“Gmail for your domain” becomes “Google Apps for Your Domain” (in beta, duh) and goes for another round of blogosphere hype. I don’t think you’ll want to use Google Page Creator for anything serious; there is no definite advantage (for now) in using this Google Calendar rather than the stock one; Google Talk will be useless for any serious use as long as it doesn’t support offline messaging, and its only advantage is integrating IM logs into Gmail; so this is really still all about getting Gmail to manage your domain’s addresses, isn’t it?

I have no personal interest in that (I wouldn’t trust my email archive to any foreign server), but it looks to be quite interesting for many people (Gmail with your own addresses, still free? why the hell not?) and I would probably not mind recommending it to clients (although most of them would complain about the lack of mailing list support — why no apparent Google Groups integration?). Plus, imagine if/when Google Apps allows for automated account management: any community site could offer free, personalized Gmail accounts to its subscribers. Teh cool.

There’s a teeny problem with the terms of service, though:

No Fees. Provided that Google continues to offer the Google Hosted Services to Customer, Google will provide a version of the Google Hosted Services (with substantially the same services as those provided as of the Effective Date) free of charge to Customer indefinitely; provided that such commitment (i) applies only to End User Accounts created during the period when the Google Hosted Services are considered a beta service (the "Beta Period") by Google (such Beta Period determination at Google’s sole discretion) and (ii) may not apply to new opt-in services added by Google to the Google Hosted Services in the future. For sake of clarity, Google reserves the right to offer a premium version of the Google Hosted Services for a fee.

In short: any user account you register during the beta will be free forever; if you want to create new accounts afterwards, you might have to pay; plus, we may launch a premium version of the service later on.

I personally find the last two clauses a bit conflicting — in a frightening “we have no clue what we’re gonna do” kind of way. Anyway, how come they’re unable to commit to something as simple as free Gmail accounts creation? Beta services are one thing we’re used to; beta pricing, now, that’s bullshit. What businesses could be foolish enough to move their email accounts to Google Apps without any sort of commitment as to what creating new email accounts will cost? (Oh, some will, I have no doubt.)

Come on, you know you’ll offer free user account creation, at least within a reasonable limit, so why not just put it in writing? Limit that commitment to 500 active accounts or so, and raise the counter over time just like you raise mailbox size. Because this doesn’t look very serious, nor clean.

Scobleizer: Bloggers have a double standard when it comes to Google vs. Microsoft? Well, duh. You do reap what you sow, occasionally.

I love that he references a Microsoft blogger’s post complaining that Google Apps is intrinsically the same as Microsoft Office Live. Behold Office Live Basics: Free domain name! (Which I can’t help but expect will forever belong to Microsoft.) Five e-mail accounts with proven Hotmail-quality spam filter! (And probably no POP3 access. Unless you have Office, I guess.) Windows XP and MSIE compatibility! Credit card required, but it’s free, really! (Unless you give in to our upgrade nags.)

Yeah, it’s, like, just as cool and tempting as Google Apps, really. Geez…

Elsewhere:

• APC Magazine: “Google promised more information including pricing soon.”

• Anil Dash: Google Office: Google Apps for Your Domain.

• CrunchGear: Google Apps Break on Through.

• GigaOM: Google Apps For My Domain, No Thank You.