Salesforce CEO champions Microsoft-free email | The Register
“This is outrageous… [this is] Gmail for our domain,” Benioff exclaimed. “I can’t wait to get my Outlook server out of my company. It’s really unbelievable what it does and how bad it is. Google does a much better job of managing email than I do at my company.”

I agree.

I recently received an invitation to join Google’s Gmail for domains beta program.  And with a little help from the Pair swellsters, was able to easily switch things over. I have all my mail going there now, and no longer use a mail client locally.  Not that I was ever really happy with any.

Gmail has proven to be an awfully good alternative.

I used to keep all mail on my iBook, so I could take it with me, and always have access.  Now I’ve got access to everything from any computer.  And good access.  I loved the webmail switch, so also tried it with work mail.  But they use “Outlook Web Access”.  I immediately found it lacking, so called to get my work mail forwarded to my gmail account.

Their first response was to tell me my responses would be from my rexruff e-mail rather than work mail.  I explained to them that actually, with gmail domains, I could set up different accounts and it would automatically reply with the same address it was addressed to.

Then I told them the things gmail could do that Outlook could not.  They tried to say Outlook could.  But I interupted to say: “I access the webmail in firefox on a mac”.  Dead silence.  Then, “oh, enough said”.  Outlook web access is extremely limited in anything besides MS stuff.

I find gmail better than my local Mac Mail client as well.  In combination with a customized google home page and google scholar, I’m just not doing all that much locally these days.  I hope their RSS reader improves soon.

It was the first attempt, so I can’t be too quick to judge, I guess.

Adding to my recent usage of Google’s search history, today I set up a few custom news modules to complement my barrage of Google Alerts.

When logged in, the Google news page also has a section of Recommendations based on my previous usage. Their first offering was this:

Hopefully they will get better. I wish they included all my Google Alerts. I must get about 100 of those a day on all the topics I track. For the most part, they have proven to be more valuable than my RSS feeds.

Google Notebook is awfully cool.  I’ve tried snippet gathering stuff before, but this is so much easier.  I do a lot of web research, and even in its early stage it’s a great tool.

My only problem is choosing between Yahoo and Google.  I track articles in Yahoo’s MyWeb.  I clip parts of articles to Google Notebook.  I already have a lot of stuff at MyWeb.

That’s the problem I see in using other people’s stuff.  I’m hoping eventually I’ll be able to access both easy enuff via an API or two maybees.

The other problem with Google Notebook is that I can’t share with selected people.  It’s either public or private.  I can export via a PDF, but then I lose the links, and those who see it can’t edit as well.

Could share a log-in, but then there are problems with rotating employees and a pain to log in and out all the time between work stuff and personal stuff.

In Yahoo’s MyWeb I can keep stuff to myself and share with selected people.

So I’m just using both now.  Additionally, I’ve started using Google’s custom home page, search history and bookmarks.  Browser as platform babee, I’m living it.