Is Google building Forever Cars?

This is a departure from the usual administration-related posts. But I wanted to write about an old feeling of mine (around 10 years old now).

In his major novel Ring around the Sun, Clifford D. Simak introduces Forever Cars. Forever Cars are higly advanced cars sold at a ridiculous price. They last very long, cost very few and plans are possible for those who can't purchase them. They are perfect and cheap.

What's the catch? Why would someone produce a highly advanced piece of tech and give it for (almost) free?

Remind you of someone? Hint: it starts with a G. With two "o" just after.

In Ring Around the Sun, Forever Cars are an example of "too good to be true" - their manufacturer's hidden agenda is to destroy the world economy. Several years ago, I wondered the same about Google. How could they give all of this for free (even by internet standards, they're cheap)? Yeah, I know. Ads. Still…

And, from time to time, even now that I am a Google Apps system administrator, I still wonder.

Is Google building Forever Cars?

Changing e-mail address for Google Apps user

Now it is possible to change an existing Google Apps user email address (administrator included). I am not talking about nickname, but about real renaming (thus, it will also work for login). It works with standard edition too.

Kudos to Google Apps France for the finding.

Shared contacts in Google Apps: I finally understood

I keep reading that Google Apps allows shared contacts and that it does not allow shared contacts? Why two opposite statements?

Because its sharing is not what most people expect when talking about sharing.

What you can share is the list of users in your domain. Not the list of partners/clients/prospects. And this is what most people (me included) expect.

Shared contacts, but not shared addressbook. And this is deeply annoying. This is the number one feature request for Google Apps (closed, read-only survey, sorry). Hopefully, someone at Google will investigate upon this.

On Google Docs

Google Docs has two meanings:

• The Microsoft Word replacement (but much lower-grade). It is based on a former product called Writely.
• The Microsoft Office replacement, of which Google Docs (1) is a part.

I'll try to stick with using the Google Docs for the Google Docs (1) and will introduce the neologism Google Office for Google Docs (2).

Why Google Apps Standard may be less interesting than Google personal

• Some services are unavailable.
  • Impossible to transfert ownership of a document to an address outside of domain.
  • Despite numerous transitions, somes services are still not available (Google Buzz and probably Google Health too).
  • (update 2011/03/31) No sorting by family name in Apps version of Google Contacts. Only default sorting (by first name) is available. Gmail regular's interface has finally did it in Google Apps.
  • Email recovery is not available (source). This is a minor annoyance, since an administrator can still use reset the password.
  • dot-insensitivity does not work in Google Apps (david.latapie is the same as davidlatapie ou davi.dla.tap.ie in Gmail; no so in Google Apps)
• Google personal may emulate Google Apps Standard.
  • Inbound mail address: use an alias at your mail provider.
  • Outbound mail address: Gmail may send as another address.
• Some handy things can't be completely emulated though.
  • Sharing a document with the whole domain can't be done. A solution is to use address book (manual autocompletion doesn't work; only clicking on select in my contacts does).

Advantages of Google Apps Premier/for Business

Main page for differences

• More than 50 users (more than 3000 for U.S. non-profit other than schools). Starting from May 10th 2011, the upper limit for the free edition will move from 50 to a meagre 10!
• Mail advantages
• Triple the amount of mail storage (one can still buy more, but it will be on an individual basis and will be shared with all services instead of being limited to the mail)
• Mail redirection handling
• Mail support (even phone support for service unavailable emergencies)
• Extra mail control (Postini, mail quota, mail blacklist (inbound only))
• Much easier migration (from Outlook or Lotus, for instance)
• Shared addressbook (in practive, works very badly without a third-party addition)
• Some advanced mobile device management
• Login advantages
• Single Sign On (SSO)
• Password complexity tuning
• No ads
• User-managed forums and mailing-lists
• Access to Google API

What is Google Apps?

There are two definitions of Google Apps:

• The first one, which is both official and accurate, defines a set of Google services wrapped together and attached to a domain. Google Apps exists in several forms (see pricing), depending on who you are and whether you are willing to pay — the most basic form (Standard) being sometimes worse than a collection of Google regular services. Even in its most powerful edition, Google Apps Premier is not on par with Microsoft administration stack when it comes to fine-tuning deploiment. Well, at least it is not on par for the moment!
• The second definition encompasses the practice of using more than juste Google search and Gmail (personal). This is not Google Apps, but quite a lot of people (including your boss!) may think this is Google Apps. After all, from an frontend point of view, there is not much difference (from an extra hours-point of view, there might be).

At GoogleAppsManual.com, we will use both definition. The main reason is that, for a lot of companies, aggregating various services may be enough. Plus, you won't have to delve with MX migrating and redirections for special cases (lesson: there is always special case :(), especially considering that handling special case requires Google Apps Premier (wich is not free).