“Google Apps Premier Edition features application programming interfaces that businesses can use to integrate it with their own applications. Ten Gigabytes (10GB) of storage for ad-free Gmail is offered standard, meaning workers can spend more time working and less time cleaning out their in-boxes. And Google is offering service level agreements that promise 99.9% uptime and 24×7 tech support.
But possibly the most compelling aspect of Google Apps — at least from the standpoint of potential customers considering a switch from Microsoft products — is the price. Google is offering the whole package for just $50 per user, per year.”
One thing that this will do is effectively eliminate piracy in office productivity applications. Think about it. This has been what Microsoft has been wanting all along and I’m sure they’re in a bit of a tiz because Google is managing it before them.
So, we’re talking:
- Gmail – their very clean, searchable mail client with 10 GB of storage
- Google Talk – their instant messenger offering
- Google Calendar – their iCal compatible calendaring solution
- Docs and Spreadsheets – creating and sharing documents.
- Page Creator – so you can whip up a web page quickly
- Google Domains – so you can hide behind your own domain name
- Extensibility APIs – so you can integrate it with your own systems.
- Add in Google Base for “public” database publishing
This does, however, remind me a little of the calls of “sharecropping” which accurately describes the state of development on the Mac. But as we can see, developing applications for the web is going to be a little fraught as anything with real utility will likely be gobbled up by Google. By this I am inferring that Google owns the web but I don’t really mean that. What I mean is that Google has infinite money and won’t think twice about developing an opportunity.
All said, I’m glad it’s Google and not Microsoft in this position. I’ve been encouraged by someone on Tom Raftery’s IT blog to try Linux again. I will, if I ever find myself with commodity PC hardware again. I last tried it about 18 months ago to see if it had got better and frankly I feel I was a sold a line by the LinuxPoliticos who urged me to try it. I used to be trying it every 6 months but I was spending too much time just getting it to the level where my Mac is minutes after install.
Mac OS X for the client, BSD for the Server. Linux for other people.
Do you think BSD whips Linux? I’ve never used it but from what I’ve heard it is a lot more stable and I’d probably not have much difficulty switching from Slackware to FreeBSD.
I think BSD doesn’t pretend to be a desktop operating system. Whereas there are heaps of people telling others that “Linux is a piece of piss, you should totally dump Windows”
My experience of using Linux on the desktop has had a definite masochistic edge to it. I’m usually suprised anytime something works first time!
Needless to say, if a person has _any_ problems using a Windows machine for _any_ task, telling them to dump it for *nix I think is just pointless.