Over 36,000 businesses may have already signed up for Google+

Google’s open invitation for businesses, brands, organisations and education establishments to apply for a dedicated Google+ business profile, may have already attracted over 36,000 signups in one week, The Next Web can reveal.

Last week, Google said it was planning to introduce Google+ for businesses before the year is out, allowing brands to create profiles on the site without using workarounds. Businesses were told to hold off on creating consumer profiles as the search giant would begin testing “non-user entities” soon.

To apply for the a business profile, interested parties were asked to submit their details via a dedicated Google form which fed information into a private spreadsheet. Google+ engineers would then be able to process to send out invites for these new accounts.

However, the spreadsheet reached its limit. Google’s Christian Oestlien took to his Google+ profile to alert users of the fact, noting that demand for the profiles was “massive”, reiterating that those who wished to apply but hadn’t already would need to submit their details before Friday 15th July.

Oestlien’s Google+ post:

Google+ users, please do me a small favor and reshare this post to anyone you know is interested in our business profiles testing. I wasn’t kidding when I said the demand for this has been massive. Our old form has filled up, so we created a new form for any businesses interested in applying. Please visit here to apply for participation:

http://www.goo.gl/KR7z5

Remember, we will close the application form at 6pm PST on Friday July 15th.

Google Docs spreadsheets have limits of 400,000 cells across all sheets and Google requested eleven pieces of information from applicants. A simple bit of math (400,000 / 11) would suggest that to fill each of the 400,000 cells, Google would have to collect data from over 36,000 individual applications.

Of course, Google has reopened applications on a new form and with the deadline looming, the search giant could be seeing a last-minute influx of brands wanting to put their hat in the ring for an invitation.

We do accept that Google may have employed a different method to capture user data, so we have reached out to Oestlien for comment and will update the article should we receive a response.