Former Google international exec Adam Freed (pictured here) has taken a job as COO of Etsy, the crafts e-commerce site, which just raised another $20 million in venture funding.

Index Ventures is part of the new round, which also includes previous investor Accel Partners.

Union Square Partners and Hubert Burda Media are also investors, as well as Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake.

Etsy has raised almost $52 million overall since its 2005 founding, which gives it a valuation of more than $300 million.

Etsy’s CEO is founder Rob Kalin, who took over again as CEO at the start-up last year.

But Freed brings more solid management with a global flavor to Etsy, having been a director of international product management at Google (GOOG). He left the company two years ago.

In that job, he focused on the localization and development of the search giant’s international products and had also worked in international online sales and operations, including setting up Google’s online advertising operations in London, Paris, Hamburg, Tokyo and Sydney.

He also established Google’s multilingual online operations center in Dublin.

Oh, yes, Freed speaks nine languages, which will come in handy at Etsy, since it helps craftspeople globally sell handmade items online.

Driving this thesis: Strong early demand for the device, iPad Internet usage patterns and evidence of netbook cannibalization (and, perhaps, a wee bit of hyperbole).

With two million iPads sold globally in under two months (see charts below; click to enlarge), Huberty’s first point is self-evident. Her second and third are worth a closer look, though.

Huberty’s analysis suggests that Apple’s (AAPL) iPad has already surpassed the Web browsing market share of Google’s (GOOG) Android and Research in Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry.

“Why is this important?” Huberty asks. “Web browsing is arguably the most important computing task for the average user and early adopters are realizing similar productivity levels relative to traditional PCs. Based on our experience with iPad Web browsing, we would not be surprised to see tablet daily Internet usage exceed traditional PC Internet usage in the coming years.”

Which is interesting. In Huberty’s view, the iPad is already becoming more PC than PC companion. And that transformation will likely quicken with the debut of multitasking in iOS 4 and more robust productivity and content-creation apps.

As Huberty notes, while the majority of iPhone/iPod touch downloads are gaming related (82 percent), iPad app downloads are more evenly distributed among gaming (36 percent), content (28 percent), productivity (20 percent) and utilities (16 percent).

As for netbook cannibalization, Huberty is convinced that the iPad is at least partially responsible for recent slowing in the growth of netbook sales. “While we don’t think all tablet sales will cannibalize the low-end notebook and netbook market, we continue to believe that the initial addressable market is low- to mid-range consumer notebooks, representing 120 million units annually,” she writes.

“While the iPad launched just two months ago,” Huberty adds, “we already see signs of cannibalization, mainly in the U.S. netbook market. Netbook units declined YoY for the first time in April 2010, the same month Apple launched the iPad. We attribute the slowdown to iPad sales, purchase deferrals in anticipation of future tablet launches and what looks like the saturation of the netbook market at around 10-12 percent of total PC sales.”

With that in mind, Huberty raised her estimate for calendar 2010 iPad shipments to 10 million from six million and said that Apple may well sell 15 million in calendar 2011.

“If you’re considering upgrading Office with Office, we’d encourage you to consider an alternative: upgrading Office with Google Docs,” Glotzbach advised.

“If you choose this path,” he explained, “upgrade means what it’s supposed to mean: effortless, affordable, and delivering a remarkable increase in employee productivity. This is a refreshing alternative to the expensive and laborious upgrades to which IT professionals have become accustomed.”

Fascinating counsel, coming from a company that just a few years ago was insisting that it had no plans whatsoever to compete with Microsoft’s (MSFT) core PC software business, even as it rolled out the pieces of its own hosted desktop productivity suite.

In any event, much as Google (GOOG) claims its efforts are a match for Office, particularly Office 2010, which allows people to edit and collaborate on documents and presentations on the Web, market research says they aren’t perceived that way. And in all likelihood, Microsoft’s 94 percent share of the productivity software market (Gartner) will remain unshaken for some time to come.

To wit, a survey from Forrester Research (FORR) released on the eve of the Office 2010 launch shows quite clearly that Microsoft has little to worry about from Google Apps. Of the 115 North American and European enterprise and SMB decision makers the research house contacted, 81 percent said they use Office 2007, while four percent said they use Google’s productivity offerings. And one third said they plan to upgrade to Office 2010 in the next year.

Why?

