Chrome is now available

They kinda missed the 11am PDT goal, but Google Chrome is now available.

Google Chrome

I cannot wait for 11am. That's when the new Google Chrome browser will be released. (I just had a scary thought. They might mean 11am PST!)

This browser looks like the answer to many problems. It will run each tab in it's own process which should conserve memory (not on startup, but over time), increase stability, improve security and allow some cool features.

But you don't have to listen to me while you sweat out the interminable wait for the download to go live. Go read this. It's informative, entertaining and has pictures!

Official Google Blog: We're expecting

Official Google Blog: We're expecting

So Google makes it official -- There will be a presentation application added to Documents and Spreadsheets. I really need to step up our testing of Google Apps for Education.

Outsourcing to Survive

Sorry about the extended silence there. I really thought it would take longer before I hit writer's block!

So, Google has their Apps For Your Domain suite of products and they are quietly increasing the amount of storage they allow Gmail users. Yahoo! ups the ante by allowing unlimited storage for their email users. Are we playing a fool's game trying to supplying email services to our users when there are organizations that can do it better/faster/cheaper? Are my users better served by using someone else's service?

Seriously, what does it gain my organization when I pay for, install, maintain, backup, troubleshoot, and generally administer an email server? I think my talents can be better put to use in other areas. Why not let Google or Yahoo! run my email system for me? Let them spend the money on storage/backups/scaling. I'll keep our PCs running and maybe have enough time left over to plan for the future.

What's the drawback? I'm having a hard time thinking of one...

Google Support, Part 2

Ironically, after posting my rant about Google Technical Support, Google Tech Support emailed me to say they had switched our Standard Edition of Google Apps over to the Education Edition. Happy ending, I suppose, but it gets me thinking about customer service.

Personally, I am a computer guy and not a people person. Put me in a room with 100 computers and I am in heaven. Put me in a room with 100 people and I am in hell. Not that I hate people, I just am not the most comfortable when I am trying to make conversation.

Additionally, with everything I am expected to handle I tend to give customer service lower priority than fixing/upgrading/adding/deleting/moving/installing/etc. I'd rather get the next task accomplished than spend time telling someone what I already did.

I think that puts me at a disadvantage with customer service. People may think that my lack of communication indicates a lack of concern or a lack of professionalism. I know I was pretty convinced that Google was uninterested in my problem with them. Even now, after a successful resolution to the problem, I do not feel good about the situation.

Leave a comment and let me know how you handle customer service in your position.

Google Support

Has anyone ever had trouble with Google Tech support? I've never been comfortable with their "no phone call" approach but figured that, in this day and age, it wouldn't be too bad. I've had two experiences with them one worked out OK, and one still hasn't worked out at all.

First Issue

The first issue was in setting up AdSense for this blog. There was some user error involved on my part and the issue did get resolved so I am not going to make to big a deal about it. The problem is that I only got a couple of form letters from Google. I still don't think that anyone there actually knows about my problem.

Second (Bigger) Issue

More troubling is the problem I am having with Google Apps for Your Domain (Education Edition). Back in September (2006), I set up a Standard Edition account to test it out. I thought it might be useful for the public school system I work for. Too few users allowed and too little incentive to change things at the time caused me to decide against going any further with it.

Then Google announced the Google Apps for Ed and I became interested again. The problem is that I registered the school's domain for the Standard Edition. I can't sign up for the Education version!

I wrote an email to Google explaining the problem and received a reply. Well, if you can consider an FAQ of common problems a reply, I did. I replied to that email and stated that it didn't resolve anything. Two weeks later, I still hadn't received a reply so I emailed again. I still haven't received an answer from them about this.

Microsoft may be a lot of things, but I always have been able to call them on the phone for support. Maybe we need to rethink what "doing evil" actually means...

