This is not new that Google is trying to take a major part of the hosting market via their services, but after releasing Google Apps for your domain, and starting selling domain names, and especially after releasing their webpage creator, it become very obvious that something is going to be announced very soon. No more than yesterday, Google announced the availability of Google Apps for enterprise a major announcement from the giant company to mark a big entry in the hosting business.
The package offered for enterprise include mainly a 10Gig email account, beside other services such Google Talk, Calendar, StartPage, Docs and Spreadsheets, WebPage creator, in addition to a management control panel and the APIs for external usage. Price announced $50 per account per year, but was the big feature Gmail, or being hosted at Google servers?
AJAX WebMail for Enterprise
After the release of Gmail, many see it as the big innovation that marked the born of AJAX applications. This is not only about AJAX, but Gmail was simply very well designed, with a very fluid interface and great features that made reading email too much fun, but become a major competitor to desktop email clients. Hosting providers have more alternatives for webmails than IMP Horde and SquirrelMail, but only few have understood the importance of this change and provided new alternatives for their customers.
Roundcube is maybe the major open source alternative here, but you can find a collection of AJAX webmail at our AJAX Magazine.
Offer Hosting or Service?
It’s clear that money IS in services, and many companies and startups today focus on hosted services from CRM, Email, Office tools, Feeds, Jobs, Advertising, … etc. The competition is big and it’s definitely not easy to make a successful service that can find a place in the market, but this is for example the choice of Google which is the focus on service then provides the most successful for enterprise.
Google and selling domain names
Google launched into domain names business just after releasing their checkout service, it’s clear that they don’t rely so much on the service by offering the possibility to use your own domain name or buy a new domain from them for the price of $10. This is not the big competition, but better if you want the service it’s over there and you can get everything from the same place.
Conclusion
Certainly Google have its own business model, but it’s interesting to see their business approach to provide hosting service of their own products. After all you can ask the question, why they don’t simply offer hosting service like everybody does?
