Google Apps for Your Domain is what is known as hosted applications. Hosted application is a new trend that is gaining attention and acceptance in the software arena.

Besides free and opensource softwares that you can download run on your own computers, free hosted applications is also another source of softwares that small business can turn to.

Free web email is probably the most common hosted application – GMail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, 163, Sina.

I personally find GMail has an edge over the rest for the business user as it can send email as another address.

Using this feature you can send email as if it comes from your company’s domain.

Not only that, if you have a few emails from different domains, you can manage all of them in a single GMail account.

Google Apps for Your Domain goes one step further to make the service customizable with your branding and color scheme.

This service is in beta and could become a paid service but “Organizations accepted by Google during the Google Apps for Your Domain beta period are eligible for free service for their approved beta users even beyond the end of the beta period, as described in the Terms of Service.”

But before you run to sign up, check out the privacy notice. Om Malik of GigaOM is apparently concerned about the privacy disclosure.

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