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

[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

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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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).

Outlook and Exchange

[KilobyteKnight]

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

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.

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

[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).

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.

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!"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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: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.