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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."
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.
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.
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
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
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.
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.
Is there a difference between this and the service that I'm just not seeing?
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.
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.
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.
:) the above would seamlessly coexist with other solutions imo.
- 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
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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.
Every time a guy gets a threesome, somewhere in heaven an angel gets his wings. --Cary Tennis
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.
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.
Google vs Microsoft.. Allways the same deal.
1 1b1081d-cfb0-4511-acb5-55db6b49f7de t .mspx
Get a look on :
Microsoft Live Custom Domains http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=
And
Microsoft Office Live http://www.microsoft.com/office/officelive/defaul
Let's go for a new battle..
Round 1
Fight!
tssss
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?
--
make install -not war
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.
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.
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?
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.
.MAC which is already a compelling replacement for exchange.
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
evil is as evil does
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.
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