Google Beta Testing "Gmail For Your Domain"

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."

Comments

Maybe if they offered IMAP

[Anonymous Coward]

POP is soooo 90's.

Re:Maybe if they offered IMAP

[Em Ellel]

Yeah, I am with you in some respects, but how do you reconcile IMAP with the GMail's way of creating "folders" (labels)? You'd end up downloading messages (or at least headers) multiple times and with 2.5GB of storage, the bandwidth required will be insane.

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.

Re:Maybe if they offered IMAP

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, in Thunderbird, I'd just have one big inbox folder, then use saved searches on labels (which I presume Google would add as some sort of standard header). So I could just as easily use my labeling there.

Re:Maybe if they offered IMAP

[Em Ellel]

Well, in Thunderbird, I'd just have one big inbox folder, then use saved searches on labels (which I presume Google would add as some sort of standard header). So I could just as easily use my labeling there.

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:Maybe if they offered IMAP

[nolife]

Companies have been offering this service for years, USA.net is one example. It is not good for everyone but there are a lot of businesses where this solution seems much cheaper and easier then maintaining their own email system (at least on paper it looks that way). In general, the more spread out your employees or offices are, the more advantage you get by outsourcing your email. I worked at a company with roughly 100K employees spread throughout the world that switched over. I left before it was completed but they are up and running on it now.

Re:Maybe if they offered IMAP

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, most IMAP clients can deal with nested folders, so google could just sort your labels into sets and create a hiearchy containing subfolders for the combinations of labels, say...

Deleted
SPAM
Inbox
-Friends
--Jokes
-Jokes
-Work
--Boss
--Jokes
--Projects

Google would use its awesome powers to work out that Jokes can be a subset of Friend emails and Work emails, and not the other way around.

Re:Maybe if they offered IMAP

[rm69990]

Well, Gmail, like Google's other services, is run on Linux servers, just like their Search Appliance. They could offer internal Gmail as an add-on for the search appliance/mini, or make a whole new Gmail appliance. It could be a new business model for Google.

When you consider the hardware is already in place at Google with their search appliance, they wouldn't lose too much money if it wasn't successful. And it's not like Google doesn't have lots of money to piss away ($8 billion with zero debt currently according to Yahoo! Finance) anyways.

Re:Maybe if they offered IMAP

[blackdragonblood]

I agree that gmail has room to grow. It doens't offer true IMAP but what it does have works just like it. After my mail is popped a copy is saved in my archived mail. I have a copy saved on gmail, and I can delete the one in Thunderbird. If I send a message from gmail.com. Later in tb I can see that I sent it. With this in mind, I see the lack of "true" imap is very minor.

Re:Maybe if they offered IMAP

[Anonymous Coward]

What if you have multiple computers? Not all of us want to use GMail, and GMail's pop only works well with one computer at a time.

Re:Maybe if they offered IMAP

[bigpat]

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.

They do this already with their google search appliances.

http://www.google.com/enterprise/gsa/product_model s.html

I don't see a good reason they couldn't do this with email as well. It wouldn't be cheap, but all but the smallest businesses will want to keep their business communications in house. email is too central to business operations to let it out the door.

Re:Maybe if they offered IMAP

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Yeah, but then how is this different from using POP to do same?

IIRC, you can't *upload* messages using POP3, but you can using IMAP.

Re:Maybe if they offered IMAP

[LnxAddct]

As far as storing the emails on another coroporation's servers go... externally hosting your email is a common solution for small businesses. Assuming the privacy policies are in line, this would be no different and it would lower the cost of infastructure and administration for the business. This beta even provides an administrator console so you have complete control over how your users are using it. If Google makes it either Outlook compatible in all regards, or if they add serious Calendaring/Scheduling capabilities, then they'll have a real winner. Small business represents over 99% of employees in the U.S (where a small business is defined as a business with less than 500 employees, although the majority of small businesses are less than 15 people), and small business is exactly the type of area that needs this stuff. Right now, externally hosting email typically costs around $12 per user per month, Google would smash that to hell.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Maybe if they offered IMAP

[transient]

you probably do not want to store your email on some unrelated big corporation's servers

Many small companies outsource their email. It frees them from having to worry about another server, and they don't have to hire someone with email expertise. All they have to do is pay a monthly bill.

Re:Maybe if they offered IMAP

[baadger]

Atleast with POP, you might be giving Google complete control of your domains MX, but you can download the messages and know that they're safe.

You can then setup Gmail to trash them from their servers, whether they do or not of course is upto them.

Re:Maybe if they offered IMAP

[HAWAT.THUFIR]

The way it's set up currently, no label can be a subset of any other label. Furthermore, it's currently not possible to POP e-mails with their labels, so it's hypothetical.

However, if one could POP e-mails complete with labels, that really doesn't get one anywhere. A single message can have one, five, ten labels applied to it. If none of those labels are subsets of each other that'd mean up to ten copies of a single message, each copy having a different label. Or, you'd need some seperate system to label the messages.

What'd make more sense would be to put the messages into a RDBMS, and those labels are a good start.

-Thufir

Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[tetrode]

I'd rather keep al my e-mail to my self, as a company...

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[Iphtashu Fitz]

Agreed. I might be tempted to use it for my personal domains, but given their desire to store and archive EVERYTHING I would never recommend it for corporate use if they plan to do this. The issue of e-mail trails in litigation alone would be enough to keep most organizations away from their service.

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[rob_squared]

They should do what they do with the rack mounted search appliance. That way you get all the web features of gmail, controlled privately and with your own domain for the addresses.

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't public companies supposed to archive all their corporate e-mails anyway, under Sarbanes-Oxley? Megacorps aren't going to use this service anyway, of course, but I can see it being useful for a mid-sized company to be able to say, "Yeah, Google has all of it."

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[bromoseltzer]

Understood. The test is whether they will be willing to encrypt all your files on their servers and let you have the only key. In any case, they can index or scarf your e-mail between SMTP reception and encrypted storage, or on the way out to your browser.

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:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[IdleTime]

Yeah, and what happens when they have an "accident" and your company's email is indexed and made publicly searchable via their webpage?

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[turbidostato]

"They should do what they do with the rack mounted search appliance"

They'll do, no doubt about it.

That's only a "beta", you know...

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[TMLink]

Yes, they are, but at the same time Sarbanes-Oxley is a bitch when it comes to who can have access to that same data. I know with how we've been interpreting the law we wouldn't even dare consider this. Then again, I think we've been going above and beyond what is necessary when it comes to SOx, so who knows.

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[Reaperducer]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't public companies supposed to archive all their corporate e-mails anyway, under Sarbanes-Oxley?

I don't think all of them. I know the last three companies I've worked for have all had a 30-day e-mail retention policy. No one was allowed to keep any e-mail, personal or business, for more than 30 days. This was a rule enforced at the server level, and after three or four important memos vanish from their mailboxes, employees quickly learned to print out anything they'd need long term.

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[Lehk228]

yea sort of like how they published everybodys gmail inboxes last week.

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[LordSnooty]

Hello paperless office, you're not looking too good these days... what's the point of e-mail if you have to print everything out?

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[Reaperducer]

Immediacy. E-mail happens now. Interoffice paper takes time.
And with 3,000 employees scattered across 200 cities around the world sending dozens of messages each day, I imagine e-mail also saves the company a bit in postage.

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[Billosaur]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't public companies supposed to archive all their corporate e-mails anyway, under Sarbanes-Oxley? Megacorps aren't going to use this service anyway, of course, but I can see it being useful for a mid-sized company to be able to say, "Yeah, Google has all of it."

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

[Zeinfeld]

Agreed. I might be tempted to use it for my personal domains, but given their desire to store and archive EVERYTHING I would never recommend it for corporate use if they plan to do this. The issue of e-mail trails in litigation alone would be enough to keep most organizations away from their service.

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:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[Midnight Thunder]

Well it all depends on what size company you are talking about. If you are big enough to pay for a full-time tech guy, then you probably don't need Google's service in this case. On the other hand if you are small outfit, whose speciality is not technology, then Google's solution would allow you to have useful service and have your domain associated with your e-mail addresses.

BTW I had suspected that the @gmail.com, login accounts was designed to allow something of the sort. Just one thing that would be interesting is whether they will do the same for Jabber, h Google Talk?

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[Ninwa]

They didn't hand over the search records the first time. Why are you inclined to believe they will hand over your records? They have no incentive.

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[Voltageaav]

You're absolutely right, if you think your employies are going to be sending a bunch of condemming emails that are likely to end with you in jail, then you probably won't want to use this. For the companies that aren't breaking every other law...

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[killjoe]

If you are running a business you are supposed to keep all your emails just for the purpose of handing them over to the feds or to other companies who may sue you.

Despite your percenption of freedom you too are supposed to hand over the contents of your hard drive if the govt serves you with a warrant. With the partiot act the feds can even come to your house when you are out and suck out the contents without ever telling you. All they have to do is to say that they suspect you of terrorist ectivities without specifying what, how or where.

Also consider this.

Lots of businesses oursource their email. They outsource spam tracking, they outsource their entire exchange hosting. This is where google is going with this. Think about it. They already have chat, they have email, they have file storage (two gigs per employee!), all they need is a shared calendar they are pretty much done. Since they have an API and since you can already mount your gmail account as a file system you already have shared folders.

This is googles attempt at a .MAC which is already a compelling replacement for exchange.

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[kennygraham]

What's that? You don't want the government to have instant access to all your communications? What are you trying to hide? Please come with me.

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[scruffy]

It will save your business the trouble of letting the government spy on you. One-stop spying will be available from Google.

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[murrama]

From working at a company that has to comply with the dreaded SOx controls, it's perfectly acceptable to use a service such as this providing all the key controls are met by the 3rd party and the evidence equired by the control is available to the auditors.

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[Hamfist]

IIRC, Sarbanes Oxley only affects publicly traded companies. The economic motor of the US is small and medium privately funded ventures. Sarbanes-Oxley does not affect them, and it would be a terrible mistake for any small or medium sized business to use gmail for corporate mail. Our small business (non-US) has a webmail fronted(s) provided by the ISP that hosts our mail (yes, choice of webmail frontends..). It works great, and you don't have to send important private company email via yahoo or hotmail or some other company that brings their own lube to an FBI subpoena party.

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[kcbrown]

They didn't hand over the search records the first time. Why are you inclined to believe they will hand over your records? They have no incentive.

Really? What if it were the Chinese government making the same demands?

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[plumby]

I've heard rumours of the same policy being introduced at our place. It's absolute madness, IMO. I regularly go looking back through old emails (often 2+ years old), and I ain't going to be able to find what I want somewhere in 10,000 sheets of paper. Only yesterday, I dug up an email from about three months ago to prove that someone had been sent (and had approved) a particular document.

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[thrillseeker]

The economic motor of the US is small and medium privately funded ventures. Sarbanes-Oxley does not affect them

Give it time.

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[mdfst13]

"all they need is a shared calendar"

I've been asking for that since gmail came out.

Outlook with Exchange is arguably the best groupware system out there. However, it's still horrible.

Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that Google will really try to solve that space. Really, how is GMail better now than it was when it was released? They've made a couple tweaks, but the basic system is the same. Scheduling is a much harder space.

For example, say I have a weekly meeting that is normally in room 202 but gets preempted by a more important meeting on 2/28. How do you store that and notify people? How do you schedule a room for an hour and a half and a meeting for only the last hour? How do you maintain both generality and full customization.

By contrast, email is based on standards. You don't have to work out a lot of workflow, because it's already in the standard. It's just details. With scheduling, there is no standard, so you have to work out the overall architecture *and* the details.

