Support for businesses on Google+ is coming later this year

Google’s Christian Oestlien has officially announced the support for businesses will arrive in Google+ later this year.  You can read the full post here, but I’ll post it below for those of you still waiting for access to Google+.

We have been watching Google+ take shape over the last week and we’ve seen some really great companies get involved. But frankly we know our product as it stands is not optimally suited to their needs. In fact, it was kind of an awkward moment for us when we asked Ford for his (or was it her?) gender!

How users communicate with each other is different from how they communicate with brands, and we want to create an optimal experience for both. We have a great team of engineers actively building an amazing Google+ experience for businesses, and we will have something to show the world later this year.

The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses. We just ask for your patience while we build it. In the meantime, we are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users. Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles.

Over the next few months we are going to be running a small experiment with a few marketing partners to see the effect of including brands in the Google+ experience. We’ll begin this pilot with a small number of named partners. If you represent a “non-user entity” (e.g. business, organization, place, team, etc.) and would like to apply for consideration in our limited program (and be amongst the first to be alerted when the business product launches) you can sign up here:

http://goo.gl/zq95C

Please keep all of the feedback coming, we are listening and really appreciate the time everyone is putting towards helping us build a better social experience through Google+.

Two important things to note:

1. They’re building support for businesses that will integrate well with other Google products such as AdWords.
2. They’ve again requested that businesses not try to squeeze their business into a consumer profile.  Just wait, as it’s coming soon.

Also, here is a video of Christian explaining what they’ve got coming:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at_azOmh69A