Google Makes it Easier to Share Documents with Co-Workers
Google Apps is a cool way to collaborate on documents with co-workers and share calendars online. But up to now, you've had to go through the hassle of associating Google Apps with your domain if you wanted to have a set of documents and calendars just for you and others at your company. Today Google's launching a free service, Google Apps Team Edition, which lets you set up your company's Google Apps universe just by entering an e-mail address.
Here's how it works, according to the Google reps I talked to (the service wasn't live yet, which is why the art here is from Google's presentation). You go to google.com/apps and sign up with your work e-mail address.
You can create documents and calendars and invite other people in your company to join Team Edition. As long as their e-mail address is in the same domain, i.e. pcworld.com, they're added to your Google Apps Team. In fact, anyone who signs up for Team Edition from your domain is automatically added to the group, even if you didn't invite them.
When you decide to share a document, you'll be able to choose from a list of all the people from your domain who have signed up. Or you can publish the document for anyone on your domain to see.
Team Edition includes Google Docs (for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations), Google Calendar, the Google Talk instant messaging service and Start Pages, which are a bit like iGoogle personal pages with widgets you can choose and arrange on your page. It doesn't include Gmail, unfortunately, though it sounded like that was in the works.
Google's strategy here seems to me a version of the drug dealer's trick of giving away free samples to get new clients hooked. Google knows that while average workers out there may see the value of using Google Apps, IT departments are sometimes wary, either because they don't have time to set the service up or because they're nervous about having important files outside of their direct control. By making it possible for an ordinary cubicle dweller to set up Team Edition and invite co-workers, Google seems to be betting that Google Apps will become so entrenched in a company that the IT department will eventually have to acquiesce. They mentioned a few times that a Team Edition account can be upgraded to one that is fully tied to your domain, either a free Google Apps Standard account or Google Apps Premier, which costs $50 per user per year.
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Yes, Google is moving in the direction indicated by the march of technology. I.e. the de-mystification of IT. Other firms giving Google company in in the in-the-cloud computing is MS LIVE, Zoho, and eDeskOnline.
I remember reading that if you had the Google toolbar installed, essentially Google can monitor where you go and what content you take-in online. I see little reason why this practice would change, if not become a nuisance. Knowledge is power.....the information that they glean is priceless...........