Google Beta Testing "Gmail For Your Domain" 283
ndansmith writes "Google is looking for organizations to beta test its new hosted email service. From the information page: 'This special beta test lets you give Gmail, Google's webmail service, to every user at your domain. Gmail for your domain is hosted by Google, so there's no hardware or software for you to install or maintain.' The beta test is limited, but Google is accepting open applications."
Do they intend to 'keep' everything (Score:5, Insightful)
Take that, Exchange (Score:3, Insightful)
Outlook and Exchange (Score:4, Insightful)
My domain is for me (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Maybe if they offered IMAP (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, what I see as a bigger issue for companies, is the fact that you probably do not want to store your email on some unrelated big corporation's servers.
If they had a gmail appliance however, this may solve both of the above issues - but now you own the software/hardware - going agains google's pitch.
How to piss off an entire industry.. (Score:1, Insightful)
2. Offer hosted e-mail with a domain.
3. Wipe out a core part of thousands of hosting provider's business.
4. Laugh that they can't possible complete with your behemoth of a company.
5. Profit!
How long until they offer webhosting too? Don't be evil? Don't make me laugh.
Re:Take that, Exchange (Score:4, Insightful)
yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
which company would allow people to integrate with a service that shows competitors ads as well as archives and allows you to interface with online chat?
not many that i know or would want to work with if you ask me. Businesses use services that can provide the above or they do it themselves. If it's a mom and pa shop sure it may work for them, but hardly an attack on Exchange if you ask me.
Re:Maybe if they offered IMAP (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, but then how is this different from using POP to do same? The main benefit of IMAP is consistent multi-folder support.
I did not mean to say that it is an unsolvable problem, just one that does not have an EASY GOOD solution, and while I use IMAP everywhere - I do not see immediate benefit of using it with GMail.
Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like a loser if you're reasonably paranoid. On the other hand, how many in-house e-mail operations are carefully managed for security and legal liability?
Re:How to piss off an entire industry.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:How to piss off an entire industry.. (Score:3, Insightful)
So now competition is evil?
Microsoft abused monopoly power to gain unfair advantage over other in the market.
Is google the only mail provider? No? Then they are not a monopoly.
Are they offering something either better than other offering or cheaper than other offerings? Yes.
Just like WalMart is "evil" for providing cheap crap. They compete. Don't like good cheap crap? You are free to pay extra a a boutique or run your own mail server and thumb your nose at WalMart and Google.
And when your connection goes down... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Their servers, your data. Not good for most. (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of them will look at this and say, "hey, who not?" No more lost email, no more hard time finding it ... we're nt talking technical sophisticates here - we're talking ordinary people who thing that "the Internet == the web," and whose web site is 4 pages of "brochure-ware" that hasn't been updated since the dot-com bust. They'll go for this because it makes sense for them.
Re:Excellent (Score:5, Insightful)
You can actually do this today already. The only thing you need is an e-mail forwarding service for you own domainname. You first forward you@domain.com to you@gmail.com, then goto you gmail account settings. Under the option "accounts" (not available in all languages, but US English will do) you add the email address you@domain.com and make it the default for sending new mail (after account verification).
This is exactly what I have been waiting for (Score:2, Insightful)
This could be a great revenue stream for google if they want to resell this solution on at relatively modest cost to companies of various sizes- it'd unify instant messaging and email for users under that domain, with tracking & search of previous converstaions and emails for later reference, and itd allow normal POP3 use of the account for normal desktop use.
IMAP and privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, they need to make clear and specific commitments to data retention guidelines. It may or may not be a problem for you that your E-mail in your Gmail account could hang around forever, but for businesses, that is an unacceptable risk. E-mail data (like other business records) needs to be retained for a specific amount of time, no more and no less.
Google copying Windows Live? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think so =)
Bad for companies, great for individuals. (Score:3, Insightful)
Check your facts (Score:1, Insightful)
When is Microsoft going to get credit when their ideas are stolen by Google? [wordpress.com]
Is it because blogs like Slashdot make tons of cash off Google ads that we see this Google worship?
Re:And when your connection goes down... (Score:3, Insightful)
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic
Gmail has a huge back-end and very reliable infrastructure. I've never heard anyone complain about lost mail sent through Gmail.
Re:yeah right (Score:3, Insightful)
plus if your users are in the habbit of moving large files through the system i'd imagine the bandwidth costs and/or time waiting for transfers could be quite significant compared to in-house hosting (this partly depends on where you live ofc). and how much more productivity will it cost you if internet goes down when your internal e-mail is outsourced?
