Home » GaGa for Google Apps - A Review of Google's Project Management Potential

Where could Google Apps be better?

This section provides bullet points on various hurdles new Google Apps users should consider. It will be updated as Google makes improvements, and new criticisms come to light.

 

For that matter, if you have a Google Apps pet peeve, leave us a comment about it, and we'll add it to the list! 

 

Concerning Google Apps

  • Lack of real time support: Google keeps most of their products in a continual beta mode. As with any beta testing unforeseen problems do arise, including security risks and bugs stopping normal operations. By using Google Tools, organizations place Google as the party responsible for their IT support. They provide wonderful online help content, but they prefer to handle most of their support issues through email or their support intake system. This means that when things go down, you must have faith in Google’s time frame to fix them. Some people prefer to have the assurances of an on-site IT expert letting them know when things will return to normal. His guess or Google’s guess may each be worth a grain of salt, but it is nice to have a human voice telling you the current situation. You do lose that with a free service.

  • As of summer 2009 several security experts have noted that Gmail, Google docs and Google calendar are vulnerable to hijacking because they are not automatically encrypted (Security Fix, Top Security Minds Urge Google to Encrypt All Services, June 16, 2009).


Concerning Gmail

  • No master contacts list: Google gives administrators the option to have all domain users available in each employee’s contact list, but there is no option for sharing a master contacts list.
  • In his PCWorld blog, Answer Line, Lincoln Spector points out that gmail falls short if you want a local backup of your email, and recommends Filip Jurcícek's free Gmail Backup as a work around. Read How Safe Is My Gmail?



Concerning Google Calendar

  • Problems with sharing calendars: All calendars imported to Google Calendar are private by default. This is problematic when you want to import a public calendar for your organization. There is a hack for getting around this issue, but this does create stress for non-IT people.

  • No support for synching with non-Microsoft clients: Syncing with Microsoft Outlook is available, but there is no Google support for syncing with alternative clients.



Concerning Google Docs

  • Slow rollout for Google Docs Offline: Google Docs Offline is supposedly available to Google Apps users, but many domains have not received this feature yet in their Google Apps accounts. Google requests that administrators turn on new features in their Domain Settings, but this doesn’t fix the issue in every case.

  • No standard CSS file for Google Docs: Google doesn’t let users create a standard CSS file for use in all their documents. Each Google Doc must have the CSS file copied to it, creating a hassle.

  • Many formatting features available in Microsoft Office are not yet available for Google Docs.

 

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