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Opinion
GAFYD: What’s A Developer to Do?
8/30/2006
By Terry Calhoun
Are you hooked into all the new Google beta stuff? Starting next week, organizations can offer staff, students, customers, employees, or whomever access to chat, calendar, Web page publishing, and Web-based e-mail. It’s called Google Apps for Your Domain (beta), also known as GAFYD or just “Google Apps,” and it is an enhancement to Gmail for Your Domain, launched last February.
Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager of Google’s enterprise business says that hundreds of universities are on board, there are hundreds of thousands of users, and it is set up and running now on tens of thousands of domains. Sigh. So many more new things to learn.
I wonder how much more will be in the premium edition ($$) slated to be offered next year? I also wonder how much it will cost. Special note: Google says that your organization will never have to pay a fee for users who sign up in beta, before it decides what fees it is going to charge!
I am somewhat disappointed. This is not the long-promised “GoogleOffice” app, and I have to wonder if this is being given to us to allow some delay in the development of that, or if this will become GoogleOffice as things like Writely get added.
Yeah, there is a lot of good stuff in Google Apps for Your Domain, but I wanted to see Writely in there, too, as well as Google Spreadsheets. I’ve used something like Writely (Writeboard) and enjoyed it very much. And, do you think Google developers somewhere are working on a slide show killer app? I hope so!
Here’s the best short description I have seen so far:
That look, while hosted by Google, will be accessed at the Internet domains of businesses, universities, and organisations that sign up for it. All of the suite applications will have a user interface based on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript + XML) and be branded for individual organisations, with the same logos and colour schemes used at the domain. While the email will be Gmail, it will remain a domain address.
And the best long, and sometimes critical discussion I have seen is here.
Google’s main competitor here, Microsoft, is planning to offer access to a similar package of Web apps soon. No doubt we will all benefit from the competition, even if we choose the loser.
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