Review: Google Apps

Google Apps is the latest offering from the internet giant Google in it’s bid to offer a web-based office solution. The service allows the usage of custom domain names with several Google products. It features several known Web applications, including Gmail, Google Calendar, Talk, Page Creator and Docs & Spreadsheets.

Launched sometime in first quarter of 2006, the service has come a long way since offering Gmail to be used with custom domains to now offering a range of Google applications for a custom domain name. The service is primarily aimed at small businesses, enterprises, schools and families or groups that may need to collaborate, communicate and share files for various purposes.

In its latest form, Google Apps has three editions to offer:

Standard Edition

Premier Edition

Education Edition

The services offered under Google Apps are as follows:

Start Page
Based on Google Personalized Homepage, this service lets you easily create a unique, dynamic place for internal or external users to find relevant, essential information, preview their inboxes and calendars, and search the web. You customize the layout, header information and color scheme, as well as the page’s default content, which can include Google Personalized Homepage modules, your organization’s custom content and links, and RSS feeds. After users log in, they can further customize the start page so it’s just right.

Email
This is based on Gmail. Built on the idea that users should never be forced to delete mail because of a storage quota, and that finding that long lost memo that someone sent last year should be effortless and instantaneous. We’ve added a lot of other handy features too, including the ability for your users to exchange IMs with their contacts right in the browser.

Chat
Based on Google Talk, this service enables your users to exchange instant text messages with their contacts and have voice conversations over the web, and it’s completely free — users can connect with friends, family and co-workers all over the world without spending a dime.

Calendar
This service helps your users easily organize all of their event-related information, including personal schedules, friends’ and co-workers’ agendas and public calendars that contain events they think are interesting. Based on Google Calendar, it lets your users view all this information side-by-side, making it easier than ever for them to make plans with each other. Your organization can publish a master list of events and important dates, too.

Web Pages
Creating and publishing simple web pages should be quick, easy and free. Google Page Creator lets you choose from a host of templates and customize them with your organization’s content and images, all within a simple what-you-see-is-what-you-get online interface. When you’re happy with how things look, publish your pages to the web with a single click.

Docs & Spreadsheets
This web-based word processing and spreadsheet program that makes collaboration more efficient. It lets you keep a document online that others in your organization can edit and update simultaneously right from their browsers, so you don’t need to keep track of attachments latest versions. Each revision is automatically saved for you, so you can see who changed what, and revert to an older version at any point.

The overall package on offer is hard to resist for anyone, and as some of you might have noticed, all of us here at NMIMS IEEE have opted for Google Apps as well. This is one product that every small office, enterprise, group or family must try out.