Google wants your ISP's email

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 21 May 2007 at 10:43

Your ISP email could be turned into a Gmail account if the search giant has its way.

The company is offering to host email, calendars and other online apps on behalf of ISPs as part of its Google Apps Partner Edition.

And it's not only small ISPs that Google is targeting; it claims the service is 'specifically designed for ISPs, portals, and other service providers, whether you have a few thousand subscribers or over a million'.

Why would an ISP hand over its email provision to Google? It would essentially allow them to outsource the management and hosting of the service, whilst allowing customers to keep their ISP branded addresses.

There are downsides to the Google service. Email inboxes are capped to (an admittedly generous) 10GB and, although Google claims to offer 24/7 support, the ISP would essentially be relying on Google to maintain a key service.

Google is also charging ISPs for the service, although the pricing details haven't been made public. Find out more details here.