Google endeavors to grab market share for office software from rival Microsoft were further boosted on Tuesday, with the Los Angeles City Council voting 12-0 in favor of Google for a $7.2 million deal pertaining to use of Google's services for government email as well as other Internet purposes.

Going by a statement from Councilman Tony Cardenas' spokeswoman, the multi-million contract, for which Google pounded Microsoft in bidding, will cover approximately 30,000 city employees to whom Google will provide e-mail, calendar, online chatting and other services.

The new Google deal also marks the culmination of Los Angeles city's 7-year contract, under which city workers were making use of Novell Inc.'s GroupWise e-mail and record-keeping software, and had often complained about it being rather slow and crash-prone.

In addition, as per the deal, the contractor, Computer Sciences Corp., would also undertake the task of replacing a number of city computer systems with the Google Apps services - one of the strongest contenders of Microsoft's market-leading Office suite of software - which include email, word processing and spreadsheet tools.

Excited at having secured the US' second-biggest city as a Google client, the company's business services division's president Dave Girouard said: "In our view, this can be a watershed agreement. There are a lot of cities and counties around the state and around the nation who were watching this."