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Google Apps for Your Domain gets customizable start page

Google just put a new feature in its Google Apps for Your Domain suite of services: a

Rafe Needleman Former Editor at Large
Rafe Needleman reviews mobile apps and products for fun, and picks startups apart when he gets bored. He has evaluated thousands of new companies, most of which have since gone out of business.
Rafe Needleman

CNET Networks

Google just put a new feature in its Google Apps for Your Domain suite of services: a "start page." This is a new corporate version of Google's existing personal start page, for people inside a company using Google's apps for e-mail and calendaring. The differences between the standard Google start page and this product are that administrators can design the page, can lock down all or part of it, and can give it a custom URL.

Setting up a company intranet page is certainly easy with this tool, but Google's business services are still a bit light. Google hasn't yet integrated Google Docs and Spreadsheets into Google Apps for Your Domain, for example. Google does have all the pieces (including a recently acquired wiki service, a blogging platform, and more) to build a killer small business service. If Google takes the small business market seriously, we should see more activity on this service, and soon. Otherwise, Microsoft's Office Live and Intel's SuiteTwo [video] may grab a lot of the business customers Google is trying to woo.

Related: News.com story and Webware blog posts.