Provider ads calendar, site building tool and IM to custom domain
services.
Provider ads calendar, site building tool and IM to custom domain
services.
Google has expanded its hosted domain service with its Calendar, Page Creator and instant messaging applications.
The service provides small businesses with access to the existing Google applications through a customer domain instead of a @gmail.com account. It provides up to 25 accounts free of charge and Google is considering launching less restricted services at a fee.
The search provider first unveiled its domain hosting service in February as " Gmail for your domain". It only offered email hosting and has several tens of thousands of active domains.
The expansion prompted Google to rename the service to "Google Apps for your domain".
Businesses and individual domain owners will be allowed to make some customizations to the services. They can for instance replace the Google logo with their company logo and share contact lists between accounts. The overall look and feel however is largely similar to that of the existing Google services.
The Google services are seen as an assault on Microsoft, which is developing numerous online services for small businesses as part of its Live software strategy. The software developer among things is offering free domain hosting, an online calendar, messenger and collaboration tools.
Microsoft also plans to introduce a total of 22 online business applications including customer relationship management for businesses with up to 10 employees, which will be paid for by online advertisements.