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?"

Comments

Gamma

[Skadet]

Wait, does this mean a Google product is out of beta? Stop the presses!!!

Start of a new one

[Colourspace]

I'm sorry but it's been a long while since I have felt comfortable with Google's 'do no evil' mantra. They are a billion dollar company with shareholders to report to. I wouldn't be suprised if in 5-10 years we see the same sort of slashback here we see now for MS applied to Google. I particularly don't like the way the toolbar trawls my PC for information to report back to the Googel servers. It was at that point I stopped seeing them as saviours and more like the circling vultures they may well turn out to be.

Uh oh

[Excelcia]

Google is doing what Microsoft has dreamed about forever - turn computer platforms into monthly revenue generators. This has been the source of erotic dreams for Microsoft executives forever. I don't care how cool a web application is, there is just something fundamentally wrong with having my productivity depend on someone else's servers.

In some measure, this is already the case - how many people at work haven't searched online for solutions to problems encountered at work. This being one form of online dependence. This is a far cry from depending on an outside server. Think about the exposure to DoS attacks that this makes your company? Corporate war is just around the corner. Get a botnet to bring down your competitor's internet and their entire workforce productivity drops to zero.

Additionally, just wait until some security hole opens up and a lawyer's documents are hacked into because they are being edited online.

This is just a bad, bad idea on its face.

Re:Let's see...

[anomalous cohort]

Contrary to the title, it's not MS-Office that google is going after, it is Exchange.

Every Exchange admin I have ever spoken with claims that it is a nightmare to set up and maintain. There is a trend now to outsource that functionality. Google is targeting that market.

Tinfoil hat time

[TinBromide]

Simply because a tiger hasn't eaten your face yet doesn't mean it won't in the future. We should be as suspicious of google as we are of any other big software company. Just because they have a catchy bumper sticker slogan doesn't inoculate them to the temptations of corporate culture.

Re:Tinfoil hat time

[EvanED]

Should we be suspicious of every large business that started out small?

Yes. (Then again, I tend to be very cynical about companies in general.)

At what point does a small, presumably non-corporate business become "big" and full of the "temptations of corporate culture"?

Hard to say, but if you can influence back door sessions of state legislatures I think that's a good indication you've crossed the boundary.

What, no spelling Nazis?

[hereschenes]

Where are the pedants decrying the spelling of the word "innstead"? Shame on you all!

Hang on a second... I think I just poured mockery on myself.