Re:Do they intend to 'keep' everything

[Peeteriz]

I am not a lawyer, but, saying simply, if you are subject to Sarbonnes-Oxley (sp?), and if there's a request for these mails, and you won't "just hand them over" yourself on a silver platter, then you'll be having huge, huge expenses to keep further from the federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison, since in any case, you are absolutely required to have these e-mails stored, not lost, and available for inspection in any case.

spellcheck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will they have the chinese goverment spell check my e-mails & filter it for spam too?

Take that, Exchange

[SmithSmytheSmith]

If they price this right, it could really take off, especially for small companies. I know we've been considering hosted Exchange solutions for a while and have been putting it off due to the price. And our POP/SMTP based solution is just too clunky. Does anyone think they'll try the all-in-one approach that Exchange provides?

Re:Take that, Exchange

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

They may, but I'd rather pay for a service that keeps my information private. I don't need google scanning all my email (and tasks/notes/etc if they do full Exchange type stuff) to market crap to me, and I'm sure that would be best case. The other uses they may find for my data, I'd find even more offensive.

Re:Take that, Exchange

[Bungopolis]

If they price this right Why are we assuming that there will be a price? By incorporating the domains of organizations, Google will be getting a massively increased userbase to which they can continue to target ads. Hosting 1000 accounts as part of an organization's domain costs Google no more than hosting 1000 regular GMail accounts, so I see no reason to think they would charge the organization (unless they remove the ads).

Re:Take that, Exchange

[Thing 1]

Hosting 1000 accounts as part of an organization's domain costs Google no more than hosting 1000 regular GMail accounts

Judging from the little that goes through my Gmail account, and the daily barrage of build reports, merge notices, corporate notices, coworker questions, etc., I would say it would cost significantly more to host corporate accounts than it would to host personal accounts.

Of course, I'm mostly in agreement with you, since I think the cost per account whether corporate or personal is fairly negligible--and also, Google is able to send even more targeted ads to the corporate accounts.

Imagine sending a coworker a question, only to have Google auto-respond with the answer to the same question that the same coworker answered yesterday to someone else? Obviously there are legitimate privacy concerns, like it shouldn't auto-respond to "How much does Dave in accounting make?"

Re:Take that, Exchange

[Capt. Caneyebus]

I don't think many companies will want their employees following the ads that would appear in the emails. It is bad enough that most management doesn't even want their employees to have internet access as it is, this would only worsen their views.

Re:Take that, Exchange

[thrillseeker]

it shouldn't auto-respond to "How much does Dave in accounting make?"

"I'm sorry Dave ... I can't answer that."

Outlook and Exchange

[KilobyteKnight]

Add Exchange type calendaring and this could seriously hurt Outlook and Microsoft in general.

Re:Outlook and Exchange

[westlake]

Add Exchange type calendaring and this could seriously hurt Outlook and Microsoft in general.

how many times have we heard this one before?

you think your boss wants Google to become the "one-stop" shopping center for corporate records under subpoena? e-mail, contact lists, schedules. it's a gold mine.

Re:Outlook and Exchange

[iknowwhatismyname]

Google vs Microsoft.. Allways the same deal.


Get a look on :
Microsoft Live Custom Domains http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=1 1b1081d-cfb0-4511-acb5-55db6b49f7de
And
Microsoft Office Live http://www.microsoft.com/office/officelive/default .mspx

Let's go for a new battle..
Round 1
Fight!

tssss

Re:Outlook and Exchange

[km790816]

http://domains.live.com/

Microsoft is already offering this. It's been around for about a month, I think.

Re:Outlook and Exchange

[stefanlasiewski]

Rumors abound about Google Calendar. The domain http://calendar.google.com/ went live a few months ago.

I use Yahoo's Calendar all the time, and I know many small nonprofits and other loosely organized groups who need this sort of cheap groupware solution. I share my calendar with friends & family, use the reminders, etc. It's the one feature that is holding me on Yahoo.

Re:Outlook and Exchange

[aaronl]

No, this hosted gmail bit isn't a threat at all to things like Exchange. People *don't* want web apps for these things. You might think they are cool and wonderful, but those that have to use it day in and day out will want your head for making them use it. You also don't have control of your data and backup, and all of your information would be offsite.

You would need a ridiculous amount more control than "just throw in calendaring". You need delegation and free/busy tracking. You need desktop notification. You need a real client application (ie: NO WEB BROWSER).

the email / office appliance

[Eric Coleman]

Google offers a search appliance, why not an email and/or web office equivalent? You buy the rack mount brains and hook up some hard drives, and you would stay in possesion of your data/email.

Re:the email / office appliance

[Vorondil28]

Google offers a search appliance, why not an email and/or web office equivalent? You buy the rack mount brains and hook up some hard drives, and you would stay in possesion of your data/email.

While to you and me, that would make sense, it defeats Google's mission: "...to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Part of that is to develop tools to analyze and 'understand' communication between people.

If you can give a chat log, a series of emails, etc' to a computer and have it distill all that banter down into concise, meaningful information, that's a big step to "organizing the world's information," and is precisely the goal of Google Talk and GMail. Keep in mind that Google isn't providing these services because they think we'll appreciate them. It's all so they can have more raw data to sift through in order to further hone the software that will ultimately make their search engine more useful.

Re:the email / office appliance

[arloguthrie]

You mean something like this?

Re:the email / office appliance

[rm69990]

Wouldn't Google's search appliance also defeat this mission then?

Re:the email / office appliance

[Vorondil28]

Wouldn't Google's search appliance also defeat this mission then?

Not really. As far as I see, search is Google's product and all else are either ways to support or enhance their search. So they're happy to sell a pretty yellow box o' search to you because that is their product. But you can think of GMail as R&D for search -- and most mega corps keep a tight lid on their R&D.

Re:the email / office appliance

[Keruo]

That's not what he ment.
If your network connection is down, that joyent would be unaccessible to you.
That was the whole point of having the email/office thingy as appliance.
Even if your network goes down, you'd still have the stuff you need at your local facility.

The idea about separate appliance is rather good, if I worked for small to medium sized organization, I'd consider and probably end up using such device if the price was right.

Re:the email / office appliance

[arloguthrie]

"In addition to hosted tiers that offer larger storage capacities, Joyent also offers the Accelerator, an easy-to-install server appliance that allows you to run your own private instance of the Joyent Connector suite of web applications."

It's exactly what he was talking about.

Excellent

[lukewarmfusion]

My small business is dealing with so much spam - plus the difficulty of using several machines to check our mail on - that we're actually forwarding our stuff through Gmail in order to filter spam. Not only that, but the interface is far more usable than alternatives we've used.

I keep saying "I wish we could use Gmail for our business email without having an @gmail.com in there."

This is very exciting to me.

Re:Excellent

[jmilezy]

Heh, and then Google will save all of your corporate emails to their servers... Is that what you really want? Sure they are a great search engine, but obviously Google has breached user privacy by saving our searches and implementing these "new" features in Google Desktop. The last thing I'd want them to do is save my private, corporate emails to their own servers for whatever reasons..

Re:Excellent

[Bungopolis]

It's true that corporate secrets and other sensitive information could be compromised through this program, however I doubt any organization that needs that kind of guarantee would actually choose to adopt it (if they do somebody probably needs to be fired). The primary audience seems to me to be institutions like schools, such as San Jose City College, which is the first to try the program according to the Google Blog, who can now offer their students a superior service without any cost.

Re:Excellent

[MikaelC]

Under GMail try:
Settings/Account/Send Mail As...

This allows you to send mail with no @gmail in the 'from:' field. (You are then asked to verify that you own the account you want to send mail from, probably to avoid mail spoofing).

Then just forward your mail from the selected adress to gmail and all should be fine.

Of course people can still identify the mail server the mail was sent from (by it IP) as belonging to Google, but this is only a minor annoyance to me.

Re:Excellent

[storem]

I keep saying "I wish we could use Gmail for our business email without having an @gmail.com in there."

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).

Re:Excellent

[figleaf]

Wow you are routing your business email through gmail.
With google's reputation for logging and tracking everything for posterity I would be very afraid to send my business communication that way.

Re:Excellent

[deesine]

Roger that. This is what business management courses would call a liability.

Re:Excellent

[Simon Donkers]

Then why not simply customise your from field? http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=g mail&hl=en&answer=20616

Re:Excellent

[Utopia]

You may not only be recieving spam but your domain might be used to send spam.
Your domain doesn't even have a SPF record.

See SPF Record Wizard and instructions on how to add SPF record to your domain.

Re:Excellent

[lukewarmfusion]

That's a blog post by someone else who's doing something similar to our own. I don't post my own domain on /. because I don't want my clients to search for me or my company and find my ranting, drunken posts on Slashdot. :)

Re:Excellent

[lukewarmfusion]

coughcoughencryptioncoughcough

Your emails are routed through an awful lot of servers on their way to the final destination. If you're sending sensitive information through plaintext email at all, it's a liability.

On a mostly unrelated note, we were asked to bid on a web project a while back where the client was taking credit card orders online and emailing the plaintext payment details to their office. Then, one of the employees (part-time high school students, mostly) were processing them on a physical terminal. When they refused to change that process or implement any security measures, we refused to help them. *sigh*

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm - doesn't this cause an infinite loop?

Re:Excellent

[jcims]

I've been where you are, hating horde, squirrelmail, etc (even though i shouldn't, it's an ambitious project).

We finally bought Kerio Mailserver for ~$600. Fantastic webmail, great imap (server side sorting!), good support of outlook, very good integrated calendaring, great integrated spam and anti-virus checking. Runs on a number of OS's, integrates with Active Directory, etc...

It does everything we ever actually tried to do with exchange for less than half the cost, and no stupid CALs to deal with.

You can get an eval copy from them, i would highly recommend checking it out. $600 isn't anything to sneeze at, but we're 7 ppl and i'd do it again in a heartbeat. If you do decide not to check it out, try RoundCube (http://www.roundcube.net/)

Re:Excellent

[rm69990]

This feature is awesome and I use it all the time. I used to have a Hotmail account before I switched to Gmail, but when I switched, I didn't want all of my contacts knowing my new email address. I simply installed Getmail+FreePOPs to forward my Hotmail email to my Gmail account, and added my Hotmail account as an option for the From: field.

Re:Excellent

[mr_zorg]

I do this to aggregate several different emails in one inbox. There's one big flaw with this, though. Google sets the address of your choosing as the From: header, but also sets the gmail address itself as the Sender: header. This causes Outlook (not Express, though) to display "xxx@gmail.com On Behalf Of xxx@yyyy.com". This allows people to discover my
"true" address as well as associate my multiple accounts with each other. I've asked them not to do this, but so far no response. Fortunately, most home mail readers don't seem to do this, only the full blown Outlook as far as I know.

Re:Excellent

[Ndiin]

Nope -- gmail stops it from looping.

Re:Excellent

[Jim Hall]

I keep saying "I wish we could use Gmail for our business email without having an @gmail.com in there." This is very exciting to me.

I work for the enterprise support area at a large University. We've been bugging Google for a while now about Gmail, asking if this will ever become a product that we can run on our own, similar to the Google Search Appliance. Sure, we already have a webmail system for students, but there is a lot of interest on campus to have Gmail for our University webmail.

I'm also very excited by this. We're viewing this as a cautious first step for Google to (one day) release a "Gmail Appliance".

Re:Excellent

[lukewarmfusion]

You're not the only University that would like to adopt this. I know schools that are interested in Google's analytics, too.

Re:Excellent

[luisdom]

I do that, and the only problem is that in certain email clients (MS flavored), the From: appears as "John Smith (js@gmail.com) on behalf of John Smith (John@smith.com)".
Which is a PITA.

