.. Google has announced a package that will offer email, calendar, instant messaging and web-page creation services.
Google Apps for Your Domain is a free service that bundles together the US internet giant’s existing services – Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, and Google Page Creator. The announcement sees Google stepping up the competition with Microsoft, which already offers packages such as Outlook and Exchange that provide email, address book and calendar software….
It was just a matter of time before Google would make this step I think. What I do find striking is that immediately the comparison is made between Google Gmail /Calendar and Microsoft Exchange and Outlook. Exchange and Outlook being enterprise / SMB related products whereas Googles products still have more of a consumer focus. The comparison with Windows Live Mail and Calendar / Office Live as they do later in the article would be better.
Source : The Register
Update 30/8/2006:
Came across another article referring to this announcement, with a nice perspective of one of the analysts at Gartner :
Google is pitching the service as an alternative to installing local infrastructure to support these services.The software-as-a-service offering sets up a direct competition in terms of basic communications tools and infrastructure with the likes of Microsoft and IBM and with smaller vendors such as CommuniGate, Gordano, Ipswitch, Mirapoint, PostPath, Rockliffe, Scalix Sendmail and Zimbra.“What Google is saying is ‘look, today we are going to build out more advertising inventory, but tomorrow maybe it even turns into a real subscription revenue source,’ ” says Whit Andrews, an analyst with Gartner. Andrews says advertising at some point always goes flat and that is a bad thing for media companies like Google.
Source : NetworkWorld.com
