Google is touting this deal as one major endorsement for the cloud based approach towards computing, but it has turned out that some funding is indirectly coming from one unlikely source .i.e. the Microsoft Corporation.

According to the minutes of the Los Angeles City Council, just over an amount of $1.5 million for this project will be coming, from a payout of 2006 class action lawsuit that was between the City and Microsoft Corp. Microsoft has paid $70 million three years back to settle this suit, and has brought on behalf of the six California counties and also the cities who have alleged that Microsoft has used its monopoly position for overcharging of software. Microsoft has also paid out more than $1 billion in the settlements of other class-actions that are based on such similar claims.

The City Council of Los Angeles has approved this deal unanimously on Tuesday as said by the Google Spokesman Andrew Kovacs.

The migration from the e-mail servers of the city's Novell GroupWise would be handled by the contractor Computer Sciences Corp. Some other applications like calendaring, document sharing and also the chat will be handled by the Google Apps too.