposed to the previous version, which showed day-by-day issues.

“The new dashboard shows only service disruptions and outages,” explains Google Site Reliability Engineer Manager Sumeet Pannu. “The size of the dot will indicate the length of outage and the color will indicate the severity. The dot to the left of the service name will show the current status of the service.”

“When you click on one of the yellow or red dots in the timeline, you’ll see a single transcript that will display all the status messages until final resolution—even if the outage spanned more than a single day,” Pannu adds. “There will now be a single URL that describes the issue and resolution for the entire outage.”

It looks like September has been pretty good in terms of uptime so far. There were brief outages on 09/07 for Google Docs List and Google Drawings as well as a brief Google Docs service disruption and a brief disruption for Gmail on Friday.

Google has also been working on some other accessibility-related features for Google Docs and Google Calendar.

“This fall, as classrooms fill with the hustle and bustle of a new semester, more students than ever will use Google Apps to take quizzes, write essays and talk to classmates,” says Google Accessibility technical lead T.V. Raman. “Yet blind students (like blind people of all ages) face a unique set of challenges on the web. Members of the blind community rely on screen readers to tell them verbally what appears on the screen. They also use keyboard shortcuts to do things that would otherwise be accomplished with a mouse, such as opening a file or highlighting text.”

The company has been working with advocacy organizations for the blind to make its products more accessible, and has already improved keyboard shortcuts and support for screen readers in Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Calendar. On the Gmail Blog, the company provides some examples of how screen readers and keyboard shortcuts have been improved specifically in Google Calendar:

• In your calendar lists, you can use the up and down arrow keys to navigate between your calendars. For each calendar in the list, you’ll hear its name and can use the spacebar to turn the calendar on or off. To remove a calendar from the list, use the delete key.
• In the agenda view, you can use the up and down arrow keys to move between events and use the left and right arrow keys to move between dates. To expand an event and expose the event details, press enter. To go to the event details page, type ‘e’. To remove an event, press delete. Although agenda view provides the best screen reader experience today, we are also working on improved accessibility for other views.
• In the guest list on the create/edit event page, you can navigate around using the up and down arrow keys. Use the spacebar to switch a guest’s status between optional and required. To remove a guest from the list, use the delete key.
• Additional keyboard shortcuts make it easier to use Google Calendar no matter which view or screen you’re on. Type ‘c’ to create an event, ‘/’ to start a search, and ‘+’ to add a calendar.

For a complete list os shortcuts and more information about screen reader functionality, you can find more info in Google’s help center.

JAWS, VoiceOver and ChromeVox are all supported by Calendars.

Google says it will continue to improve products for blind users in the weeks and months ahead.

Delegated administration was revealed in May. The feature essentially lets primary admins offer other users specific admin controls.

Multi-domain support was first announced in June as a new admin control that lets organizations with two or more domains on Google Apps to manage them from one control panel.

“Users belonging to different domains within an organization keep their domain-specific email address but can see coworkers from other domains in the organization’s global address book,” said Google Apps software engineer Will Smit. “It’s also easy for users to share across domains in Google Docs, Sites and the rest of Google Apps.”

In July, Google revealed its new user policy management letting admins segment their users into organizational units and control which apps are enabled or disabled for each group.

“These features have been well-received by the administrator community and we’ve seen healthy adoption among Google Apps for Business customers where these capabilities are helpful,” says Google Apps product manager Muzammil Esmail.

“Now all Google Apps administrators can use advanced control panel features to manage users and customize the security policies for their organizations, regardless of which version of Google Apps they’re using,” Esmail adds.

This week, Google also announced page-level permissions for Google Sites.

I strongly favor accessing my Gmail account via Safari as opposed to running my Gmail account through the mail feature on my iPhone.  The prior gives me one touch starring of important emails, quick archiving, as well as a search bar right on top that allows me to easily wade through the peat-filled swamp that is my inbox.  Plus, it’s simply more aesthetically pleasing.

One of my complaints, however, with mobile Gmail were the phantom emails – the ones that you send but never quite go anywhere.  Today, Google announced on their Gmail blog a fix to this problem: The connection bar.

The connection bar adopts a bit from the iPhone mail client as it pops up at the bottom to notify the user what is happening at various stages of the email process.  The new connection bar will tell you when it is checking for new mail, whether you have a connection or not (obviously), and most importantly, when all mail has been successfully sent on its way.

The update is only available in iOS4.

The site’s live at www.officialroyalwedding2011.org, and at the bottom of every page, you’ll find the brief message, "Powered by Google App Engine, implemented by Accenture."  Google explained on the Europe Developer Blog that this "allows developers easily to build and host their web applications on Google’s own computing infrastructure.  It’s a great way to run apps quickly, more securely, and at scale, which makes it ideal for such an important national occasion."

Then other interesting tech references on the Royal Wedding homepage include an embedded YouTube video, a link to a Facebook Page, and Twitter and Flickr streams (lower down than this screenshot shows).

Anyway, it’s hard to imagine a higher honor for Google in relation to this event.  After all, every update pertaining to the wedding is now in the company’s virtual hands, and the Royal Wedding site promises that it’s the first place some highly sought-after information (including facts about Kate Middleton’s wedding dress) will be released.

A post on the site also indicated, "Subject to further planning work, the website may feature a live web stream broadcast of the wedding itself."  Traffic levels for such an occasion seem almost unimaginable.

We’re sure a whole lot of organizations in the UK and around the globe will now give more thought to using Google App Engine.

Scot Adams, SVP and CIO at Cadillac Fairview, wrote today on the Official Google Enterprise Blog, "Prior to switching to Google Apps, we had been providing IBM Lotus Notes for about $190 per user per year, plus the cost of storage.  Google Apps’ simple $50 per user per year price tag was very compelling . . ."

That’s not the end of the story, though.  Adams also wrote, "The initial reason we looked at Google Apps was cost savings, but the ongoing value of access to information from anywhere, totally independent of the device, is where we’re seeing the real gain."

So Fairview Cadillac’s transition represents a definite win for Google.  Granted, many people would consider Microsoft a more serious competitor than IBM, but it seems reasonable to suppose that Fairview Cadillac didn’t forget about Microsoft, with its market cap of $220 billion, when considering its options.

Google’s no doubt hoping this endorsement will now push a few more companies in the direction of Google Apps.  After all, what’s good enough for "one of North America’s largest investors, owners and managers of commercial real estate" should serve the needs of many other organizations.