As a small business myself, I’ve migrated to Google Apps for Business, primarily for the email support. I now rely on Google to handle delivery and spam control for all of my business mail. I have IMAP support set up, allowing me to work offline and while its not 100% reliable, there have been only a few short instances where delivery was delayed. The spam control is wonderful – I check it every day and average 100+ spam emails and I can only recall one false positive in the past year.

With that in mind, I share with you this recent notice I received from my host:

Next week is National Small Business Week, and to celebrate, the Google Apps Team is going on tour. From April 21st through April 24th, we’ll be visiting the most entrepreneurial city in each of the four regions of the U.S.*: Washington D.C., Charlotte, NC, Kansas City, MO, and Phoenix, AZ.

Come by to meet members of the Apps team, find out what’s new, and connect with other businesses using Google Apps.

——————-
Event information for Kansas City, MO:
——————-

Date:
Thursday, April 23, 2008

Location:
Kansas City Live
Corner of 14th Street and Grand Boulevard
Kansas City, MO 64106

Time:
10:00am – 3:00pm

For more details, visit http://www.google.com/apps/citiestour .

We hope to see you there!
The Google Apps Team

If you’d like to learn more about Google Apps, contact me and I’ll demonstrate my personal experience with the tools available.

I bring this up because of the recent announcement Yahoo made – an offer of unlimited free email storage starting in May. There are some caveats, for example Yahoo noted that it is for personal use only and they will monitor to ensure that a business does not offer the Yahoo services for a fee.

There is another downside that we are all becoming more aware of. In order to pay for this service (remember, no such thing as a free lunch) Yahoo has begun a more aggressive advertising model on their services. There are examples of what to expect in the Beta services they currently offer with both email and the My Yahoo portal that was Yahoo’s monster hit. Before Search and Advertising were the breadwinners, the online world revolved around portals.

I was recently invited to try the new Beta My Yahoo. There were two noticeable differences immediately. The first was to my content, the reason behind My Yahoo – it was replaced by a very large square ad in the top right column. Not my content, theirs. On My Yahoo. Because of the pretty changes, I also had to make some changes to my preferred layout that were not as easy as it should have been. Finally, the service continues to be slow. I use Hotmail and Gmail as well and have begun to migrate several email addresses to Gmail due to ease of use, layout and quite frankly speed.

The one thing that keeps me coming back is the Music Launchcast Plus Streaming Radio service. This is a premium service and it was nowhere to be found on My Yahoo page after the migration. I had to go find it, then I had to find the button that ultimately allowed me to add it back. While I do the majority of my internet work via Firefox, Yahoo continues to force me to use Internet Explorer with this service. That would be OK, I open it up first thing in the morning and beginning streaming music. The problem is it crashes regularly now. One minute I have music, the next I don’t. I wonder how much Rhapsody is these days?

I’ve been a big proponent of My Yahoo and the other personalized web pages that are available from Google and Microsoft, recommending them to my SGFsoccer.com readers as well as my genealogy compatriots at Ozarks Genealogical Society.

I’m not the only one that is unimpressed.