Google Apps

The current buzz is about Google Apps Premier Edition which gives you access to Google Apps without advertising plus extra tech support. They'll even throw in APIs to tie your existing apps into the Googleverse (did I make that up just now or am I subconsciously recalling it from somewhere?), all for the low price of $50 per user per year. But I'm not seeing a great amount of discussion about Google Apps for Education, which is more intriguing to me. (My current position is as the entire IT department for a local K-12 school district.) This is a shame because it could be very interesting in a school environment.

What's in Google Apps?

Google Apps for Education includes the standard Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar and Docs & Spreadsheets. Additionally, they throw in the aforementioned APIS and tech support. To sweeten the deal, they give a start page with a WYSIWYG HTML editor to create a page for your staff and/or students to access. This is the same package as the Premier Edition. The difference between the two? For qualifying educational institutions, this will cost the grand total of FREE.

Of course, you never get something for nothing. You'll have to put up with advertising in order to take advantage of the deal. Curiously, Google will allow you to block ads in Gmail but not the rest of the apps. My question is how closely Google will be monitoring the ads. I would hate to subject young minds to inappropriate advertising. Also, with CIPA-mandated web filters in place, Google will have to be careful that the ads will actually be viewable by users in schools. Otherwise, the advertisers are getting the short end of the stick.

Pros

From the perspective of the Lonely Tech, this program (either the Premier or the Education Edition) has a few things going for it. First, you can offload your email infrastructure onto Google. Imagine no more corrupt Exchange databases, no more email server backups or patches, and no more email system upgrades. Heck, that's a pretty good selling point right there.

Our school system outsources the email server to a host. I can't fault their uptime, it's been terrific. The biggest complaint I get from users is that the Exchange OWA setup they use does not allow offline email viewing. If they allowed POP3 access, I doubt I would even look at Google Apps. Gmail does allow POP3 access, so my users can access email with Outlook or Outlook Express they are already used to. (Heck, maybe I can get them to use Thunderbird!)

Additionally, you get a barebones document management system. Docs & Spreadsheets allows for collaborative development of documents. Again, this is all offloaded onto Google, so there is no additional storage or installation of software to make this work for you.

Finally, you get Google Calendar. This is a pretty good way to share a calendar with a select few or the entire world. You can even set up a master calendar and include it on your Start Page to keep the entire organization up to speed.

Cons

Additional Reading

Your data: safe in your hands? by ZDNet's Phil Wainewright -- I can't believe people commenting on the launch of Google Apps are still recycling the tired old mantra about hosted applications being untrustworthy. It's users that can't be trusted with important data, not SaaS vendors.

The first thing that springs to mind is: What might Google do with all the information that will be stored on its servers? Could they sell information to marketers? Could sensitive information end up exposed to the web? Probably the bigger question is: How well am I protecting my organization's info? It's likely Google would do better than you at protecting it. Still, it is a legitimate concern and you had best verify compliance with whatever regulations ail you before diving in.

The next thing (and a bigger concern than privacy, IMHO) is application upgrades. Currently, if I want to teach my fellow employees the new ribbon interface for Office 2007 then I can go ahead and upgrade from Office 2003. If I don't have the time or feel that the employee's aren't inclined to learn, then I can hold off on that upgrade. With Google Apps, everyone is getting upgraded when Google decides to upgrade. I am giving up some control in this exchange.

My final concern is the pricing structure. Sure, it's $50 per user per year for Premier and free for Education now. What will it be in the future? Can anyone seriously guarantee prices won't drastically rise someday? And if I opt out at that point, I'm going to be scrambling to scrape together an email server and get an office suite installed quick!

Wrap-Up

All told, I can't overlook the price with my current budget. Google's uptime is rock-solid and while giving up control over certain aspects is a little scary it is also liberating. Google Apps could give a whole new level of interactivity between the students and teachers (and administrative staff) for no investment.

I'll be sure to post if we go through with this and give updates as to the process. In the meantime, let me know what you think of Google Apps.