Re:Excellent

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

I agree that sending sensitive information in the clear is never a good idea. But I submit that there's a big difference between the fact that there are a number of hops along the way from one mail server to another which can all access emails in transit and the archival of those emails in what one poster referred to as a "one stop subpoena shop." And in aggregate, even not-so-sensitive information can yield the pieces to something sensitive.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if the other email clients don't show it directly in the main inteface, the same information is still in the headers so it's trivial for them to discover it too.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

also the email that you forward doesn't get filtered :(

Re:Excellent

[batkiwi]

Google is doing the correct thing here per SPF reccomendations. Mailing lists should be doing the same thing (and mailman does by default now).

Re:Excellent

[thrillseeker]

Mailing lists should be doing the same thing (and mailman does by default now)

Yeah, and I really hate it. It confused the hell out of my several hundred mailing list members for awhile. It's still ugly. It shouldn't be the default. Being in the viewable headers alone is sufficient and much cleaner.

Re:Excellent

[mr_zorg]

Granted. But 90% of the users out there don't know how to look for it. Nor would they have any reason to under normal circumstances.

Re:Excellent

[mr_zorg]

I suppose my objection is more to the way Outlook displays it. I don't have a problem with the information being there for anyone who *really* cares to look (I don't have much to hide), but it does make things look strange in Outlook.

what they need next

[CdBee]

1). IMAP. Need simplicity of sorting messages in a local client or groupware application. POP is a one-way protocol and less than ideal for this.

2). Filtering or restrictions on some user or ability to review mailboxes

3). guarantee that ability to reset POP download count will be maintained, as business users have an absolute need to make remote backups of their mailboxes

My domain is for me

[Gyorg_Lavode]

I personally bought my domain simply because I wanted my information to reside on my hardware. I think in the future people will finding giving up control of their information wasn't the best idea.

Re:My domain is for me

[Sky Cry]

But... But it's Google! We trust Google!

Re:My domain is for me

[Anonymous Coward]

But information wants to be free :)

Seriously, though, I agree with you. If I ran a business I would not want all of my email to be accessible to Google. (or anyone else, for that matter). Somehow Slashdot will spin this into the second coming of Christ.

Re:My domain is for me

[killjoe]

I did the same thing. I got a DSL connection, a Powermac, installed MacOSX server on it, added plone for my web sites and off I went.

It's nice but these days my email server is just getting hammered with relay requests and emails to bogus_user_name@mydomain.com. Postfix to it's credit is handling the load OK but I am getting really tired of tweaking spamassasin constantly to filter the spam and the three to five SMTP connections PER SECOND must be chewing up bandwidth some.

I am ready jump on this whole hog. I will leave everything on my server but If I can point my mx record to google and be done with that headache I am all over it.

Re:My domain is for me

[michelcultivo]

And if you don't have a hosting solution at your house (like me) of your business you need to host it on an ISP that you don't known how is the procedure of storing email.

Re:My domain is for me

[Gyorg_Lavode]

At some point I expect MS to create a 'windows home server' addition. It'll be a box you plop down on your broadband connection. You chose the services you want: email, share your documents anywhere, microsoft word anywhere (ajax application), and it will mostly be autoconfigured.

Combine this with a paid administrator, (think how AOL 'administrates' -- patches, firewalls, scans -- your computer), and you have a solution most people can live with.

Honestly many linux systems are this easy for a large number of servers. It just needs to move into the windows real backed by a huge name.

How to piss off an entire industry..

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Be the size Google is.
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:How to piss off an entire industry..

[Anonymous Coward]

If the 'industry' wants to compete they should offer IMAPS and SMTP auth, with restictions on cross user forgery. POP3 and insecure MSA's are legacy offerings, put up or shut up!

Re:How to piss off an entire industry..

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be evil? Don't make me laugh. How is participating in the system known as capitalism "evil"? I thought we [slashdot] had, as an information culture, moved past the "that company is big and a corporation, so therefore, it is bad" mentality.

Re:How to piss off an entire industry..

[gatzke]

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.

Re:How to piss off an entire industry..

[The-Bus]

GeoCities has had free hosting for a decade. Yet hosting companies are still around!

Re:How to piss off an entire industry..

[Bogtha]

How long until they offer webhosting too?

Probably not that long, considering they already do it in a limited form (see Blogger) and already have a working business model (Adsense for page visits).

Don't be evil? Don't make me laugh.

How is it evil to outperform your competition and give away free stuff? It's not like Google have a monopoly on domains and bundle free mail hosting with it. If people choose to use Google for their mail hosting, it's because it's better than the alternatives, not because it's the default.

Re:How to piss off an entire industry..

[thechristelegacy]

This not evil at all. I for one say good for Google for trying to contribute to the community by giving away free services. I have seen nothing from them that is remotely evil. There is nothing wrong with designing the supieror product and making money off of it. Hopefully, this will force other such products and services to make their prices lower and to make better products. Competition is something we need.

Re:How to piss off an entire industry..

[RobertLTux]

yes but i would like to see any free host touch 1 domain name is MINE 2 absolutely no evidence on the site of who my host is 3 fixed IP address and unlimited subdomains 4 unlimited e-mail accounts (subject to space availible) 5 direct access to mime types 6 99.99% uptime (and the only major outage was due to a server upgrade and i was given about six different e-mails on the subject 7 ZERO Spam from the admins 8 CHEAP AND LINUX based do a whois on my domian to see the company but if you link an image in the USA network you might figure out who it is

Re:How to piss off an entire industry..

[bennomatic]

3. Wipe out a core part of thousands of hosting provider's business.

Or... let thousands of hosting providers outsource that core part of their business. Maybe they'll even pay ISP's a percentage of revenue earned by their customers for hosting email service there. It is possible that they could change the entire industry without being evil.

Of course, it's also possible that you're right. I guess it's going to be a case of "news at eleven".

Re:How to piss off an entire industry..

[toiletsalmon]

Microsoft used to give away free stuff. They also didn't piss and moan as much about piracy until EVERYONE started using their stuff. By then, it was too late. It was easier for midsize to smallish businesses to pay the "Microsoft tax" than to switch to alternative software/solutions.

I think some people are weary of Google because the same thing could happen again. The really scary thing is that they could be bigger than Microsoft. Google seems to be alot more creative than the Microsoft of olde.

I'll be keeping my mail, thankyouverymuch. I'll pass.

Re:How to piss off an entire industry..

[Bogtha]

I knew somebody would make a Microsoft comparison. That's why I pointed out that Google didn't have a monopoly to abuse. And you can't pirate hosting. As for switching to alternatives, just download your mail from Google with POP3, it arrives in standard RFC 2822 format. There's no lock-in and no bundling. The comparison to Microsoft doesn't work.

Re:How to piss off an entire industry..

[toiletsalmon]

Basically, be weary of how trustful you are of Google is what I was trying to say. It can get us into a similar situation like we have here in the US with Civil Liberties. Once you give away certain rights/priviledges/data, you can never get it/them back. We shouldn't let Google lull us (as a public) into a false sense of Nirvana.

Re:How to piss off an entire industry..

[Anonymous Coward]

Your .edu address makes it obvious you're not in the real world yet where you actually have to earn a living to survive. Let's point a few things out here...

"So now competition is evil?"

It's not competition. When one provider is so massively bigger than the other that the 'competition' can't compete any longer it's a monopoly and given Google's stature, a bloody huge one.

"Microsoft abused monopoly power to gain unfair advantage over other in the market."

Just like Google is doing now, duh!

"Is google the only mail provider? No? Then they are not a monopoly."

If the SMEs opt for the stupidly cheap / free gMail with domain service (and why wouldn't they) there'll be no competition. If small hosting providers go under, their upstreams have nothing to fill their racks with, and the datacentres then have nobody to rent floorspace and power to, except well, maybe Googlenet once the non Google Internet industry disappears. What are all the redundant techs going to do? Ah yes, work at McD's and / or go live in their parents basement again and spend their days beating off over the latest from Google like half the fanboys here do.

"Are they offering something either better than other offering or cheaper than other offerings? Yes."

Not necessarily better, but given their share of customer eyeballs for their search engine they have a grossly unfair advantage on the e-mail providers.

"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."

Wal*Mart is evil for undercutting and offering free shelf slotting even if it means running at a loss for as long as it takes to put the competition out of business. Of course, you're still in higher ed so you probably don't realise these real world things yet.

Come back in 10 years and stand behind what you're saying now. You're all well to talk until you're the one adversely affected.

Re:How to piss off an entire industry..

[Anonymous Coward]

if i had mod points, i'd mod parent up.

Re:How to piss off an entire industry..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Just like Google is doing now, duh!"

Google does not have a monopoly on webmail or search engine. I don't think they have a monopoly on anything, so they have no monopoly to abuse.

"If the SMEs opt for the stupidly cheap / free gMail with domain service (and why wouldn't they) there'll be no competition. If small hosting providers go under, their upstreams have nothing to fill their racks with, and the datacentres then have nobody to rent floorspace and power to, except well, maybe Googlenet once the non Google Internet industry disappears. What are all the redundant techs going to do? Ah yes, work at McD's and / or go live in their parents basement again and spend their days beating off over the latest from Google like half the fanboys here do."

Blah blah blah. What about the buggy whip makers? How will they compete?

"Not necessarily better, but given their share of customer eyeballs for their search engine they have a grossly unfair advantage on the e-mail providers."

So advantage is "grossly unfair" just because you started small and managed to compete and win? Sounds pinko stinko to me.

"Wal*Mart is evil for undercutting and offering free shelf slotting even if it means running at a loss for as long as it takes to put the competition out of business. Of course, you're still in higher ed so you probably don't realise these real world things yet."

Loss leader, standard practice in economics. What exactly does it take to compete with google? A crapload of CPUS and HDs and some bandwidth. Hell, they have no capital in the traditional sense. And a personal attack on "higher ed", very nice.

Re:Wow

[Em Ellel]

Invites insanity is so over - just sign up.

Employee targeted ads

[LoverOfJoy]

"I see you are doing personal emails during work-hours. Click here to see what your boss really wants you to be doing!"

Re:Employee targeted ads

[Anonymous Coward]

You should patent that idea quickly before google starts doing it.

Re:Employee targeted ads

[noidentity]

More like "Boss caught you doing personal e-mail at work? Covert E-mail can help." or "Super Deluxe Solitaire for Windows. Great for passing the time at work!" Google ads come up for employees.

So let me get this straight...

[MajorG17]

The way I read it, you get addresses that use your domain name (e.g. user@xyz.com), but use the GMail system, including storage space and search capability. Sounds nice, but I think I'm already doing that, without some special program:

1. Set up user@xyz.com
2. Set up copy@gmail.com
3. Auto-forward all mail from user@xyz.com to copy@gmail.com
4. Have copy@gmail.com "Send mail as" user@xyz.com
5. Read and send your email using copy@gmail.com (with all its abilities), and everyone thinks you're user@xyz.com

Is there a difference between this and the service that I'm just not seeing?

Re:So let me get this straight...

[inter alias]

Maybe they make it less hassle (global for the domain) by setting G servers up as MX?

(too lazy to rtfa..)

Re:So let me get this straight...

[szczym]

there is no way to overide "from" in gmail... and that sucks

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Utopia]

That one of the neat features http://domains.live.com/ provides.
I absolutely don't need setup a copy to a hotmail or a msn account with Live.com

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

That means you need to have 2 accounts. With Gmail for domains, you only need to have the domain account. Cutting out the middleman.

I'm currently testing it and I'm unsure how much information to reveal, but this offering gives more control to the site owner than one could get with regular gmail.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[anjrober]

I completely agree. I do the same thing the parent poster does (and presumably you do) and I hate that the from is from @gmail....If this corrects that alone, I'll go for it.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[h2d2]

Yes there is. It's been around for a few months matter of fact...

