Starting today, subscribers of the Google Apps Premier and Education Editions will be able to enjoy a new tool called Google Groups, which has been made freely available to everyone in its current standalone position since 2006, and will now be incorporated with the other applications found in the suite which has been designed for small businesses.

As per Google, the Groups in applications will have a set up time of a mere 30 seconds, and employees can create a group name, assign an address to it within the domain name that is being used for the Application Suite and then even send out invites to anyone who they want to join.

In the Application Suite, Groups is now all set to join other available Google apps such as Docs, Sites, Video, and Calendar, all of which come together to share data, which is archived and searchable. Users of the tool can also choose if they want to get messages from their groups emailed instantly to their Gmail account, in a daily digest, or not via email at all. Managers of the group can even send a single message on the behalf of the entire group.

With a price tag of $50 per user, per year, Google Apps Suite includes Google Video, Google Sync for Microsoft Outlook, Voice/Video Chat, Enterprise Contacts, offline support and much more.