Microsoft Office is familiar, and, in many cases, an upgrade to Office 2010 was included in their licenses (click on chart below to enlarge).

So while Google Docs might represent, as the search sovereign argues, “a real alternative for companies: a chance to get the collaboration features you need today and end the endless cycle of ‘upgrades,’” the market doesn’t yet much care. Yet. And that’s all that really matters.

Says Forrester: “The alternatives to Microsoft Office today do not meet the needs of the enterprises Forrester surveyed. Common end user barriers to adoption of alternatives include lack of required functionality, third-party integration requirements, user acceptance, lack of seamless interoperability with Office, and legacy content support needs. These gaps will be bridged in the coming years as Google, OpenOffice.org, and others mature.”

Amit Singh–a 20-year Oracle exec who has worked in product development, channel management, sales, strategy and acquisitions–has taken a job as VP of International Sales for Google’s enterprise business.

Singh (pictured) was most recently part of the North American team at Oracle (ORCL) responsible for running the company’s applications business.

At the search giant, he will focus on recruiting Fortune 500-size companies, especially in Europe and Asia, to use cloud-based apps being aggressively pushed by Google of late.

Google (GOOG) recently launched its Google Apps Marketplace store to offer more online business tools to customers as it seeks to compete with business software companies, especially Microsoft (MSFT), in providing all kinds of Web-based productivity and collaborative tools in the enterprise space.

Google’s approach has been to focus on the cloud-computing arena, which is what attracted Singh.

“I have become increasingly fascinated by the cloud and what it is doing,” said Singh in an interview with BoomTown this morning. “It is an absolutely exciting area.”

Singh said he got more interested in the arena and Google’s role in it, from his son, who is a big user of its online apps.

“I then became a user myself, and it was clear that there was real potential for a company that is accelerating into the space,” he said.

While Singh is aware that there is still some reluctance by big companies to turn over major swathes of their business computing to the cloud–mostly over issues of control, security and scalability–he said that attitude is changing fast.

“They are using Web-based technologies in the consumer market and then get to work and are frustrated by antiquated systems,” said Singh. “But it’s process and they have to get comfortable.”

Singh pointed to some recent big wins for Google in the enterprise space, such as Genentech (DNA) and Jaguar Land Rover.

“Everyone has a vision of business transformation and Google is at the forefront of that,” said Singh, who noted the cultural differences between his old job at Oracle and new one. “It will be an incredible change for me.”

Here’s Singh’s bio, via Google, and details about the new job, which he started at a week ago:

Amit Singh joins Google as Vice President, International Sales and Operations for Enterprise after nearly 20 years of leadership at Oracle in different facets of the business including Product Development, Channel Management, Sales, Strategy and Acquisitions. He started his career in Product Development designing and building some of the first Oracle Applications. He then moved into channel management to recruit ISV’s to build solutions on the Oracle database platform. Amit then joined direct sales and spent the next decade as a Sales Rep, Regional Manager and Vice President managing different regions in the country with responsibility for both database and Applications products. In his most recent role as Group Vice President, he led the Applications Strategy Group for Oracle and was responsible for Applications acquisitions. He also managed shared service functions in North America and ran Sales and Operations for some of the fastest growing acquisitions including Demantra, G-Log, Agile, Logical Apps and Peoplesoft HR. Amit also managed Oracle’s competitive strategies against companies like SAP and Salesforce. He is a graduate of Rensselaer with a Masters in Industrial and Management Engineering and an undergraduate Electrical Engineering degree from the Delhi College of Engineering. Amit, his wife Monika, and their three children live in the Boston area and are in the process of relocating to Mountain View, California.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Along with 50 initial partners, Manymoon, the social productivity start-up that makes one of the more popular tools on Google’s apps platform, has joined the Google Apps Marketplace store rollout at the search giant’s Campfire One developer event tonight.

Manymoon’s exec spoke at the event, along with Intuit (INTU), Atlassian and Appirio.

(You can watch the event here.)

The San Francisco company, funded with only a seed funding round by Harrison Metal, offers an online collaboration app that businesses or consumers can use to organize group projects, conversations, tasks and documents that are often done via email or software.

Manymoon is rather typical of the innovative apps makers the search giant has been courting to populate its marketplace.

Before the Google (GOOG) announcement, BoomTown made this video of an interview with co-founders Amit Kulkarni and Manav Monga about the interesting space: