Google+ Latest Service To Snub Google Apps Users

Top 15 Google Apps For Business

Maybe the reason Google has struggled to succeed in social media is that it keeps snubbing some of its most loyal fans.

The introduction of Google+ has revived interest in Google's ability to become a player in social media, with granular control over different circles of contacts that might even make it useful for business collaboration--if only the company's product planners would stop working at cross purposes. Google+ is only the latest service to snub the users of Google Apps, the online service for businesses that allows them to use their business domain with Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and other Web applications. Google Apps is the company's core cloud computing offering to small businesses, large enterprises, and universities, many of which use it to support student email accounts.

Even before Google stopped issuing new invitations for Google+, Google Apps users who tried to sign up were confronted with an error message ("Oops!") informing them that Google+ requires a Google Profile. Google Apps users, some of them paying customers, get the same brush off if they try to use the +1 button Google introduced earlier this year.

Google Profiles are a prerequisite for any of these social features, but they have yet to be enabled for Google Apps accounts. Google Buzz, last year's supposed Facebook-killer, had the same issue. When Buzz was announced in February 2010, Google promised to have it working with Google Apps accounts "within a few months".

Buzz turned out to be a misfire, but a similar promise followed in a March 30, 2011 post on the Official Google Enterprise Blog: "Coming soon to Google Apps: +1 button and Google Profiles."

By now, Google Apps users can be forgiven for wondering what "soon" means in Google's book. Some of the chronology presented here comes from the blog of Brad Wells, an electrical engineering student at Florida State University, who has chronicled the string of broken promises and recent hints that soon might really be coming soon.

"I do think it's weird that their most loyal users getting locked out of all their best applications," said longtime tech blogger Kent Newsome, who also has been ranting about the snub to the users who have made the greatest commitment to Google's cloud apps. In an interview, Newsome said he understands why Google has to be more careful with the features it offers to business users, but he still finds the delay frustrating.

"I think the reason Google is being so careful about this is they've been promoting Google Apps to the enterprise, which means they have to be super, super careful with access and security and not roll anything out before they can secure it," Newsome said. "It just makes me mad because I love Google, love Google Apps, and want to use Plus."

Top 15 Google Apps For Business

The logjam may break soon. Dave Girouard, president of the Google Enterprise division, recently tweeted, "Making Google+ work for Google Apps users is a very high priority for the team. Sorry to make you wait--we have to do it right." In a post on Google+, he also mentioned something about an upcoming trial for universities ("Can't wait to get Google+ out to some of our Apps for EDU schools!"). Speaking on the last This Week in Google podcast, Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product at Google said the need for Google Apps compatibility "is the single biggest bit of feedback we got" on the Google+ launch and reiterated that it was a high priority.

R "Ray" Wang, principal analyst and CEO at Constellation Research, sees great potential in Google+ as a business application, particularly because of its unified communications features such as voice and video collaboration options. The fact that Google Apps users don't have their email unified just yet is a temporary roadblock, he said, a factor of Google suffering through "big company problems" where different product teams are struggling to synchronize their efforts.

The hurdles could even work to Google's advantage, establishing pent-up demand much like in the early days of Gmail, when accounts were offered on a limited invitation-only basis, Wang said.

Still, a survey of support forum threads shows many Google Apps users are frustrated.

"The thing is with people with personal Google apps domains are the first adopter types who would probably most interested in getting profiles and this Google+ thing working," wrote Jeff Martin, a programmer who works for the education firm Apollo Group, the operator of the University of Phoenix. He runs a Google Apps account for his own personal domain, he said, and for an educational nonprofit he supports.

"We're sort of the loyal Google guys, and we jumped on the bandwagon when they announced this 'use Google with your own domain' thing," Martin said. Sure, he could go back to signing in with his old Gmail account to use the social services, "but I really hate my Gmail address and don't want that exposed anymore."

Newsome said he was mildly irritated by this incompatibility when he first experimented with Google Buzz--except that he didn't care that much because Buzz never seemed to have the same potential that Google+ does. Now he wants in, and he doesn't want to have to switch to a personal Gmail account to accomplish it.

"If you're using Google Apps, you don't want to create a network around some other email address that you don't even use," he said.

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