It is no longer a matter of if but when, as far as I am concerned. That's how I feel about Google Apps being integrated into Salesforce.com after interviewing Kraig Swensrud, senior director of marketing at Salesforce. [ Video: Salesforce and Google forge new alliance ] This follows on the joint company announcement of a new alliance. I asked Swensrud if he thought integrating Google Apps with Salesforce would b It is no longer a matter of if but when, as far as I am concerned.That’s how I feel about Google Apps being integrated into Salesforce.com after interviewing Kraig Swensrud, senior director of marketing at Salesforce. [ Video: Salesforce and Google forge new alliance ] This follows on the joint company announcement of a new alliance.I asked Swensrud if he thought integrating Google Apps with Salesforce would be worthwhile. Here’s his response:“It would be worthwhile. Enough customers have pointed out the value of integrating Google Apps with Salesforce. “Even now, we ship a number of contextual links, search, links, and maps. We include that, even today, more and more companies are storing more sales contracts as Google docs, and they can be linked directly to Salesforce. “I find the idea of where we can take deeper integration with Google Apps intriguing. “As an organization, we will be taking suggestions from customers from our Idea Exchange Web site. I will monitor that Web site to see which new features around Google integration do our customers want. And odds are we will focus our developer resources where folks tell us to focus our resource in regard to Google Apps.” As I said last week, when that happens, we are in for some big changes in the software marketplace.Meanwhile, the new product announced on Tuesday, Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords, yes that’s the full name, has one key feature that was not mentioned before today’s live event.Perhaps if it were announced, I would have been just a bit less harsh on them in my previous blog. By integrating Google AdWords and Salesforce lead generation, a business can track back and discover where a lead came from. In other words, they can see what the last click was that got the user to their Web site. This can be used to gain a better understanding of what marketing programs are working and which ones not. Very helpful. I expect the next big announcement between the two companies to be about Google Apps and Salesforce but probably not before the first quarter of 2008. Technology Industry