Google has released Google Applications for Your Domain – you can sign up and check it out over at http://www.google.com/a.
Google Applications for Your Domain currently allows you to run Gmail, Gtalk, and Gpages (a web publishing tool) through your own domain. One immediate advantage of doing this is that Gmail’s spam filters seem to be very good so running company mail through it should reduce spam problems you may be having.
It is also planned to integrate Google’s online word Processor (Writely) and Google Spreadsheets so that Microsoft Office need never be fired up (or even installed!).
When you sign up you get the following screen:
The functionality is sparse right now but the great thing about software as a service is that updates are constantly being rolled out to the benefit of the consumer. One nice feature in the setup is the bulk uploader which allows you to upload a csv file for setup of your users:
Microsoft needs to be worried. Not because this threatens them from the point of view of functionality but because this new model is quickly becoming the accepted norm. And although Microsoft are getting into this arena too, who would you trust with your company’s data, Google or Microsoft?
UPDATE: D’oh! I forgot to title this post. Title added subsequently along with bang on the head to remind me not to do that again!
I recently bought a new laptop which came pre-installed with XP Windoze Home edition – which I hadn’t realised at the time didn’t have MS Word / Excel on it by default (it comes witht he ‘lite’ versions of these packages, which are – frankly – useless).
I was going to just bag a copy of MS Word / Excel off someone (as I do actually need them time to time, partic the spreadsheets) but then got pointed to OpenOffice.org.
It’s a bit slow to start, but it works a treat – so you don’t have to wait for Google to get their act together, there already is a viable alternative MS Office applications.
I’m personally reluctant to rely on online applications in order to do some very basic tasks – internet connectivity is not guaranteed, and atleast with a desktop app you can still do *some* work, even when an internet connection is not availabel to you.
And of course, putting my tin-foil hat on, I really do think Google knows more than enough about my life as it is – I don’t *really* want it to know too much more 🙂
Interesting development. I think Google is planing to play a major role in the free software market. The spreadsheets service appears to be cool but useless, because it needs internet access which can be broken sometimes. I wonder who is going to use this software instead of the free Openoffice.org
Thank you for sharing this story with me !
From what I could see it looks like they’ll be charging for this once they’ve got past the beta stage. As I already suggested, unless they improve their customer service the rest of us need not worry too much.
I’ve been using the Google for Domains beta for awhile now (sans the Page Creator) and it has been excellent. Having your “own” Jabber/GTalk “server” is very cool.
Haven’t had any outages or other reliability issues in the past few months either.