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... yes there is. Go to your GMail settings, go to Accounts, and add a "Send Mail As" address.

And then come back when you know what you're talking about.

--
M

Re:So let me get this straight...

[anjrober]

That's great! Thanks. Next time, lets try it without the attitude though. Just not necessary. And uncool.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[ACME Septic]

Is there a difference between this and the service that I'm just not seeing?

Yeah. You're eliminating the middle man that's currently forwarding your email to gmail.com. Gmail's mail servers are listed as the MX for your domain, and all email destined for you@xyz.com is sent directly to your gmail account. Now you're only having to worry about one point of failure (Gmail) rather than two.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

And next time they should research and notice that it sends it so that some clients shows that it sends it "someone@gmail.com on behalf of someone@example.com" which defeats the purpose when people are able to get my discover my email is someone@gmail.com.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

we have researched...
sender: @gmail
from: @domain

THERE IS NO WAY TO CHANGE THAT!

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

that's right. that's why this service will be useful. it actually will come from the proper email.

Skins for gmail

[MatthewParker]

skins for gmail
http://gmailskins.mozdev.org/

yeah right

[cybrthng]

no sane business would outsource there email this way. Outlook as a rich client does a lot more than calendar and email and even small businesses wouldn't (shouldn't) do anything like this. Where is the google helpdesk? where is the google backup/restore policy? who takes the calles when it's slow? who will restore deleted messages? who will verify that email is fitting the corporate policies?

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:yeah right

[LiquidCoooled]

If the chat is securely logged, then why not?

Its a good way to handle the nitty gritty business needs (two techs in different companies liasing about some technical issue) without being slowed down by mail.

I know a great many issues that can be dealt with in under 5 minutes that because of mails and faxes and even phone calls (describing code modifications over the phone is not efficient) can take over a week to handle.

Re:yeah right

[cybrthng]

internal chat is great.. what gmail offers isn't secure at all. I use SIP chat at most business and love it, won't dispute that. But archiving it an your mail interface at a 3rd party site isn't my idea of "business savy"

Re:yeah right

[straightcash]

I agree, it may not be able to replace something as useful as exchange, but it sounds a lot to me like you're an admin. :)

Re:yeah right

[segfaultcoredump]

There are lots of comanies that do exchange outsourcing. You run outlook and connect to their exchange servers. Pricing starts at about $8 per user per month. Yes, thats $96USD per person per year.

Compared to the average discounted cost of an exchange CAL, $96 a year is twice as expensive. But once you factor in the cost of the hardware and the admins to run it, it would make sense for small to mid-sized organizations to outsource this sort of operation. Once you hit about 500 mailboxes, it starts to become cheaper to just bring it back in house.

Now, if google can find a way to offer the service at a significant discount to the exchange ASP's out there (think $1-$3 per month per person) and provide a similar or better end user experience.... Well, then they may be on to something. All they need is an outlook plugin (Both Sun and Novell have one that link outlook to their mail/calendar systems) for those who demand outlook on the desktop and they can easily snag a ton of companies who need email but dont want to invest in an it staff to maintain the email.

Re:yeah right

[petermgreen]

Yes, thats $96USD per person per year.

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:yeah right

[PietjeJantje]

No sane company uses Outlook:
- 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:yeah right

[Peter_Pork]

Sure, but it's free, and it works much better than the email system in half the companies using Microsoft's solution. I've experienced plenty of MS based email systems that work really poorly, losing emails, breaking aliases after each reorganization, doing a bad job with spam and viruses, etc., and all of these for lots of cash (email sysadmins + software licenses). Outsourcing and outcosting email to Gmail is really attractive for plenty of organizations, especially small to medium size ones. Universities and other educational institutions are another good market for this. Gmail's free, high-quality service is substantially better than anything I've seen in the three university email systems I've dealt with over the years. Let's face it. Gmail is works damn well, so it's hard to justify paying for a poorer service.

Re:yeah right

[Karma Farmer]

Outlook as a rich client does a lot more than calendar and email

Other than integration with Active Directory, what else does Outlook do out of the box?

(I do know that it's relatively simple to extend Outlook, and that for many organizations getting rid of Outlook would be as impossible as getting rid of Excel or Word. But without paying a developer, what does Outlook do other than directory, calendar, and email?)

Re:yeah right

[Jim Hall]

Yes, but what I'm also wondering is: can I use Gmail as my mail service for my free software project? It's often easier to find (or provide your own) web hosting than (good) mail hosting. If I could use Gmail for my very small email domain (4-6 email addresses) then I'd be a happy guy.

Google: Are you listening?

Re:yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

I've just finished roll out of Microsoft's Business Contact manager. It is a sql CRM db which is an ACT! replacement. You can link all of your contacts/accounts/opportunities to the events and items that pertain to them.
"Included" with office sbe and pro out of the box.
e

Re:yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not Google, but the answer is yes, you can use Gmail for your domain. I'm currently testing it on one of my personal domains. I'm not sure what you're not sure about.

Re:yeah right

[aaronl]

It isn't what Outlook does by itself, it's what any rich client can do when connected to a proper server. You get contacts, shared contacts, calendars, shared calendars, delegation, appointment tracking, free/busy notification, shared/public message stores, to do lists, and - oh yeah - email tacked on to all that.

Outlook will connect to OpenGroupware, Exchange, Open-Xchange, Kolab, and a few others, and serve all of the groupware functions. There are a few other clients that will do similarly, such as GroupWise. Then you have things like Notes/Domino that do huge volumes more than the others.

That is a lot of things, and they are not trivial.

Re:yeah right

[killjoe]

Actually it's more expensive to oursource exchange because remote exchange only works with outlook. It has a proprietary protocol. This means that for each employee you also have to putchase either outlook or office.

If a company is looking to ditch MS office this a great way to go. You can use any email client you want.

Of course .MAC beat them to it by a few years but hey.

Re:yeah right

[Karma Farmer]

You get contacts, shared contacts, calendars, shared calendars, delegation, appointment tracking, free/busy notification, shared/public message stores, to do lists, and - oh yeah - email tacked on to all that.

All of that, except for delegation, is just basic calendar, email, and directory services.

How absolutely, mind numbingly brain dead are most clients, if they can't even do insanely simple stuff like that?

Re:yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, we know Google has been using this internaly for quite some time (even before Gmail went public), and they seem to be sane and doing alright...

Re:yeah right

[aaronl]

Well, considering that Mozilla, Thunderbird, Eudora, Pegasus, The Bat, Outlook Express, GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and I'm sure quite a few others, do not do "just basic calendar" or directory services, the vast majority of clients are "mind numbingly brain dead".

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.

Re:yeah right

[hotdiggitydawg]

Its a free service. Got a problem? Just google for your solution.

Where is the google backup/restore policy?

Its called "Forward mail to another account and keep a copy in Gmail". Comes standard with every Gmail account.

Who takes the calles when it's slow?

Google's shareholders. Or more likely your own ISP, I suspect. And based on years of bitter experience I daresay that a Gmail server will have better performance and uptime than your average in-house corporate Exchange server too.

Who will restore deleted messages?

You have 2.6 Gig. If you're not sure you want to delete something and you delete it anyway, you're a fool. Either that, or you're using your account to store porn, pirated movies or just REALLY want to re-read all that spam.

Who will verify that email is fitting the corporate policies?

Who wants to work for a company that imposes fascist restrictions on employee communication?

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?

I know one which will be getting a strong recommendation to sign up first thing Monday.

Re:yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

Right... because Outlook is JUST ANOTHER email client. Oh.. wait.. there are bunch of other features there important to businesses and power users there? Forget 'em! Only clueless people use those useful features. Besides, Outlook XP and 2003 are a script kiddie's paradise. Please ignore the fact that the client can be set to execute nothing.

Hey, I'd love to have an alternative to Outlook. The problem is that most developers (commercial and OSS alike) seem to think that Outlook is only email and thus ignore or put very little thought into developing the 90% of features that ARE NOT email.

Re:yeah right

[jrockway]

> Well, considering that Mozilla, Thunderbird... do not do "just basic calendar".

Wrong :) http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/

Frankly, "enterprise calendaring" (i.e. Exchange) is so popular in business because it allows people to look like they're working when really they're just updating their "away/present" status or forwarding spam to 42 of their closest friends. "Sorry, I'm really busy now. As you can see I'm looking at a window with appointments on it." "Oh."

Personally M-x calendar handles all of my calendaring needs (i.e. none. I have a good memory), and looking behind me tells me whether or not my co-workers are around. The thousands of dollars saved not having Exchange go directly into my pocket, theoretically.

Re:yeah right

[aaronl]

Mozilla Calendar, in all its incarnations, is barely alpha quality software. It only really works for personal calendars, with no collaboration. Lightning doesn't have a real release and Sunbird is 0.3alpha. As you admit to, if you don't need a calendar, then I suppose it's fine. When it's released, then it is an option; for now, it is not.

I've spent more time than I like trying to find a low cost solution to desktop calendaring with the features that Exchange/Outlook or GroupWise can offer. I would prefer to use OSS, but the problem is that nothing is currently usable that is OSS. If I was willing to go with a web interface, then I would be done, but that is not a realistically acceptable option.

Re:yeah right

[PietjeJantje]

Yes, the 90% of Outlook that is not e-mail. I love it! I use Outlook for my personal finance. I use Outlook to download my p2p music. I use Outlook to frag the hell out of people. E-mail? Pah! Who wants to e-mail with Outlook?? How dare you say Outlook is an e-mail program?

Re:yeah right

[michelcultivo]

And who does this on a small business today? It's a good option for a small business that need email and can't expect to pay $20,00 for hosting solutions.

Their servers, your data. Not good for most.

[bbzzdd]

My company threw a fit yesterday regarding the potential of internal documents ending up on Google's servers via Google Desktop 3.0. The IT department ordered that all copies of Desktop be uninstalled, even though the dubious functionality is turned off by default.

I can't see many large companies trusting Google with their internal email and documents. The ASP model will not be embraced by many. If they were serious about eating Exchange's lunch, they would offer Gmail as a self-hosted solution.

Convenient

[Council]

I was just looking at forwarding mail from my domain (just to me) through GMail, because I like their interface and I like not having to handle spam filters myself. I was sitting here literally moments ago thinking "how well will GMail handle auto-forwarded spam? It'd be nice if I could use the GMail interface for mail in my own domain." when they come out with this.

So it's as I suspected. The Google Desktop privacy infringements now include picking up my brain waves. That, and time travel, because they couldn't have developed this in 15 seconds.

And, you know, the scary thing is that I just spent a moment thinking "Google reaching into my mind and indexing my memory wouldn't necessarially be evil. It might be helpful, and --" And then I had to splash cold water on my face.

You're a seductive one, Google.

Re:Convenient

[thelost]

it's not such an unfeasable idea though. We store more and more of our thoughts and thought processes externally on our computers and servers. While letting a third party company store our memories is questionable, storing them on an external medium seems like a way forward. Look at it like this, there are levels of privacy in our thought processes, there are things we are happy to share with strangers, things we will only share with friends and things we won't share with anyone. If I have a thought that is completely public then why need I waste brainspace on it at all, surely it would be better to store it externally; And also if it's a piece of public info then there is a great chance other people have the same info, so you could just store that information once and share it between hosts/distributed brains.

