Google beta offers domains beyond gmail.com

Google has launched a beta for hosted e-mail accounts that feature the user's domain instead of gmail.com.

The hosted-Gmail beta, which is going head-to-head with a similar beta that Microsoft launched in November, is offering 2GB of storage, e-mail search tools and a control panel to manage user accounts, aliases and mailing lists, as part of its test version.

The beta is open to businesses, organizations and schools, according to Google's blog site. The search giant points to San Jose City College as one school that is testing hosted Gmail, offering its students e-mail accounts with the domain of jaguars.sjcc.edu.

Google's beta follows on the heels of a similar one Microsoft launched in November. The Microsoft Windows Live Custom Domains beta features hosted e-mail and instant messaging.

The Live Custom Domains service, however, was aimed at consumers who wanted up to 20 e-mail accounts, with 250MB per address for an existing domain. Microsoft's hosted beta also included security features such as virus scanning and spam filtering.

The battleground for hosted e-mail 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 e-mail storage by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

[explorer5]

Wrong about live custom domains

Windows Live Custom Domains currently has a maximum of 250mb per user account, but once Windows Live Mail is released, all accounts will be upgraded to 2gb, in addition, Live Custom domains increased the number of accounts to 60, and im sure in the future they will increase it to a much higher number.. Remember this is till in beta, and its a beta that anyone can sign up for and use - immediatly, unlike Gmail version where you have to go through an approval process.

[gggg sssss]

You gotta be kidding

If Google rolls over for every request to snoop around by every lawyer who can spell subpoena who would ever keep anything of business value on their servers? Run far far away from this disater in waiting

[Jamie314]

Misleading title

Talk about sensationalist headlines! I read all about this on Slashdot a few days back, but when I saw this headline I thought "Wha? They're changing the domain?".

Perhaps something a little more descriptive than 'ditches' would make sense.... I'm just amazed you guys get paid for this stuff.

[bukaroo12]

Horrible article title!

I agree with you all. This article title is horrible! Why not change it to reflect a little bit of reality?