Currently supported by advertising, Google plans to offer a fee-based premium service of Google Apps for Your Domain. Removal of adverts from Google’s offering makes it much more appealing for business use. If this also coincides with Google refraining from parsing content, to determine suitable advertising, much of the argument against Google’s services is removed.

The messaging offering includes up to 2.5GB of storage per account and a Jabber IM client embedded into the browser interface. An administration login is included for account maintenance and to allow branding of the service. The ability to share documents and calendars, and provide instant messaging and VoIP integration through Google Talk, further enhances Google’s offering.

This service could be of particular interest to small organizations that cannot afford to provide their own infrastructure. As such, it also has the potential to dent the customer base of companies providing hosted messaging solutions that rely on these customers for the bulk of their income.

… John Stanners