Re:Convenient

[Khalid]

Just use a Wiki. I have been doing this for at least four years now, it works wonders. I have started with TWiki, then migrated to Mediawiki when I became a Wikepedia addict. I store evryting in my local Mediawiki, ideas, thoughts, to do lists, drafts, specifications, bug lists, interesting articles, and even interesting Slashdot comments :). I have adopted a Wikipedia style of doing things, using categories, merging articles or spliting them when necessary. I have created my own local Wikipedia, next thing I will probably install Lucen (search engine) and nothing will never be lost. My ultimate goal is dump all my memory into that thing and then create a Semantic Web with Artificial Intelligence capabilities :)

Google copies Microsoft Again

[George41]

Sounds a whole lot like Windows Live Domains (http://domains.live.com/) to me. What's the big deal?

Re:Google copies Microsoft Again

[Anonymous Coward]

At a quick glance, Gmail offers more accounts per domain and much much more storage.

Maybe MS will copy Google and offer more storage, too, like they did with hotmail? :P

Live.com Custom Domain is great

[Utopia]

I have been using http://domains.live.com/ along with a Live.com mail account.
I love the ease of use and the featuresets live.com provides.
I am going to give gmail a spin too.
But I believe Live.com custom domains will be hard to beat.

Re:Live.com Custom Domain is great

[slashkitty]

uhm, only 60 addresses? only 250 mb storage? Windows requirement? It'll be easy to google to beat.

Re:Live.com Custom Domain is great

[figleaf]

2GB if you signup for live mail beta at the same time.
And unlimited accounts if you signup with offive live beta.

Re:Live.com Custom Domain is great

[slashkitty]

I certainly don't see that anywhere. Are those Windows only services?

Re:Live.com Custom Domain is great

[killjoe]

Mmmm. Trust Microsoft or trust google?

Oh I know that's an easy one. I would trust google before I trusted MS!.

MS already do this

[master811]

Well MS already are providing exactly this service as part of their ideas.live.com (its still in beta) but does the same thing using hotmail and works perfectly well. Of course at the moment you are still limited to 250MB storage but that should go upto 2GB (and tbh who needs anymore than that anyway) when they are finished with the new Outlook style hotmail.

Re:MS already do this

[rm69990]

Well Microsoft better make Windows Live Mail work reasonably well if they want that service to be successful. I spent two months trying to get into the beta program, and about 2 hours using it before I opted out and went back to Hotmail. And then 2 weeks later, I got a Gmail invite. So this was back in December, it probably has improved since then.

My beefs:

1) Shitty Firefox support
2)Sending emails wouldn't work, kept clicking Send (waiting a minute between clicks), then I would end up sending the email 5 times. Gmail is instant 99.9% of the time when I click Send, and for the other .1% of the time, it normally only takes 5-10 seconds.
3)Windows Live better offer a reasonably priced pay product for organizations, because the ads are freaking unbearable.
4)Not really a gripe, but more along the lines of a feature request. I love Gmail's way of holding down shift to open everything in new windows. If I want to type up a very long email and want a lot of space to work in, I simply hold down shift and click compose. This works good for professional emails (such as one I recently sent to my Alderman) where you want to have it looking a certain way with regards to formatting. I still use the normal compose box though for quick 3 line personal emails. Also, opening a conversation in a new window removes all of the ads from it (which aren't exactly intrusive in the first place).

Re:MS already do this

[laffer1]

The problems you experienced are due to it being a beta. In the real world, beta means that the software is unfinished and not ready for general use. Google calls everything a beta and people don't realize what it means anymore. For example, netscape 2 beta crashed going to websites much like IE7 beta can. Netscape 4 pr2 crashed like crazy as did IE4 beta 2. In the old days, beta's didn't work right because they were not done. In google language, they call everything a beta so that they can say its a beta if it doesn't work right or people bitch about lack of features. Its very clever but now people expect beta code to be perfect. Next alpha code will be real beta code until google starts releasing public "alphas".

Also, let me address your points.

1. its microsoft, would they really support firefox? Most of their sites are going IE only again to a point i can't use IE7 beta on them as they are coded for IE6.
2. see beta dialog above
3. i agree
4. sounds good.

If google is so noble, why don't they release their gmail software as open source. (i.e. the code running on their servers) I wouldn't mind having a good webmail and mail server setup on my server. I hear the argument microsoft should open source windows all the time, why not google's software.

I'm still hopeful about hula.. novell's open source mail server. Someone is working on freebsd patches so maybe it will get stable. If not, it might even persuade me to use linux.

Re:MS already do this

[rm69990]

I never have said that Google should open source any of their software, and I have never said Microsoft should either. I agree it would be a noble gesture on the parts of both companies, but I'm indifferent as to whether they actually do it or not. They wrote the software, own the copyrights, its up to them and last but not least, it is none of my business.

That's my view anyways.

And to address number 1, if Microsoft wants to shut out 10% of their potential market, let them. I just won't use their services, as I have now been doing for the last couple months.

I am not against Microsoft. If Windows Live Mail was good enough to convince me to switch back from Gmail and worked in Firefox, I would definately use it.
I guess I'll have to see when it comes out of Beta, seeing as I opted out.

Re:MS already do this

[rm69990]

To address your post further, this was the first sentence of my post.

Well Microsoft better make Windows Live Mail work reasonably well if they want that service to be successful

I was kind of hinting in the future when it comes out of BETA. I should have made it clearer what I meant though. My bad!

GoogleBox hosting

[n54]

I've been wondering for a while if free webhosting (with or without normal domain names) wouldn't be a perfect fit for Google's business model, it would fit snugly with Gmail for domains.

- Google already has plenty of hardware and there might not be much need for additional hardware as becoming a hosting provider would remove the necessity of caching those sites (why cache something you have direct access to?)
- Google text advertising could easily be a mandatory part of any hosted websites (perhaps a minimum of 5 text-ads)
- however there should be no invisible frames, toolbars or similar unless a user/content owner/provider actually wants it (opt-in)
- mycoolsite.google.com or similar (I wouldn't actually expect them to use google.com for this) as free domain names (naturally with Google's control/TOC and approval) as well as support for regular domain names
- the TOC would allow for or mandate that sites do such-and-such for example in regard to robots.txt or better meta-info (and of course the Google-hosted site would have to agree to be siphoned for data)
- Google could sell (or also swap for ad revenue) ordinary domain names as well as different levels of mirroring, guaranteed bandwidth levels, statistics & analysis, increased hosting space and so on. Imo they would be smart to include such as php, python, and ruby by default
- if Google provided/made a micropayment system things would possibly become even simpler if a site was already hosted by Google

Unlimited hosting space as well as (transparent to/readable by Google) database support might actually be the best idea. I'm sure it would blow away plenty of the competitors for those not overly concerned about having Google dissecting every little piece of your website for information on a daily basis.

Doesn't Google already own Blogger? However Blogger is limited in comparison to a normal website. This is but a tiny step really, a win-win situation increasing Google's reach while providing a service essentially for free (just like Gmail).

I'm not too afraid of the internet becoming googlenet :) the above would seamlessly coexist with other solutions imo.

Re:GoogleBox hosting

[Anonymous Coward]

Then I'd sue them for stealing my idea (jointly came up with the idea of doing just this 6 years ago but noone was interested in paying for text only ads)

Re:GoogleBox hosting

[h2d2]

I woudn't host with Google unless it's a paid service, *or* I get the same features and ownership I get at my paid webhost. Other than that, such a service would be no different that Google's Blogger bloghost service, with that ugly bar on the top.

Re:GoogleBox hosting

[n54]

You might not be interested and I wouldn't recommend what I outlined so far for most (or possibly any) businesses out there but that's actually a small piece of the market for hosting. Most sites have no real confidential data to worry about (tons of different communities, forums, game-sites, individual sites etc. ad nauseum).

But actually it wouldn't be that hard for Google to draw up a contract which made it less worrysome to do something like set up a webshop or run a small business webpage on the site; seperate private customer information from the rest and keep that under lock and key (making the user encrypt it without giving Google the key). This could easily be done while evading abuse by either Google or the content-owner.

Blogger is extremely limited as is almost all free hosting providers to date, neither compare to what I'm talking about.

Re:GoogleBox hosting

[students]

How about this hypothetical situation: Google actually pays people to use their free hosting service, based on the number of clicks on the ads in the hosted pages. Of course, the web site creator would get less per click than they would if they had an external site, but they would make just as much money because they wouldn't have to pay for hosting. This plan seems like a good way for Google to increase the prevalence of their ads.

Google would have to prohibit other sorts of commercial activity on the sites they host, or else they would end up hosting other people's ads for free. That's the tricky bit.

Re:GoogleBox hosting

[Anonymous Coward]

Hosted web service! With ads! Novel idea!

Wonder why nobody else thought of it?

Re:GoogleBox hosting

[n54]

The way I was thinking people would be paid standard rates for the mandatory Google text-ads (as well as additional ones of course). If someone creates a great site they'll get a nice revenue stream relative to click-through. So yes in practice Google would be paying people to sign up but as a win-win at small cost to Google.

Benefits for Google include:
- an expanded reach for their advertisements as the cost of entry for people becomes nil (or extremely close to it) except for time & effort. The "GoogleBox" sign-up & support pages should of course provide plenty of text-ads focusing on web-authoring etc. ;)
- at least slightly greater control against click-fraud since they're hosting the site (ease of logging and comparing IP/MAC between site-hits and ad-hits which might make at least some kinds of click-fraud either unsuccessful or prohibitly expensive)
- avoiding caching while providing the possibility of deeper levels of data mining in relation to targeting ads
- implied in the above a possible first-public-use of semantic targeting processes since they have full access to all data at any time in a completely different way than sending out spiders/crawlers and waiting for partial results or a somewhat old cache (I can't really say if this will provide enough of a difference to be a valid point but my guess is it would be)
- instant full access would also open for a qualitative jump of search-indexing of hosted sites...

I'm sure there can be more positives I haven't thought of and it all seems to be available at a very low cost to Google.

This has to be done right and not exclude people, Google should want to aim for diversity as the concept of their take on advertising is based on micro-targeting the long (and wide) tail of content. It's important to note that the idea rests on avoiding inhibiting great site design, content, and possibilities the way your average free hosting provider or even Blogger does. To avoid throwaway websites it might be necessary with some sort of a small initial deadline for a site to reach one of several metrics to get greenlighted, I'm not sure... well... this would all have to be Beta in the start anyway lol ;)

With a hosting plan including enough goodies like support for a wide variety of client and server scripting solutions etc. it would probably be more than enough to attract people. If successful they might also want to make alternatives quelling privacy concerns for "smallish" sites that have such (webshops, small businesses etc.), i.e. solutions seperating out confidential content and giving control over it to the content-owner (there might be other solutions as well depending on the situation; for example some degree of partnering if Google provides a payment solution for a webshop).

I agree it might be a good idea for Google's TOC to ban non-google commercial for-money advertising except for referral programs like Amazon links etc. which is part advertisement and part information/ease of use (needs to be differentiated from voluntary non-commercial ads like f.eks. an image-link to slashdot or a game you love etc.). I think it probably would be in Google's own interest not to be too strict (like removing the possiblity of having a PayPal graphic for donation etc.) or they could simply make it go through them and approve any ad as long as they get to take something like 0.1% of the value in the process (a simpler solution). Anyway if done right I doubt it would put that many people off and if they want more ad revenue they can also sign up for more Google text-ads or banners.

Sorry for the long reply :)

And when your connection goes down...

[Richard_at_work]

you not only lose new email for the duration, but also all your stored email unless you take the step of pop3ing stuff down, and if you do that then whats the point of using this service?

Re:And when your connection goes down...

[Anonymous Coward]

Webmail is great for people on the go who want to check email at various computers that aren't necessarily their own. Having POP allows for offline access.

