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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."
POP is soooo 90's.
I'd rather keep al my e-mail to my self, as a company...
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.
"I see you are doing personal emails during work-hours. Click here to see what your boss really wants you to be doing!"
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.
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'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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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.
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.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."