Review of Google Apps for Your Domain

Although it is nice to have the flexibility to integrate parts of services with Google Apps, it would be much easier if Google registered the domains along with hosting the services.

It would be nice to see integration with Blogger. Blogger accounts can't be managed from inside the Google Apps control panel, although Blogger does offer a separate solution for integrating with an existing domain. This wouldn't be appropriate in a situation where you want multiple users to maintain separate blogs.

Google Sites does allow users to make announcements, and this is almost like a blog. Google has also hinted that Blogger integration may be coming in the future.

It would also be nice to have easy Google Checkout and Google Base integration for small businesses that use the Web to sell goods and services.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets is nice, but the service needs some major improvement to compete head to head with Microsoft Office. Spreadsheets should be integrated into documents, and Google Presentations is not quite a PowerPoint killer.

Where Google has the leg up on Microsoft is that Docs & Spreadsheets lets multiple users simultaneously edit the same documents instead of checking them in and out.

If you have an existing Web site but would like to integrate some Google features, you should give it some careful consideration, especially if you need to share documents and need to work with at least one computer that is not running Windows.

Google Page Creator doesn't give you a lot of design options, so Google Apps shouldn't be the only source for Web pages if your company Web site depends on custom HTML, Flash, or integration with a shopping cart service. This means that you will most likely need to purchase a larger package from your hosting service, and that package may already include most of the features Google Apps offers.

If you do not already have a domain, and you want to get started quickly and inexpensively, Google Apps is fantastic and possibly one of the best deals available.

If you are using SharePoint, it's time to give Google Apps a serious glance. Not only can you organize different files and create Wikis with Google Apps, you can edit all your files simultaneously. It's also considerably cheaper.