There are two ways to look at Google’s new two-step security installation for Google Apps.

1. Google just made it harder for someone to hack into your account.

or

2. Google just gave hackers everywhere an incentive to steal your iPhone!

Of course, the chances of a hacker managing to get their hands on your Google password AND your cell phone are pretty slim, so we suspect option 1 will be the main outcome of this accouncement:

Two-step verification is easy to set up, manage and use. When enabled by an administrator, it requires two means of identification to sign in to a Google Apps account, something you know: a password, and something you have: a mobile phone. It doesn’t require any special tokens or devices. After entering your password, a verification code is sent to your mobile phone via SMS, voice calls, or generated on an application you can install on your Android, BlackBerry or iPhone device.

Here’s how it will look:

Fortunately, you can mark a computer as trusted, so you don’t have to complete the 2 steps each time you want to use your office computer.

Google Apps Premier, Education or Government users can activate the two-step verification now. Regular Gmail users will have to wait. Hah! Suckers! You may have Google Voice enabled in your Gmail, but we get the awesomeness of….extra security. :-\