10 Reasons not to use Google Apps
September 16, 2007
Microsoft provided a list of 10 reasons not to use Google Apps.
Can not agree to most of them, even for enterprise. But I have my very personal list of problems with Google Apps, although I think all of them are solvable:
If you use a google apps account you can not use most of the google services, like web history or my places on google maps. It works, if you create a new google account with your google apps id as secondary email address. The concept of gmail account vs. google account is pretty tricky, so it took 4 posts for a google employee Steve to explain the point ;-).No IMAP access to mails. IMAP is the standard for accessing emails stored on the server. Standards are great for accessing stuff in, you know, the standard (uniform) way. I know, gmail web interface with its incredible full search capability and usability is really great. But for some special cases you really wish the standards:
- checking for the mails on your mobile phone even in sleep mode
- some sort of automatic processing of emails
- using non browser mail client uniformly for multiple accounts
Google apps uses completely different URL structure than gmail. So all the great gadgets and widgets, that make the integration with mail so pleasant, are not aware of it and do not work:
- Gmail for mobile application does not work
- the gmail widget of netvibes aggregator shows recent mails but the links do not work
- mail notifier in the google toolbar does not work
Besides that I am a big fan of google apps and looking forward for google to fix the problems. Eventually google apps should leave the beta phase.
The adoption for the enterprise in Europe could primary fail on google conspiracy considerations but it is another story…