I have my own domain where I can check messages in Outlook. The host offers webmail applications so I can check my email while away from home, but the interface isn't as nice as Gmail.

I agree with a lot of people here who want imap support.

Re:And when your connection goes down...

[SuperQ]

That's why gmail supports pop3. You can keep a backup copy if you're paranoid.
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic= 1555

Gmail has a huge back-end and very reliable infrastructure. I've never heard anyone complain about lost mail sent through Gmail.

Re:And when your connection goes down...

[mykdavies]

I work in a company of about 1000 people, and our mail servers are unavailable out of hours for backups to run, and are brought down maybe every couple of months for assorted maintenance activities. Not only does Gmail have a much better availability than our in-house service, it would probably be cheaper for us, and be easily accessible when working off-site -- what's not to love?

At a previous job we were looking at a cheap web-based email solution for around 40,000 staff, and I can assure you I'd have looked very closely at Google's offering.

"on behalf of" problem

[Wierdy1024]

That doesn't work:

When you send your mail to someone who uses outlook and they reply they see "copy@gmail.com sending mail on bahalf of user@xyz.com" in the from line. That totally defats the purpose of doing it, as not your busness conatcts still see that you're using gmail, and cross you off the "serious clients" list.

Re:"on behalf of" problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Patently false, if you do it right (changing the From in addition to the Reply-To).

Re:"on behalf of" problem

[Wierdy1024]

The "From:" and "Reply-to:" mail headers are fine - the one outlook looks at to make the "on behalf of" tag is the "Sender:" SMTP header, which gmail always sets to your @gmail.com address. I've never seen any other program use the "Sender:" header, so I guess it's new or nobody's ever used it before.

Re:"on behalf of" problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sender: header is actually standard, and webmails are supposed to use it to indicate who the authenticated sender is.

Gmails spam filter is the worst...

[cybrthng]

its the only one i know that resets itself almost every other week. I regularly have to stop those "Want to be a cop" or "get a date" or "ebay credit here" emails and they come back only 2 weeks later and i again have to retag them as spam.

A good rbl and squirrelmail interface does better than gmail for quick and easy online reading and filtering of email

Re:Gmails spam filter is the worst...

[ctid]

Seriously? For me it is FAR better than anything else I use.

Re:Gmails spam filter is the worst...

[n0dalus]

its the only one i know that resets itself almost every other week. I regularly have to stop those "Want to be a cop" or "get a date" or "ebay credit here" emails and they come back only 2 weeks later and i again have to retag them as spam.

I find Gmail's spam detection is very good; 99% of mine ends up in the Spam folder.

From there I have a script that runs every 30 minutes to check for new Spam in my Gmail account, and pass it through spamassassin.
Depending on the score assigned to it, my script either:

• Deletes the spam permanently (I never see or have to deal with it);
• Marks it as read (so I'm not distracted by the unread message count);
• Keeps it marked unread (so I should check if it's really spam); or
• Marks it as not spam.

Re:Gmails spam filter is the worst...

[dickens]

I used to think it was pretty good, but it seems to have deteriorated.

I got about fifty pump & dump spams each beginning with "A MAJOR PR CAMPAIGN IS UNDERWAY FOR" and kept getting them for the next few days. One would think that one would be easy to pick out. Also I get them with "st0ck" in the body all the time. Should be a dead giveaway.

Re:Gmails spam filter is the worst...

[alanh]

I get exactly the same sorts of spams on GMail. I also do my own filtering of the same feed with Bogofilter which has problems with the same emails. I don't think it's just a problem with GMail's filters.

Re:Gmails spam filter is the worst...

[baadger]

Strange you mentioned Squirrelmail. The novelty of the Gmail interface wore off for me as well. I bought up a Tuffmail account and had some time left to run on it after getting a Gmail account, so decided to let it run before I gave my GMail address to friends.

By the time my Tuffmail account expired I was getting 170 spam messages a week to Gmail, even though i'd never used it. Factoring in the clean responsive predictable squirrelmail interface, and Gmail's login quirks with Opera (Why does Gmail have to have that ridiculous loading page? It fails all the time for me) led me to renew with Tuffmail.

Re:Their servers, your data. Not good for most.

[tomhudson]

If they were serious about eating Exchange's lunch, they would offer Gmail as a self-hosted solution.

The majority of businesses are small businesses lf less than 50 employees. If they have to have 33 "computer people" because they do all their own stuff internally, they're less competitive than their competitor, who has one "local geek" and hires everyone else on an as-needed basis.

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.

This is exactly what I have been waiting for

[stunt_penguin]

I'm the web designer in a 50 person company who does our sites, manages our email accounts, and does web design work for outside companies. I've been absolutely dying for google to do this since it occurred to me that they could do this.

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.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Without a mobile phone or .edu email address, how do I "just sign up"? No, I'm afraid the invites insanity is far from over...

Perfect for...

[dbucowboy]

Universities... As of now, that is where Google is testing it. There is an open invitation to Universities who want to be a part of it as well.

Re:Perfect for...

[DarthMAD]

I'm currently a student at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. About a week or so ago, Google was here reportedly trying to sell university officials on the idea of using Gmail to replace our current e-mail system, which is awful. They were also handing out those damn Google pack CDs.

What is the matrix?

[djdavetrouble]

Control. The more control google has, the more power google has. Information is power. Be sure of this, google is where the first AI will come to 'life' it will be the head, and the body will be this massive freaking database that google has compiled. Larry Page and Sergey Brin will end up topside of the gravity well, I have to stop rereading neuromancer for the 143rd time. WINTERMUTE CAN YOU HEAR ME ????????? Half of my karma to the first person that can pinpoint the moment in time that I descended from informative to raving lunatic. Well, just a quick game of nethack and I get to come up from the basement for some of mom's meatloaf and some refreshing mountain dew. Aww out of cheetos _again_...
ch ching.

Re:What is the matrix?

[cybrthng]

has nothing to do with google being the borg, has everything to do with the fact Gmail isn't anywhere near the feature list of exchange as the original post had suggested.

i just expanded on the fact that companies wouldn't/shouldn't do this for there own rights. Imagine the day when google gets subpoena and you don't even know about it until your sued for something you stored on gmail?

a public company would be shutdown for using this period.. wouldn't fly with sarbanes.

IMAP and privacy

[idlake]

I think for this sort of thing to work, Gmail needs to support IMAP.

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.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you step into the 90's and just buy a cell phone?

Somewhat off-topic question

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm interested in email hosting to replace an e-smith server, which has dozens of aliases set up. So I'd need IMAP for two domains, unlimited (or at least a high limit) of aliases, and about ten real mailboxes for each of two domains. Googling for the search terms yields an overwhelming number of hits--any recommendations or endorsements?

Re:Somewhat off-topic question

[turbidostato]

"any recommendations or endorsements?"

Take a mid-range desktop with enough hard disk space for your needs, and hire a proven record free-lancer for a day for the set up and about one hour a week for maintenance.

Provided you hire the proper person, all your email-related problems will fade away.

Re:Somewhat off-topic question

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you.

Google copying Windows Live?

[danielk1982]

https://domains.live.com/

I think so =)

Re:Google copying Windows Live?

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Just signed up for that with a domain that laid dormant anyway. Not too shabby, but it does stick MSN ads at the end of messages. It's essentially Hotmail with your own email addresses.

Bad for companies, great for individuals.

[autopr0n]

I'd love to have all email for all my domains sent to google, with no need to host my own mail server.

Check your facts

[Anonymous Coward]

MSN has been offering this exact same service for months.

When is Microsoft going to get credit when their ideas are stolen by Google?

Is it because blogs like Slashdot make tons of cash off Google ads that we see this Google worship?

Re:Check your facts

[rm69990]

Ummm, the article blurb simply stated Google would be offering this service. How exactly is this "worship". And why is it that people posting comments like this are always AC?

You know, OSNews recently banned anonymous posting. The site instantly became a lot more bearable.

Privacy concerns?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah!!! They are just making copies of documents on your computer for their "search purposes". Wouldn't you feel better having Google "secure" everything for your digital life?

SUCKERS!!!

I just want the software

[edmicman]

I'll reiterate my digg comment....I really wish Google would "open" their software or something; I just want to install a gmail like front end on my host and connect to my IMAP server. I don't like the idea of all my emails being on google's servers - you could argue that they're on my host's servers, but then I'm paying my host for that service, or alternatively I could always host it myself. But all I really want is a gmail interface for my own webmail. Roundcube has/had promise, but I don't like the direction they are taking in making it a desktop-like web app that imitates Thunderbird.

Why can't someone just blatantly copy gmail in php/mySQL to use IMAP, implement a "labeling" scheme using saved searches or tagging or something, and build on there. Copy what works first, then add some ajax calendaring, and you've got a killer app that people can install on their own.

Dang it, I need more PHP/DHTML experience or I'd do it myself.

Re:I just want the software

[kefler]

Squirrel Mail does what you're talking about. I use it with my IMAP server. I have a web server on one machine running SquirrelMail and the imap/MTA server on another machine. Also its easily configured to run over https. Of course, squirrelmail isn't as fancy nor does it have the indexing and search. But it seems like it would be a good starting point to add those kinds of features.

Re:I just want the software

[edmicman]

Thanks, but notice the emphasis on "squirrelmail isn't as fancy nor does it have the indexing and search." I've used squirrelmail and HATE it. I want something slick and fancy, and squirrelmail just seems old and clunky. I know it has a extensibility, but I just don't like it. Same goes for things like HORDE, etc. It just seems like the OSS webmail apps out there are stuck in 10 years ago. Currently I use IlohaMail, which I like - its small, minimalist, and just works. But it, too, is starting to feel old.

I just don't understand why all the other webmail apps are where they are at after seeing the experience google created with gmail. It's not like there's a ton of fancy flash to it or graphics and whatnot. It's CSS, DHTML, and text.

Re:I just want the software

[Alatalo]

RoundCube is pretty good and getting better all the time..

Re:I just want the software

[blaksaga]

Dang it, I need more PHP/DHTML experience or I'd do it myself.

And I need more TIME or I'd do it MYSELF. :)

As for calendaring...I've been working on a calendar app *NOTE: This link does not currently work in IE* and trying to make it somewhat gmailish. But as you can see it has a long long way to go...and I just don't have the time I need to work on it. :/

Re:I just want the software

[blackhaze]

Take a look at @Mail - http://atmail.com/ as a decent alternative to SQ/Roundcube.

Aggh! Typo alert!

[tomhudson]

If they have to have 33 "computer people"

My bad. An extra 3 there. Of course, so many people consider themselves "computer people" because they can actually send an email (thought they can't find the ones they sent, or where the replies went, and their desktop is full of icons from stuff they downloaded and can't figure ut how to clean up ... that ca company of 50 may very well have 33 people who consider themselves "computer people". They are the target for this service.

And when Google get out their web-based document-writing software, look out ... that's the market they're really looking at.

Re:Maybe if they offered...

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be even nicer if Google would release a Gmail server software or machine, that way we can have gmail without Google havving access to private information.
lmsjjr rezzen

Re:Wow

[The Hobo]

Try google

http://www.google.com/search?&q=google%20account%2 0signup&sourceid=firefox

Sign up, that's it, your google account works for gmail.

A great deal

[Luscious868]

Gmail for Domains! Not only can we spy on you, now we can spy on everyone on your domain!

Re:A great deal

[hkb]

I don't really view his comment as a troll. I think legitimate attention needs to be focused on privacy issues. Google seems to want to have your life revolve around its services. And while that may be an ethical capitalism thing, it could have more nefarious purposes, or they could be bought out by someone evil, like Doubleclick.net, or Google could be an NSA front* or have other ties to our corrupt ass government.

