If you outsource your email to your web hosting company, you definitely should move it to Google instead. If you run your email servers internally, you should at least take a hard look at the Google option.
My views on this are shaped in no small part by a leading independent e-mail analysis firm, Ferris Research. Ferris not only recommended moving to Google, they followed their own advice and moved themselves. Based on their recommendations, I followed suit.
Basic reasons for moving to Google include:
Related links:
My own early experiences moving to Google (with a bunch more related links)
Adam Gaffin's report of a large web hosting company recommending its users move their email to Google
Curt Monash is a leading analyst of and strategic advisor to the software industry. Praised by Lawrence J. Ellison for his "unmatched insight into technology and marketplace trends," Curt was the software/services industry's #1 ranked stock analyst while at PaineWebber, Inc., where he served as a First Vice President until 1987. He subsequently co-founded Evernet, Inc., a $40 million networking systems integrator. Since 1990, he has owned and operated Monash Research, an analysis and advisory firm covering software-intensive sectors of the technology industry. In that period he also has been co-founder, president, or chairman of several other technology startups.
Curt has served as a strategic advisor to many well-known firms, including Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, AOL, CA, and Netezza. Curt earned a Ph.D. in mathematics (Game Theory) from Harvard University. He has held faculty positions in mathematics, economics and public policy at Harvard, Yale, and Suffolk universities.
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I am shocked
You are recommending outsourcing business email to Google!!! Have you read the terms of use, especially the following? Are you out of your mind?
11. Content licence from you
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.
11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.
11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this licence shall permit Google to take these actions.
11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above licence.
Google's terms of service
That would be, I presume, from http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS?hl=en, where it also says:
That doesn't strike me as bad, although earlier versions were indeed as horrible as you're implying.
Funny you should mention this now....
We are in one of our outages with Google based corporate email. We don't use it, but some companies we deal with do. Every month or so, for no know reason (at least not one Google will tell us) all mail gets delayed until the eventual NDR comes in. Some of it actually gets delivered, but we still get the NDR. Log files say "Communications error with host" or something close to that. I am not in the server room right now. As a Sys Admin (including our own in house Exchange server) I would find this totally unacceptable. And I am not on some little ISP with poor connectivity... we use Cogent as our ISP. So I think I'll wait to switch to Google until it allows its users appear a little less unprofessional.
Google can't match the responsiveness of local mail
Another disadvantage that you don't mention is that outsourced email just isn't as pleasant to use as email that is hosted on a local server. When the mail server is remote, there are annoying delays when you open a message, delete a message, switch to another message, open an attachment... they're small, but repeated many many times over the course of a day. Locally hosted mail comes to you at LAN speed, not internet speed.
Locally hosted?
Good point. Local hosting may have a speed advantage if:
Best Client for Google Access
You're right about the problems of a web interface. The trick is to use POP or IMAP for access, and then use your favorite rich client. I personally use Thunderbird.