Postini, which was founded in California in 1999 by Scott Petry and employs around 300 people, specialises in online security and compliance software, but is more well known for its anti-spam technology.
The company also provides message security, archiving and encryption for email, instant messaging and other web communications.
The deal, which makes Postini a wholly owned subsidiary of Google, will expand the range of services available on Google Apps -- its business applications service, which includes spreadsheets, word processing programmes, Gmail, and personalised start pages.
Postini claims to block more than one billion spam messages every day, and serves more than 35,000 businesses worldwide, including seven of the world's top 30 largest banks. The acquisition will be used by Google to target Microsoft Office users and expand its market share.
To date, Google Apps has registered over 100,000 businesses to its services, and is being adopted by around 1,000 small medium-sized businesses every day. However, its success is dwarfed by that of Microsoft Office, which has around 240m users worldwide.
Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google, said: "With the addition of Postini, our Apps are not just simple and appealing to users -- they can also streamline the complex information security mandates within these organisations."
Schmidt added that while adoption rates for Google Apps had been encouraging, "at the same time, large businesses have been reluctant to move to hosted applications due to issues of security and corporate compliance.
"By adding Postini products to Google's technology, businesses no longer have to choose -- employees get the intuitive products they want, and the company achieves the security and assurances it needs."
Quentin Gallivan, chief executive officer of Postini, added: "We share a commitment to providing enterprise customers with compelling technology alternatives. This is an exciting milestone, one that will certainly lead to the next level of rapid innovation."
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