I’ve heard again and again…
“I’d love to use Gmail for my company mail and can POP mail *IN* but can’t send mail with my company domain *OUT*. I’d pay to be able to do this!”
So this raises the following questions for me:
Some questions:
- What size would the market be for this in the A) personal B) small/home-office and C) medium/large corporate spaces? Would individuals and companies really ditch Outlook/Exchange?
- Would this ‘private label’ version of Gmail still show ads?
- Would it cost money? If so, how much, and if not, would ads be the only revenue stream?
- When can we expect to see this new offering?
My guesses:
- A) Not large. Individuals with their own domains probably want the extra features that geek-mail-software offers, or the integration with Palm and such that Outlook offers.
B) Pretty substantial. Folks in this position may travel a bunch and really relish being able to check and send (branded) e-mail from any computer. Also, they’re not likely to have MS Exchange set up.
C) Questionable. Such firms likely are too entrenched in an Exchange environment and have security / privacy concerns that have already been QA’d against Outlook. - By default, yes, but you could pay (extra) to get rid of them.
- I anticipate a three tier set of offerings: Free (current version), Private Domains, and Enterprise, with only the latter having a fee based upon number of seats. No idea of the cost per seat, though.
- September 12, 2005 or April 1, 2006
Your thoughts?
What do you think?