Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
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
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