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Google Apps to Become Paid Service
FredDC writes "Business Week reports Google Apps is becoming a paid service soon for companies who wish to use it for their domain. Disney and Pixar are reportedly thinking about switching to Google Apps instead of using Microsoft Office. Could this be the end of a monopoly? Or the start of a new one?"
.mac isn't an application suite - it's basically a shared disk (the 'iDisk'), a webmail interface (although 'Mail' is much better), and a place to put your website. Oh, you can sync your address book through it as well... It has peripheral advantages, if you use other mac apps ... the "casting" abilities of the iApps, for example, where I can publish/subscribe to various document-formats (eg: iPhoto does 'photocasts'); it's only really being used as a network-shared disk in this instance though.
.Mac is worth the money.
It's actually one of the few things I think must have slipped under Steve's radar - I don't think
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
This is only going to become a paid service for those who want to host it themselves. If you are going to continue to use Google's server's then the price remains free.
Maybe because Microsoft Office won't be a Universal binary until later this year?
I don't expect people to read the article, but at least read the comment you're replying to.
Google Apps for your domain is not an online office suite, but a gmail, gtalk, gcalender, etc for your domain.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
RTFA. As has been said above, it's not about Office, it's about Exchange.
That statement was pulled out of their asses. The Google Apps page has always said it would be free for beta, and then after beta, new signups will be charged. I know, because the company I work for has made the switch. We were looking for new email hosting at the time anyhow, and that came up as a recommendation. After weighing the alternatives, and treating GMail as if it was costing the same as the others (so as not to give it unfair advantage in our minds, as it has to be GOOD for our company) we still chose GMail.
There has been a few snags. No IMAP, POP3 implementation sucks, SMTP and POP3 both require use of secure ports, no folders (tags instead, useless to a pop3 client), and some (minor, temporary) hassles now and then with adding email lists, names to email lists, new accounts, and setting forwards.
If I had my vote again, I might choose to have the company pay for a managed email solution... But were on it, and weve worked out most of the kinks. And I love GMails interface. Ive given up on Thunderbird and just use the web interface now.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
A replacement for Outlook and Exchange, maybe. But "Google Apps for Your Domain", the service in question, isn't an office suite.
It is:
It is *NOT* a replacement for Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. That is 'Google Docs & Spreadsheet' (minus the presentation software, which is rumored to be coming soon.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
I did read the article, I picked up on: ... and sort of expected "office productivity suite" to include word-processing and spreadsheets, since they do *have* those. But you're right in as much as they don't do these *yet*
2) "Install Firefox. It works with more websites than Safari"
I just don't like Firefox - I've never had a great experience with it, and I have no need of google apps, so I'm happy as I am, thanks.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
This is only going to become a paid service for those who want to host it themselves. If you are going to continue to use Google's server's then the price remains free.
Where do you get that information? It wasn't in the article.
When I signed up for Google Apps for Your Domain a few months ago, they said that they would eventually start charging for new user accounts, but user accounts that already exist will remain free when they transition to a paid service.
Ummm...Google Apps for your domain doesn't include an office suite yet either. Google Docs has yet to be integrated into GAFYD.
This could be quite nice. It could potentially meant that, if all documents are in a web-based tool, my underlying platform becomes less relevant. I could use my company-issued POS, or I could use my MacBook. Who cares, so long as I have a browser?
OTOH, I'd have to rely on internet access. I couldn't work on my documents in a plane.
Come on people, we've seen this game before. Disney/Pixar are conveniently "evaluating" Google Apps so that Microsoft will be pressured to lower their prices on MS Office.
This is the same thing that happened with Linux in the late 1990's. Companies would leak and/or hint that they were doing a serious evaluation of Linux, and Microsoft would suddenly swoop in with deep discounts. In the end, though, Linux actually did take a chunk of that market away from Microsoft, which is why Microsoft now goes to such great lengths to publish a bunch of lies about TCO.
I think the MS Office alternatives are now where Linux was in the late 1990's -- some serious evaluations, some early adopters, but the big migrations are probably still a few years away.
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Those key bindings date at least back to Apple Lisa (1981), and probably Xerox PARC before that. It is no surprise that they can be found in many different environments today.