A limited trial has started for small firms, schools and other organizations
Google has launched a beta for hosted email accounts that feature the user’s domain instead of gmail.com or googlemail.com.
The search giant is testing the service at San José City College, supplying the school’s students with email addresses hosted by Google but ending in ‘sjcc.edu’. Users reading their email see an interface similar to that of a Gmail account, and also get access to 2 GB of storage. Google is also providing management tools that allow the school to create and delete user accounts and mailing lists.
The beta, which is going head-to-head with a similar beta that Microsoft launched in November, is offering 2GB of storage, email search tools and a control panel to manage user accounts, aliases and mailing lists, as part of its test version.
The battleground for hosted email accounts appears to be taking shape among the industry titans, but it has yet to be seen whether it will quickly accelerate, as did the offerings for large email storage by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.
The beta is open to businesses, organizations and schools, according to a posting on Google’s blog. Businesses and organizations are invited to sign up for a beta of the ‘Gmail for your domain’ service on Google’s website here.
Google’s beta follows on the heels of a similar one Microsoft launched in November, and a service it has been offering to individual users on an account-by-account basis for some time. The Microsoft Windows Live Custom Domains beta features instant messaging too, which Google has just integrated into its mail product in the US.
Microsoft is offering a service similar to the Gmail beta as part of its Windows Live initiative. The Microsoft Windows Live Custom Domains beta offers to host a user’s domain and will make e-mail available through its MSN Hotmail interface.
The Live Custom Domains service, however, was aimed at consumers who wanted up to 20 email accounts, with 250MB per address for an existing domain. Microsoft’s hosted beta also included security features such as virus scanning and spams filtering.