Google today released a Mac version of its Google Email Uploader, an application geared toward easing the transition to a Google Apps account. The application is designed to simplify the process of uploading hundreds of messages at a time from any three of the major Mac e-mail applications: Mail, Eudora, and Thunderbird. Currently, the Email Uploader will not transfer mail to an ordinary Gmail account; it requires a Google Apps for a business account.

This is good news for Mac-based businesses looking to outsource their e-mail and take advantage of Google's system, but have dreaded transferring years' worth of old messages. The application is far from perfect, though: for instance, the system limits the uploader to one message per second after 500 messages, but the automation might make it worthwhile to do 500 messages at a time.

One can only hope that Google will soon allow the same thing for regular users of Gmail. Painlessly uploading thousands of old messages from one of my older e-mail accounts would not only be a good use of the space Google provides, but it would allow me to use Google's search to sift through them all.