CNN Money put out a review of Google Apps today in their small business section describing some of the hidden costs associated with the service. Considering that the base level of the service (with ads) is free, and installation can be done relatively easily by a novice webmaster (unlike Outlook Exchange) the service is hard hate.

I’ve been using Google Apps for over a year now and love it to bits. I think think the article (which focused on account confusion) over emphasized how “hard” it is to use and forgot to mention how much time you can save with the email search feature… You may not realize what you are missing if you still use Outlook or some other off brand email, even Hotmail and Yahoo, which don't offer an application suite akin to Google, have struggled with search and it was only very recently (this week) that Hotmail expanded it's size limitations and stopped trying to charge for storage. The enormous space offered by Gmail and Google Apps is a huge plus, and something that should be taken for granted these days. Google's philosophy is that "storage should be free" based on the rapid growth in storage technology following Moore's Law.

I run three small businesses online, each one uses apps, and I have never had a problem getting accounts confused. Furthermore, I have setup Google Apps for dozens of clients here at Sustainable Online Solutions and efficiency and smiles are the only side effects I've seen :)

On a semi-related note, Google's Gmail launched new "theming" elements this evening that allow users to change the color scheme of their inbox. What's even cooler are the scene themes which incorporate different settings and locations such as a beach. The beach theme is very similar to the igoogle theme (used for personalizing your google homepage) and has a sun, waves, a beach ball which change color and location as the day progresses (based on your zip code). Pretty sweet...