Google Sets Sights on the Office
According to MSNBC and the entire blogosphere, Google will be releasing a set of Office tools as an extension of the whole “for your domain” service (remember how there was gmail for your domain?). The free bundle of online applications being unrolled today include gCal, gmail, gTalk and Page Creator as Google Apps for Your Domain. It’s only a matter of time until they add Google Spreadsheets and Writely to the mix.
I’m very anxious to see how this operates, and I’m curious as to how it will work with a domain? Never the less, I love what Google is doing and I will continue being a fan of their products.
I think this is all great, but I’m not sure it makes sense for business uses. As a head of an IT department, I know I’d be uncomfortable with hosting e-mail and documents on an outside server, no matter how un-evil Google appears to be. I might be more interested in a package of web apps that I could buy and host within our own network, or maybe an appliance if there were assurances that it could be upgraded.
However, I guess there might be businesses who would be less hesitant.
Note: If you signed up for Gmail for your domain, and are using it, you are already signed up for Google Apps for your Domain.
Allyn you’re right - I just got it all setup on my domain as I previously had gmail for your domain setup.
Until Writely and Google spreadsheets are added, I see this as a lot of hype. Very few businesses will find this useful. Even then, relying on an internet connection for working on documents is not something many businesses do. Most of that stuff is kept internal.
And does google having a copy of everything you do really appeal to most businesses?
BTW, it’s interesting that I’ve read a lot of posts about Writely now that Google owns it. Only a handful of people seem to remember it was not created by Google and that they purchased it. Many of us (myself included) had writely accounts long before google grabbed. I never really used it all that much, though.
They’ve given us Page Creator…big whoop. The other tools are great, but do we really need Page Creator on our domains? WordPress works perfectly fine.
I’m not really impressed. The early hype around this months ago was huge.
I could see this being useful for small businesses or startups, but I don’t think it’s ready to compete in the enterprise.
This isn’t useful now, but when it really begins competing with Microsoft’s office suite, with Spreadsheets and Writely, then we will see some interesting action. The problem with it all, though, is that the geek will be the only one using Google’s services. I agree with Scott, that businesses will be wary of using it because relying on an internet connection is not very reliable :)
for the small (read: very small) businesses which are running on very low capital (or even not-for-profit) will really like this- no more paying for separate licenses per computer- or the recurring nightmare of the door being bashed down by the anti-piracy police. Businesses running over many continents will appreciate this too.