* Sure, this is in the tin foil realm, but you've got to wonder what sort of contact the NSA has had with Google's unarguably ground-breaking technology and data store.

Re:Their servers, your data. Not good for most.

[turbidostato]

"The majority of businesses are small businesses lf less than 50 employees. If they have to have 33 "computer people" because they do all their own stuff internally, they're less competitive than their competitor, who has one "local geek" and hires everyone else on an as-needed basis."

But they both are less competitive than the competitor that has one "local geek" that knows his job and can do all their own stuff internally without resorting (except, maybe, some coding, from time to time) to externalities.

Seriously, where is the IT world going if a 50-less company can't do all their stuff with only one (two max: one sysadmin and one helpdesk/hardware) IT people?

"They'll go for this because it makes sense for them."

Even if it doesn't make sense at all.

Like how fastmail does it.

[GodWasAnAlien]

I'll use fastmail until gmail has IMAP.

Re:Like how fastmail does it.

[Jon_S]

Word!

Nobody has it as right as FastMail does. Those guys are incredible. I go with the enhanced account and it is worth every penny and more. I find myself going more and more to their web interface for my mail rather than just using Thunderbird. I never thought that would happen. Why can't every IMAP client have a "delete and [next|mailbox|previous]" set of options.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

http://mail.google.com/mail/a-a71b30636b-60dd30ab0 d-177ace8f9e.

There you go. If you need 99 more, just let me know.

How do you get it out of gmail, again ..

[Blu-Ray]

I mean If you got all those mailboxes in there with GB's of e-mail and attachments ..

Re:Their servers, your data. Not good for most.

[Reaperducer]

I think you've totally hit it there, not just with the aim of Google e-mail, but with an entire Google strategy.

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.

Privatized Privacy

[Doc Ruby]

Of course they should hold copies of all my email, as well as records of all my Internet searches. How else are they supposed to help the government protect me, even when there's no evidence of wrongdoing?

history repeating

[maccalvin5]

hey slashdotters, how much longer until you scream for a burning google logo to go with the m$ broken windows one? you wonder how monopolies take control? by offering great services for free, or even better, for easy, building up a HUGE user base, and exploiting it.

you've seen them take unexpected business risks like censoring results in china and europe, more recently (although it's ALL been recently...) you've seen them begin gathering user data via google desktop. how can you be sooo against wiretaps and surveillance when it comes to the us gov't, and sooo upset with the adware outfits, and yet gladly welcome google's intrusive technologies?

give them negative feedback when they grow somewhere that seems out of bounds. try their products, but remember to be a good consumer, and demand what you want from the market. google is seemingly unstoppable now, and granted their products and services are unparalleled now, but remember your computing history.

Re:history repeating

[Anonymous Coward]

"you've seen them take unexpected business risks like censoring results in china and europe, more recently (although it's ALL been recently...) you've seen them begin gathering user data via google desktop. how can you be sooo against wiretaps and surveillance when it comes to the us gov't, and sooo upset with the adware outfits, and yet gladly welcome google's intrusive technologies?"

You're wasting your breath. The fanboys are too busy jacking off over their short term gain to realise the privacy implications. Maybe when they don't have a job because Google put their tech firm out of business they'll wake up.

Re:history repeating

[Anonymous Coward]

Please mod parent up.

Windows Live domain hosting

[0xFFFFFF]

Interesting that nobody posted when MSN/Hotmail started offering the same service recently.

One of the first...

[JonLatane]

One of the first companies to seek the opportunity to try this new service.

Re:One of the first...

[h2d2]

You moron, MS has been offering such a service for a few months now... http://domains.live.com/

Re: Mod Parent Down. It's called Sarbanes-Oxley

[finnif]

I'd rather keep al my e-mail to my self, as a company...

Having email handled off-site by an independent third party is a great way to have S-OX compliance, especially if it never gets deleted.

an original Google idea!

[YesIAmAScript]

Mark your calendar. They so rarely do anything at all original. This is not only original (as far as major players are concerned) as far as I can see, but seems like a great ide.

Good job Google.

Re:an original Google idea!

[CaptKilljoy]

>This is not only original (as far as major players are concerned) as far as I can see, but seems like a great ide.

As somebody else pointed out, M$ already has it in beta, and, unlike Google, it's an open beta.

http://domains.live.com/

email appliance

[rayde]

i'd be interested if google sold an email appliance, similar to their search appliance... so i have a little bit more local control of the data, without it all being hosted on google's site. sell this appliance with a customizable gmail interface for your own organization, and i'm pretty sure it would sell REALLY well.

Interesting..

[techefnet]

Sounds interesting indeed. But I already have my email server. And would I really trust my users privacy to Google? I don't want to sound like a flamebait, but I don't trust Google much anymore. I used to.

Re:Interesting..

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

Good for NGOs too

[grcumb]

I think this is a really exciting opportunity for NGOs in the developing world, if Google decides to support us.

Organisations such as the ones I support in Vanuatu work with minimal resources in very difficult circumstances. Internet costs for a dedicated server start at about USD 1000 per month, and increase from there, based on bandwidth. This in a country where the average monthly income is less than USD 50.

In other words, we will not soon be in a position to host our own mail servers. Because NGOs are supposed to work in a transparent manner - we have a mandate for free and open communication - having our mail hosted by GMail is not a particular problem from a privacy perspective.

The biggest benefit that we can get is reliable and centralised email and - more important - mailing list management. Email is the only affordable means of communication in this country, as telephone and mail delivery are both expensive and inefficient. This is a big deal because poor communications in this country causes really severe problems - indeed, it can often make the difference between life and death.

I know some of you will ask: 'If this is life and death, why the hell would you trust an online email provider? Surely there are donors who would pay for a proper service?' The short answer is that there are people working on long-term solutions to this problem. I'm one of them. But donors move slowly, and the government has no money for this. In the fullness of time, I don't doubt that we'll develop a home-grown and very robust system. But in the short term, we need something that's going to work, and isn't going to kill us with the cost.

I've already submitted an application on behalf of my NGO, and if that's successful, I'll ask Google to consider supporting a couple of publicly-run computer resource centres I've set up, so that the public can get free email, and the staff can do mailing list and account management, etc. from one location.

Re:Good for NGOs too

[JonnyCalcutta]

Can I ask why you can't just rent a dedicated server in the US or elsewhere (where these things cost less than $100, with ridiculous amounts of included bandwidth)? Its not like you ever need access, since the hardware is leased. And obviously there's no 'political' issues with putting things offshore if you are prepared to use Google's service.

Re:Good for NGOs too

[grcumb]

"Can I ask why you can't just rent a dedicated server in the US or elsewhere?"

This has been asked of me many times. Here's the logic I've been following:

The bottom line is that the best solution is onshore. As I mentioned before, that's precluded by price. So the next obvious solution is to go offshore, and find someone who's willing to do it for us. That's what we're doing right now with the geek community mailing list. It's administered by someone in a neighbouring country who has a mandate to support this kind of thing. But managing dozens or hundreds of accounts and related mailing lists is a different kind of task to a single mailing list. I don't feel that we can in good conscience rely on this organisation to maintain that kind of service.

So why not host at a commercial operation, as you suggest? The biggest reason is that we don't have enough local talent to handle the setup and administration. The second reason is that we want to involve someone who actually sees some value in what we're doing. Google fits this bill, because they benefit by being perceived as Nice Guys in the development community. It makes great copy for them.

It's true that there are not a few others who would be willing to support this kind of thing. Staff at Apple computer have shown interest and offered assistance in other aspects of this project, as have many others. But it always pays to aim high. Google really is at the pinnacle of reliability right now. I've been using their service since the beginning, and in all that time have received a grand total of one server error.

In previous jobs I've worked with Tier 1 hosting providers who couldn't provide the same kind of support. The budget ones are sometimes good, but from this distance (i.e. several thousand miles away) it can be tough to be sure.

So I guess it boils down to this: Google is big, it's a known commodity, and has a policy of being a good neighbour. And they're free. All of those things may be true of others, but given that I've already found a service that fits the bill, why look further?

Assuming that we're approved for the beta, that is. 8^) If that doesn't happen, then I will most assuredly be looking at exactly the kind of service you're describing.

Re:Good for NGOs too

[Anonymous Coward]

So, basically you only want to use Google for some sort of prestige value, no other reason.

Given the NSA connections at Google, I'm sure they'll be more than happy to have as many foreign NGOs on thier systems as possible. :D

GMail smtprelay service

[klingens]

GMail allows you to use it as your smarthost for your mailserver, so that mails sent from a dynamic IP range don't get rejected by AOL and the likes. Are they keeping that mail just like the inbound mail to your gmail account or not?

bluetie?

[estoll]

How will companies like BlueTie compete with Google?

Google does not agree to comply with EU data auth.

[Animats]

If you check out Google's compliance statement with the "safe harbor" for EU data privacy law, they didn't say "yes" to "Do you agree to cooperate and comply with the European Data Protection Authorities?". They didn't sign up with a third-party neutral verifier; they just put down "in-house". The list of information collected doesn't include what Google Desktop collects. That's considered "slimeball-level" compliance. So persons in the European Union should not trust gmail or Google Desktop.

Even Microsoft does better than that. Microsoft has agreed to TrustE dispute resolution and cooperation with European data protection authorities. Google agrees to neither.

No thanks ...

[ScrewMaster]

currently I am the Master of my own domain, and I'd much prefer to keep it that way.

Re:Google does not agree to comply with EU data au

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

I suppose some compliance is better than none, but I treat display of the Trust-E symbol as almost a warning label -- kind of like I become wary when I enter a place of business that prominently trumpets its Better Business Bureau membership.

Both are sham organizations that try to appear to be in the interest of customers, but are mutual-interest business cooperatives aimed squarely at avoiding real regulation.

Maybe if they offered Hosting

[Elixon]

"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.
"

I agree. But there is big amount of low-cost hostings that will move their users to GMail. I think that vast majority of the users will not be alarmed by seeing the GoogleMail logo instead of HostingXY logo. They will probably think "Ooo, Google, I know that brand... and look what a nice features! I love it! And my hosting provider lowered the prices too... Cool!"...

OK, then next step is GoogleHosting ;-) (Theoretically the first step is already here: google base)... and then we can use the name GoogleNet instead of Internet...

Funny. They know what I'm interested in (search history, their google analytics, ...), they do read my e-mails so they know my friends that write me, friends or customers that search for me, they know my girlfriends, they decide what users visits my websites... Hey, maybe it is not so funny!

Re:Google does not agree to comply with EU data au

[Animats]

I tend to agree about TrustE. In their early days, they actually did something, but now, they're toothless. TrustE used to publish watchdog report statistics, but by 2004, they were taking essentially zero enforcement actions. They don't even publish those any more.

And they're getting worse. TrustE's latest product: "certified" adware and spyware. This is another "buy your way around the filters" scheme.

Re:Maybe if they offered...

[Nataku564]

That would defeat the purpose of Google offering services to people. They are data whores.

Beta Testing

[Blind_Io_42]

Well, since everything Google does is in a cronic state of beta....

a texas state agency-- same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at a state agency in texas and we have a state law that enables ANYONE to request any obscure record or piece of data we might track. Mad at a mayor or city official? File an Open Records Request to see ALL their email over the past year.

Because of this law, it is no coincidence that at my agency our server deletes all mail in our inbox after 15 days. You can keep special mail in your other folders indefinitely, though.

a guy at the government

Re:a texas state agency-- same thing

[thrillseeker]

Because of this law, it is no coincidence that at my agency our server deletes all mail in our inbox after 15 days. You can keep special mail in your other folders indefinitely, though.

Maybe with the technology now in place we could pass laws requiring all public employees to retain all their business email.