Re:Their servers, your data. Not good for most. (Score:5, Insightful)
Google isn't after the megacorps -- it's after small business. Businesses that are nimble, willing to take chances, and small enough to made quick decisions. Google is never going to convince a huge company to offload its e-mail. But something like this could save thousands of small businesses money, time, and frustration while making their employees more productive.
Now expand mail to the whole range of Google rumors. Remember those Google desktop boxes we keep hearing about? Google is never going to wean the Fortune 500 to unhook from Microsoft's teat. But it can make serious inroads among the other 5,000,000 companies in America that can lay out $400 for a new computer with a trusted brand name that will let them get things done without worrying about viruses, spyware, or the constant upgrade cycle/Microsoft tax. Google, like many other companies would rather have 20% of five million businesses than 20% of the top five hundred businesses.
And since many of these small businesses are run by people who have things like Google Desktop on their home machines, and search the internet with Google already, Google isn't some strange name coming out of left field promising them the moon. They're a known quantity that the head of Joe's Antiques or Mary's Candy Shoppe can look at and say, "Well, it works great at home. I bet it would be good for my business, too!"
Think of all the Google things that don't work well in megacorp environments, but work well for small business:
> Google Desktop - Did the Kelley Girl lose a document? That's OK, Google Desktop will find it.
> Google Translate - OK for informal e-mails that small companies use to make a sale, but not robust enough for a real corporate contract
> Google Mail - Small companies don't have the time or technical know-how to manage mail servers.
> Google Alerts - Small companies can't afford clipping services, but Google can do the work for them.
> Google Catalogs - A B2B tool, and a method for keeping an eye on the competition and doing industry research.
> Froogle - Big business buys through contracts and channels and purchase orders and waits and waits and waits. Small business hits Froogle and gets it done.
> Google Maps - Great for small delivery companies, florists, pizza shops. Useless to megacorps like FedEx and UPS that have their own methods.
And obviously Google is thinking at least some about business, because front and center on their home page is a "Business Solutions" link.
Re:Check your facts (Score:2, Insightful)
You know, OSNews recently banned anonymous posting. The site instantly became a lot more bearable.
Re:yeah right (Score:2, Insightful)
- Not RFC compliant and it should die horribly alone for reverting the order of replies;
- What a red flag is for a bull, is Outlook for script buddies and crackers. A company that runs Outlook is like a matador in red: not smart.
Personally, being outsourced so many times, I see Outlook used only in clueless companies where the PH management started using Outlook, and either don't know or don't want to know anything else. I agree that no sane company should use centralized e-mail as well, especially when in another country or continent.
Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything (Score:4, Insightful)
And who's to say that when the government decides it needs to read your emails, that Google won't just hand them over? I wouldn't touch this with a ten-foot pole, business or personal.
Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything (Score:3, Insightful)
The concern there is not the fear of unearthing the evidence, its the sheer cost of processing the subpoena.
Shifting that cost to google sounds real sweet to me. Plus they can probably charge the plaintif for the reasonable costs if they are not a direct party to the suit.
Re:Live.com Custom Domain is great (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Maybe if they offered IMAP (Score:4, Insightful)
IIRC, you can't *upload* messages using POP3, but you can using IMAP.
Re:yeah right (Score:3, Insightful)
Outlook is one of a very few collaboration clients that do shared calendars at all, for example. This might seem basic to someone that doesn't know what is involved, I suppose. As I said, *these are not basic things*.
Having a directory service is easy. Having one that is useful is not, since you need to have global contacts and personal contacts, and a way to share those personal contacts. You need a friendly way to update these contacts.
Having a calendar is easy. Having one that is useful is not, since you need to have global calendaring, personal calendaring, things like room and equipment reservations, personal calendars, and a mechanism to share them, the ability to invite a person to a meeting, having them accept, and have a the meeting roster updated, the ability to determine when your potential invitees are availabe, etc. You need a friendly way to manage these calendars.
That is before delegation gets added in. Most mid-size and larger businesses want to be able to delegate such things. Many smaller business and institutions want to delegate as well. You don't want to do this by sharing passwords.
Again, this stuff is *not easy*. There aren't a lot of options, in general, and the OSS options are rather useless; the client support is abyssmal. If you need these functions, and run Windows or MacOS, then you are going to spend money. A web page interface is not a usable option (which is to say that the usability, bluntly, sucks on them). Evolution, KMail, and Kontact don't run on Windows, and they are the OSS alternatives.