APC looking for Google’s dark side
I read this article on APC where they struggle to find a dark side to Google’s newly announced Gmail Partner Edition. And while I appreciate the graphic of Darth they’ve posted, sadly, it’s the best thing about the article.
The first problem they run across is this:
Google’s fundamental selling point is a single one: laziness. “You can quit spending your resources and time on applications like webmail — and leave the work to our busy bees at the Googleplex,” Middleton wrote.
Google may well be on the money here — APC’s past discussions with ISPs has indicated that running the email system for customers and dealing with spam while offering an acceptable amount of reliability is a major cost and headache for companies
What? First they say the big selling point is laziness, then in the very next sentence they say that running a reliable and spam free email system is a “major cost and headache.” Wouldn’t that make the actual reason, cost savings and increased focus on core business which is something quite different (from my perspective at least) than laziness? Unless APC was talking about the virtue of laziness as defined by the perl world, but I strongly expect they are not.
Then they go on to find this new insidious twist:
Secondly, while Google talks up the potential for ISPs to customise the service, that might not always be good for end users.
For instance, a key selling point of Partner edition is the ability to “offer subscribers the latest Google applications on your domain”. If a Gmail account is tied to ispname.com.au, it suddenly becomes a lot less appealing, because, like any other ISP email address, changing ISP means having to tell everyone you know about your new email address.
Oh, so now when you use your ISP given email address, when you change ISP’s you’ll also have to change your email address! Oh, wait, you’ve had to do that for as long as there have been ISP given email addresses. I think the only other point they might be trying to make is that, Gmail being better than ISP’s current mail offering may entice more people to use the ISP email that otherwise might not have. Which is a very strange thing to say against the offering. In fact, if anything, there is the potential for a plus in that gmail being gmail, it should be technically possible to migrate your email from the Partner Edition to the regular gmail (which may or may not be what ISP’s want - but it certainly is more possible than the options prior to this).
Similarly, the promised storage volume is “up to 10GB”. If Google offers ISPs the choice of how much storage space to offer customers (and if less space costs an ISP less dollars) then the chances are that ISPs will offer a minimal amount.
I’m not sure what the point is here. It sounds conspiritorial and bad, but I’m not really clear what the problem is…
Honestly, there are all sorts of reasons that one might fear Google these days. Their huge size, gigantic pile of cash and unbelievable influence in the world all provide plenty of fodder for (legitimate) worry. There may even be an angle in the Partner Edition that should worry someone - increasing Google’s already ever increasing presence in online applications might be one angle - but APC doesn’t even find one reasonable thing. APC tries to give their piece some spice with implication and putting “quotes” around particularly “suggestive” phrases. But really they have nothing to say, as far as I can tell.
