Google Apps for Your Domain gets customizable start page

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Google just put a new feature in its Google Apps for Your Domain suite of services: a "start page." This is a new corporate version of Google's existing personal start page, for people inside a company using Google's apps for e-mail and calendaring. The differences between the standard Google start page and this product are that administrators can design the page, can lock down all or part of it, and can give it a custom URL.

Setting up a company intranet page is certainly easy with this tool, but Google's business services are still a bit light. Google hasn't yet integrated Google Docs and Spreadsheets into Google Apps for Your Domain, for example. Google does have all the pieces (including a recently acquired wiki service, a blogging platform, and more) to build a killer small business service. If Google takes the small business market seriously, we should see more activity on this service, and soon. Otherwise, Microsoft's Office Live and Intel's SuiteTwo [video] may grab a lot of the business customers Google is trying to woo.

Related: News.com story and Webware blog posts.

[Fanbloodytastic]

Is that the death of shared web hosting I smell???

Wow this is the sort of impressive set up from Google that all the small hosts running cpanel/whm have been worried about. It's pretty clear Google are going to chase the small biz sector hard with these sorts of tools. Add Analytics and AdWords to the list, then throw in an aquired or developed invoicing system that works with Checkout and you'll never need to use another company for anything.