All the latest UK technology news, reviews and analysis
|
|
|
29 Aug 2006
Google has expanded its hosted domain service with the addition of Calendar, Page Creator and instant messaging applications.
The service provides small businesses with access to existing Google applications through a customer domain instead of an '@gmail.com' account.
The search firm unveiled its domain hosting service in February with the slogan Gmail for your domain. The service offered only email hosting and has several tens of thousands of active domains.
The expansion prompted Google to rename the service to 'Google Apps for your domain'.
Businesses and individual domain owners will be allowed to make some customisation to the services. They can, for instance, replace the Google logo with their company logo and share contact lists between accounts.
The overall look and feel is largely similar to that of the existing Google services.
The Google services are seen as an assault on Microsoft, which is developing numerous online services for small businesses as part of its Live software strategy.
Microsoft is offering free domain hosting, an online calendar, messenger and collaboration tools.
Microsoft also plans to introduce 22 online business applications including customer relationship management for companies with up to 10 employees paid for by online advertisements.
Latest stories from Web
Related videos
Related articles
Related jobs
Poll
Are you confident that the UK's IT infrastructure is secure from attack in the wake of the Flame malware revelations?
Orange and Intel talk us through the ins and outs of their San Diego smartphone
Connect with V3.co.uk
The wrong printers, for the wrong tasks on the wrong contracts
Who leads the BI pack and who should we be watching out for?
BUSINESS SYSTEMS DIRECTOR (You will ideally have worked...
Application Production Engineer - Application Engineer...
C#/ C++ * Software Engineer* 3D Graphics skills - Global...
Senior Low Latency Consultant, Low Latency Project Management...
Keep up to date with the latest products, services and technologies from the world's leading IT companies. IThound.com brings you over 2,000 white papers, case studies and analyst reports.
Do you agree?
The Bell Tolls For Microsoft
Today Google released a new service named Google Apps for Your Domain. Notice I didn't say software package. Reffering to this new service as a software package would be doing it a disservice. This is not merely a collection of free software/services that Google is offering. That in itself is pretty nice for small business owners. I owned a small company during the late 1980's through the late 1990's, and I would have loved not having to spend all the money I did on software packages, that were no more functional than what Google is offering now for free. What Google is offering business owners, is the chance to re-think the way they do business, at no financial cost. How nice would it be to buy "packaged" software, and then get your money back a month later when you discover it really doesn't meet your needs? If you're anything like me, you have a lot of software collecting dust, because it didn't do what you thought it would. Google is offering the chance to try a new business model for free, and if doesn't work, you can always go back to over paying Microsoft for average software. Every day the web-centric world moves a little further away from the desktop as we know it. Every day Microsoft pretends that they still are a player. Every day the true web players, distance themselves further from the desktop world. The bell tolls a little longer, a little louder, every day. I'm guessing Microsoft can hear the ringing in their ears.
Posted by: I?m Guessing 29 Aug 2006