Gmail for Your Domain
Gmail is now offering a corporate version.
Starting Monday, Google will offer Google Apps for Your Domain, a free package of programs for businesses, universities and other organizations. Workers will be able to send e-mail with Gmail, Google’s two-year-old Web-based mail service, but messages will carry their company’s domain name. The package also includes Google’s online calendar, instant-messaging service, and Page Creator, a Web page builder.
It’s an interesting idea. The searchability and accessibility from anywhere of Gmail offers some significant advantages over an Outlook type setup.
At the same time, there are some serious drawbacks. For one thing, Gmail is often rather balky, likely because of its popularity. Some or all of it is either inaccessible or maddeningly slow several times a week. Firms might also be reluctant to have corporate information under the control of Google.
Huh. It also seems a solution in search of a need. You can already do just about all of that, since Gmail lets you change the “sent from” and “reply to” in your account.
It also will mean those people who choose to protect their privacy and not have Gmail read, process, store, and possibly never delete their mail will have more difficulty. See:
http://www.epic.org/privacy/gmail/faq.html
http://blogs.oldradio.net/tb/222
http://www.google-watch.org/gmail.html
…for a few of the reasons some of us will not permit our mail servers to speak to Gmail servers.
google is evil