Why Om Malik turned down Google’s new business suite

I don't know what kind of company GigaOhm intends to be (looks like just a blog to me), but I doubt anyone at Google is losing sleep over this.

Why would I be concerned about the privacy of letting Google manage my e-mail, web page, calendar etc. if the alternative is to host it on any other service provider? Let's see, do I trust Google with my stuff being about one billionth of their hosted content, or would I rather share hosting services with a few thousand other organizations at a sever farm in Podunk Texas?

For even the smallest company, whats the cost in getting a throw-away domain (maybe making it similar to or related to your primary company domain) and testing out the service there?

I smell "hidden agenda" in a lot of the concern I hear expressed over this company or that.

I don't know if I'd agree with Om here. The privacy page he linked to merely clarified what his designated "domain admin" would have access to---tt's the same access a sysadmin would have.

yeah, we all know the average consumers are wary of the privacy implications of what they do on the web. /sarcasm.

The fact that he is right doesn't mean Google will have a smashing success on their hands.

and for "will" please substitute "won't"

Om seems to be more trusting of 37Signals and Microsoft with his data than he is with Google. I'd like to understand his reasoning for this better. I am also smelling an agenda here. Maybe Om should stick with blog posts as he does not come across well in this audio interview.

I'm also not following what the reason is. Any admin can read your email, see what traffic your are downloading or uploadng. Whether it be at your ISP level, on a cloud like Google's services, Microsoft, whatever. There's always someone that can see your "stuff". So what's so threatening about Google's privacy policy for this new service?

I do disagree with Ohm on this ... I read through Googles privacy policy, and found it to be sufficient to host all my mail on Google mail. So last night I moved all my domain's mail handling to Google.

On the privacy issue ... it is like Mac Beach said ... as a small business, I am taking the same risk as if I would host my mail at some server farm.

And the Google Mail interface is sooooo sweet.

The Google "reality distortion field" is pretty amazing.

Gmail is fine for a free e-mail service - they're probably leading the way with free e-mail. However, why anyone would use Gmail for business is a mystery to me. Gmail is still pretty primitive e.g. doesn't even support IMAP. There are any number of companies that specialise in e-mail hosting, do a great job, and offer their services at low cost.

The same is true for shared calendaring. There are several low-cost shared calendaring systems (very low TCO, compared to MS Exchange) that are much more suited to corporate calendaring than Google Calendar. The truth is - any business that is large enough to need shared calendaring (perhaps more than four or five employees) can afford something way better than Google Calendar.

And as for the Office Suite... well, I'm sorry, but Google's word processor and spreadsheet simply aren't even close to being good enough to run a business on; and that's ignoring the fact that many businesses need a PowerPoint like app too, where Google has nothing. If a business can't afford MS Office, then OpenOffice, for example, is far more compelling than "Google Office".

Bottom line: forget about privacy. The reason to not use the Google "business suite" is that it's just not very good compared to the competition...

I think the issue is broader. Remote hosted services will become the norm when virtualisation technologies like VMWare GSX and the Longhorn wave of Virtual Server with Hypervisor hits the Internet big time. The question ultimately will be how secure will data be from the prying eyes of unscrupulous admins, but more so with government bodies

It will all come down to net citizenship, aka big brother, where all data has to ultimately be accessible regardless of privacy

Om is way off, Google's "privacy" is not much different than Office Live, NetSuite or any other hosted service. They are offering free and fee based services. Free ones with advertising no doubt. Sure we can choose, but let's stop slamming Google at every instance. I'm quite happy with Google and what it is doing for small businesses. Microsoft started the software revolution to make us more productive. Google is now starting the second wave.

Ramon Ray
Editor, http://www.smallbiztechnology.com

It's cool to have a vendetta against Google these days. I honestly don't see what's wrong with the privacy agreement, especially for a hosted service.

I accepted Google's invite for providing group e-mail and calender for my group blog domain - mutiny.in. The privacy agreement is quite standard - as offered by most e-mail service providers. I'll have to disagree with Om on this.

wooaah! This is the equivalent of telcos listening in on our conversations--wait a minute didn't Bush legalize that? The PIPED act in Canada still protects.
Most of us will never garner the attention of surveillance--lest we raise our heads and say "peep".
Watch out Robert. Watch out OM. Why don't you two come up with an app named "Below Radar"?

The latrine is still a private place right?

I'd just like to know what an Om Malik is?

i have also been using the google hosted service for about 2 months now and it was immediately obvious to me on the page linked in ohm's article that the statement was directed toward's user's telling them what the administrator of there domain could do, not what google could do with their information. I have to agree that this kinda smells of google hating for sure.

LayZ: Om was one of the top writers at Business 2.0 and just got some Angel funding to start a content network.

would "content network" mean "funding to write a blog"?

LayZ: no. That would be "funding to pay other people to blog for you." :-)

Makes me wonder if Robert Scoble writes for Scobleizer...

Data security is the issue at hand. I guarantee that Google has better security policies in place tha Om does or for that matter 37Signals can afford. I'd be more likely to buy into Om's argument if he was saying that he preferred to keep all of his corporate data on an encrypted data storage device and not on the Web. I do think we should be careful about who we trust with our data - don't sign-un for every contact/e-mail/crm BETA that launches. Personally, I have a hard time trusting anybody but the biggest players (Microsoft, Google, Yahoo) with my personal or business data.

@19. Cool. Nice work if you can get it, I guess. :-) I wonder how much vig Om pockets for himself?

Robert,

One thing about the podtech, while i was listening to the podcast of Om, I was putting in my comments, when the page refreshes, the podcast stop. logically yes it should stop as the page refreshes. I am sure you can use AJAX to avoid the page refresh.

www.irin.co.uk

OM was referring to this ...
http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/privac...
Obviously companies with IP to protect will have to think twice on going for such stuff.