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While Google Inc. hopes its new Buzz social networking tool set gives it another entry into the corporate world, analysts have mixed views over whether it can offer features that enterprise users need.

Google yesterday took the wraps off what it has dubbed Google Buzz -- a set of tools designed to make its popular Gmail e-mail service a social networking hub. The company said that Google Buzz is designed to help users more easily and quickly find the most important information contained in their flood of social posts, pictures and videos.

During the formal announcement, Google disclosed that its engineers are working on a version of the Buzz service for business users. The company did not say when the enterprise version of Buzz will hit the streets, though Bradley Horowitz, Google's vice president of product management, said development is well underway and that the product should be released soon.

That version of Google Buzz is the latest effort by Google to attract the attention of corporate IT managers and show that the company can be an enterprise alternative to Microsoft Corp.

Over the past year, the company has launched itself into a heated rivalry with Microsoft. Among other things, it outlined plans for Chrome OS, an operating system that analysts said could one day challenge Microsoft's vaunted Windows software. Analysts say that Chrome and other new applications for the enterprise -- like its recently retailored Google Groups -- give Google an opportunity to both move into the lucrative enterprise realm and sock it to Microsoft.

"Buzz could be very interesting in a work environment," said Rob Koplowitz, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. "Microblogs, like Yammer and SocialText Signals, are proving valuable in a work setting. To some extent, Google is not only providing a microblog-type update feature, it's adding video and images and tightly integrating it all into e-mail, where many knowledge workers still spend the majority of their time."

Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc., agreed that corporate workers are increasingly using social networking tools, but he wonders whether Google Buzz is too late to the party.

"While a lot of people do communicate with business colleagues via Facebook or other social networks, these interactions are typically more socially-oriented than business-focused. The existing social network mechanisms, like Twitter and Facebook, seem to fulfill these needs pretty well. I think it's going to be hard for Buzz to catch on with folks who are happily using other social networking mechanisms."