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Gmail's redesign may come with a bunch of spiffy new themes that look great in screenshots, but the actual usability of Gmail is in steep decline. For business users, Gmail is going downhill fast. It looks like Gmail is trying too hard to be a "social" application, and not hard enough to be an application for reading and responding to email quickly and effectively.

I've been using Gmail now almost since its release to the public. Its clean interface, keyboard shortcuts and relatively responsive Web interface have made Gmail my go-to mail client for years. While I've had some gripes with Gmail for years (not being able to sort by subject or sender in my inbox, for instance) the latest redesign has me considering going back to Thunderbird. Considering Thunderbird has improved very little in the last five years, that's a sad reflection on the state of Gmail.

Google Apps Business and Education customers got a security option today. Administrators can now delegate certain admin privileges, such as creating new accounts or managing mail lists, to specific users without making them a full fledged administrator. That means IT can offload certain responsibilities to HR staff or managers, or create permissions for IT workers with fewer permissions than senior IT staff.

The desktop issue is one of the biggest challenges to face the enterprise. Tablets, smartphones, laptops, netbooks and personal computers are all part of the mix.

Google's Chromebook for business is symbolic of this shift. It represents the mainstream acceptance of conducting business online and how we view the role of the desktop in the post-PC era.

Google announced the Google Apps Certification Program today. The program will certify IT professionals who have demonstrated the ability to sell, deploy, develop and support Google Apps. The first certification is the Goolge Apps Certified Deployment Specialist, "which certifies IT professionals who have demonstrated the fundamental knowledge and skills required to migrate to, configure, and deploy Google Apps."

Google Apps now has multi-domain support, allowing organizations with two or more domains to manage from a single control panel.

Until now, Google Apps permitted one domain per account. That has become an issue, especially for larger organizations, migrating employees on multiple domains. Companies would either set up other domains as domain aliases or set up different Google Apps accounts for each domain.

Google Wave has graduated to Google Apps, showing a resurgence in user interest that seemed unlikely just a few months ago.

It took a lot of criticism over the past year, following its launch at Google I/O in 2009. Its blank white page was confusing and people were unsure how to use it - it almost left too much to the imagination. But to Google's credit, Wave has come a long way, particularly with its UI.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in his address to the World Mobile Congress on Tuesday that Google's future is not to compete with mobile operators. Instead, he pointed primarily to search advertising as Google's focus. But notably, Schmidt also mentioned Google's interest in enterprise software to deflect operator's concerns that the search giant wants to compete with them.

Schmidt's address to the world's leading mobile executives came as Google treads a delicate path. Google entered the mobile market in January. Instead of working through carriers, Google decided to sell its Nexus One directly to consumers. Last week, Google announced it would be offering Internet connectivity to select communities. That's another sore point for operators who wonder if Google is planning to enter the networking business.

The Google Enterprise blog has a post tonight about some new features being unveiled that should assuage some of the critics who discount the security of using Google Apps on a mobile device.

The new features permit corporate IT policies to be enforced from the customer's Google Apps console across different mobile devices with the exception of Android smartphones, which will eventually have similar features.

In an unusual display of concern, the president of Google Enterprise has made a public statement saying there should be no cause for alarm about Google Apps and its cloud computing infrastructure following a major data breach by a China-based attack on Google and 20 other large enterprise companies.

David Girouard, Google's president of Google Enterprise, said in a personally written blog post that Google suffered a massive cyber attack last month. According to the corporate Google blog, the attackers came away from Google with stolen intellectual property.

IBM CEO Sam Palmisano had some questions of his own in response to a question by a Barron's writer about Google in the enterprise.

The quote appears in a Barron's story about IBM's comeback. The actual story requires a subscription to view. Here is what Palmisano had to say:

"Is Google going to become the computing platform for the enterprise? Is a bank going to run itself on Google? Is an airline going to run itself on Google? Is IBM going to run its supply chain on Google? Is Bharti Wireless going to run themselves on Google? Is the banking system of China that we've built going to be on Google? Is the Russian Central Bank that we're building going to be on Google? No."