Weak arguments

[Anonymous Coward]

Outlook as a rich client does a lot more than calendar and email and even small businesses wouldn't (shouldn't) do anything like this.

I'm at a big company, and we use Outlook. I know in theory it does a lot more, but in practice it does a lot less: sometimes we have trouble just getting it to do email. Would you rather have a server that does email+calendars+kitchen sink but goes down all the time, or one that doel email+calendars reliably?

Where is the google helpdesk? where is the google backup/restore policy? who takes the calles when it's slow? who will restore deleted messages? who will verify that email is fitting the corporate policies?

As a big-business user of Outlook/Exchange, I have to say: WTF? Do you think we can call up Microsoft when Exchange goes down? when it's slow? Do you think our corporate helpdesk provides any of this?

Microsoft provides the illusion of good support, plus a lousy system. Eventually, people are going to learn that a solid app (even with no guaranteed support) can beat this -- they're already starting to with Firefox, for example.

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.

I don't know what you mean by "integrate" in this context, but in case you hadn't noticed, every company worth its salt is already using Google (for web searches) on pretty much every desktop, so they're already seeing ads for their competitors.

Would you switch to a different system just to avoid unobtrusive text ads? I wouldn't. I don't know anybody else who would, either: if that was a real concern, we'd all still be using AltaVista or Lycos.

Now, I can't see my big business (or any other) doing this, but just because they're so set in their ways that they'll probably *never* change, not because it's necessarily a horrible idea.

Then you've never seen Hotmail...

[CoachS]

My GMail inbox gets maybe 1 or 2 spam a day. My Hotmail inbox gets about 2-3 an hour.

GMail's spam filter catches most of the spam I get (30-40 a day) to the account and correctly redirects it to the Junk Mail folder with almost no false positives. Hotmail catches maybe 50% (at best) of the spam.

GMail's filter works much better for me.

-Coach-

Re:Their servers, your data. Not good for most.

[CoachS]

A lot of companies of that size (~25-50 employees) are already running Microsoft Small Business Server (or certainly could be) and thus already have their own Exchange server. It never ceases to amaze me how many of them don't realize they have it and so still pay for hosted POP e-mail via some ISP.

About every 3 weeks we take on a new client where our first project is to turn on the Exchange server they already own, create their MX record so that their mail comes to their own server instead of the ISP, create their mailboxes and change Outlook from POPing their mail from the ISP to native MAPI to their own server.

It's easy, the improvement for most of the clients is fairly dramatic (especially if their mail ISP hasn't been terribly reliable) and a SBS server can be readily maintained by a single geek with a little bit of knowledge.

Google's market for this is probably the very small businesses - 10 employees who may not even have a server.

-B-

Try again Cletus...

[Anonymous Coward]

A google account does not automatically give you a GMail account.

http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer. py?answer=27440

Re:Their servers, your data. Not good for most.

[macshit]

The IT department ordered that all copies of Desktop be uninstalled, even though the dubious functionality is turned off by default.

Pretty amusing, considering that stuff like this is a direct competitor to IT departments.

Given the utter incompetence of the typical IT department, I'll bet google wins in the end though. I sure hope so; the local sysadmin-type people in my dept are fine, but the sooner the incompetents in charge of "central IT policy" are shown the door, the better.

i can see this being useful for nonbusiness groups

[moochfish]

I'm in a social organization and we have had a mailing list for a few years. we used to use hotmail and yahoo groups but there was too much bloat that was pissing off (the yahoo sig) or confusing (how to join list) new members. so we switched to Mailman on shared hosting service. that costs us a few dollars a month to have, but there hasn't been any confusion since. if gmail can offer a mailing list that doesn't have group joining requirements, stupid ads on the bottom of every email, and an easy interface to manage the users on the list, i'll make sure to switch to their service. In every solution, our email is still passing through servers we don't own so privacy isn't a concern anyway.

Innovation

[ben_1432]

Wow, who would have ever have had the idea of providing a free email account with an external domain?? Other than Microsoft last year with Hotmail.

Google is just so wonderful omg.

Nice for people in my position.

[donkstuff]

My current hosting company allows for unlimited email addresses, but does not let us use more than 1 domain for email. With 4 domains (that i can think of) on this single account, having email accounts on multiple domains would be nice. I do realize that other companies offer similar solutions (everyone.net did, if they're even around anymore), but Google is a company that I have a soft spot for, and their webmail is the best UI wise, in my opinion.

I dont trust Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is scary. They done plenty of good stuff, but at the same time they're scary too and I dont trust them. Gmail is a great product, it is awesome. The best webmail service there is.
But as far as I know, the mails are kept on the server even when you delete them.
And I dont feel Google takes my privacy seriously enough.

I think it would be better if Google would release their software for the webmail as open source instead of try get a company to let them host their stuff.

Also, Gmail lacks IMAP support and S/MIME, PGP, encryption shizzle.

Wary, not weary

[bennomatic]

I wouldn't have said anything, but you did it twice, so I figure it's not a typo. "Weary" = "tired". "Wary" = "aware", with a sense of "cautious". Very different meaning.

Google's Hosted Gmail Business Model

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has been talking to some large ISPs trying to get _them_ to switch to this hosted Gmail thingie. The deal is: Google will host your service and give you a cut of the revenue.

As far as I know they have been trying to do that for at least one year, and they don't have anybody who has picked the bait yet.

Nobody would be stupid enough to entrust their business to a competitor, potential or otherwise.

Re:Google's Hosted Gmail Business Model

[thrillseeker]

Nobody would be stupid enough to entrust their business to a competitor, potential or otherwise.

Companies frequently outsource a portion of their business to competitors - or they lose out to those who do, because it's cheaper, and cheaper wins in the long run.

Re:yeah right/But Yahoo's been doing this for year

[big-shoulders]

Yahoo has offered small business email hosting for years. See http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/email I use it for my business for all the reasons discussed. They handle spam well, they are always up, I don't need software, can get to my email from anywhere (including my cell phone). What's not to like. Now, Yahoo really deletes things when I say delete, I like that. Gmail wants to keep everything around. That might pose a liability risk.

Re:yeah right/But Yahoo's been doing this for year

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, Yahoo really deletes things when I say delete

How do you know?

There are good client-side spam filtering programs

[aegilops]

SpamBayes is a free open-source plug-in for Outlook. It's tiny. No reboot. It gets things wrong a little for the first week or so as you start to train it, but it very rapidly gets much better. Just remember to occasionally check your Junk Mail and Junk Suspects folders for any proper mails that slipped through, and that you do have to cut it some slack while you're training it. After a few weeks, it's extremely accurate. Coupled with AVG Anti-Virus, and your Outlook experience gets rather better.

Recommended.

Aegilops

Re:i can see this being useful for nonbusiness gro

[thomville]

I think gmail's interface is interesting and useful (i.e., the "conversation" concept), but don't forget that Google is first and foremost an advertising company. Every e-mail you look at has context ads along with it. So when I get an e-mail from my buddy Enzo I get a column of car ads .... Don't lose sight of the fact that "Do no evil" depends on your definition of "evil."

I already have it!

[hesiod]

The mebsite domiain I manage forwards email to gmail accounts so, in a sense, we already have this.

Re:I already have it!

[hesiod]

mebsite domiain.. wow. Preview, man...

oh, okay, cancel alert status.

[YesIAmAScript]

More Google copycatting. Situation normal.

Re:Their servers, your data. Not good for most.

[thrillseeker]

Seriously, where is the IT world going if a 50-less company can't do all their stuff with only one (two max: one sysadmin and one helpdesk/hardware) IT people?

Last firm I worked for with 50 people had 2 full time IT geeks - one existed simply to keep email (Exchange) alive. So, do the math - 50 person company requires single $50,000 annual geek, equating to $1000 a year per other productive employees, vice overhead of IT geek. Offered outsource email service for $100 per employes vice $1000 annually. Accepts deal. Applies $900 per employee times 50 employees equaling $45,000 saving to boss's bonus. As boss, it's an easy choice.

Re:Their servers, your data. Not good for most.

[tomhudson]

Most small businesses (uner 50 employees) don't want to have to have a full-time geek. They may have an office staff of 5, the rest being drivers or factory workers - most actual goods production doesn't take place in offices or cubicles, but on shop floors.

Same with retailers and wholesalers.

For most of them, Windows is something they run on their desktops, and they have NO interest maintaining any sort of server locally. As for the email, they just have to switch to a better provider. Its not like there isn't choice out there.

All they need is a web site, email, and a browser so they can access a few portals where they interact with their suppliers, and that's going to be the trend in the future for larger businesses as well, despite what people pushing dot.net think. Web apps are cheaper to maintain (single point of failure/updates), and easier for the end user to work with.

If privacy is an issue...

[ponos]

So many people insist on avoiding Google (or other online providers) because of privacy issues. I don't understand this. If privacy/confidentiality is an important issue for a company then that company should use encryption. Public key encryption is not an obscure, bleeding edge technology and I'm really wondering why so few people use it. I've been using Gmail quite extensively and if I really need to exchange sensitive information, I simply encrypt it.

Anyway, I really hope more people would use encryption for emails. It should be standard, like placing your letters inside an envelope, note a "geek thing". I have been signing my emails and attaching my key number since the late nineties and NOBODY EVER ASKS what the f*ck is that signature thing! (Oh, and I use mutt and thunderbird)

P.

Why did you bother to learn Linux...

[tropicflite]

if you didn't want to run your own servers?

Count me out.

Labels and IMAP

[hadaso]

> how do you reconcile IMAP with the GMail's way of creating "folders" (labels)?

Labels can be implemented using IMAP flags. A Gmail account is like an IMAP account with one mailbox. Labels are like custom (user defined) IMAP flags. The "archive" function in Gmail is like a "Deleted" flag in IMAP and "purge" is not available.

The only problem in reconciling IMAP with GMail's labels is getting IMAP clients to treat them consistently, i.e., to create a standard way for IMAP clients to treat labels/keywords implemented through flags (the difference between keywords and labels is that keywords are fixed strings and labels can be renamed).

IMAP users tend to use lots of folders to classify their own personal mail. I doubt if this is what the original designers of the protocol had in mind. IMAP has a method of organizing folders in a hirarchy, but they are actually not called folders. They are called mailboxes. And it seems to me that the original purpose was to enable administrators to organize users' mailboxes and allow easy maintenance of shared mailboxes. Not to allow individuals to use mailboxes as folders. For instance IMAP does not define cross-mailbox search. To me using one or just a few mailboxes with labels or keywords seems a better way to organize a personal email archive (not that I don't have many email folders. But I do wish I had the option to mark my email using keywords in a standard way and then reduce the number of folders). A tree structure is too limited for classifying personal mail.

The mods really are on crack

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

WTF? I can understand "Informative", but Insightful?

Re:Their servers, your data. Not good for most.

[CoachS]

Well, that hasn't been my experience. Yes they may not want or need a full-time geek but as businesses grow beyond a couple of computers they start to talk about shared documents, shared databases and shared applications.

You can do that to a limited extent peer-to-peer but when you start to get to 8, 10, 12 or more workstations most companies really should have a server and SBS is a good solution for those kinds of companies.

They don't need a full-time geek. It can be installed, configured and then just takes occasional maintenance. As long as somebody in the office knows how to change the backup tapes there isn't much other need for daily interaction with the server.

Most of the companies we see are trying to do more with their technology, not less. The web browser is fine, but it's hard to run a substantial company purely on web-apps and, frankly, I don't think I'd want to.

For performance reasons if nothing else I think larger companies (i.e. 8-25 computers) should maintain their own server locally for documents, e-mail and other local applications.

-Coach-