August 9, 2007
Google Apps
In which I move to Google Apps and kick sand in Google's face.
So, I'm moving my andrewsavory.com mail handling across to Google, in the face of an unending torrent of spam, bounces and viruses in the last few days. I thought I'd try the gorilla of mail services on the assumption Google have more resources than me when it comes to spam tuning. I've heard warnings of false positives from various people, but I'm a sucker so I'd like to see for myself.
Initial experience was a little confusing. The benefits of paying over the benefits of the free service didn't seem that great, the most interesting being migration tools (which seem the most obvious to be free, if you want people to adopt your service.) Also, the first month is a free trial, so I ponied up the virtual cash to try, with the intention to fall back to free afterwards.
It's annoying that google apps isn't tied to an existing google account.
The whole setup process is crazily bad. Twice I got grumbles from Safari about Google's secure certificate, and at one point I got a broken ad served up from https://www.googleadservices.com/ which left me with a blank page. Then there's complete non-sequiters, such as setting up a username but being given "spam me" buttons:
I mean, hang on - am I setting up a username, or an email address?
And now I'm being asked to verify that I own my domain, AFTER I provided my credit card details to Google. I'm sorry, but that is just evil. Given all the other barriers to entry they put in front of their customers, the least they could do is verify I can be a customer before taking my money.
Oh, and the verification process? They ask me to upload an HTML file with a verification string in it, that looks like plain text to me. So, do they want a full-on <html><body>googleverificationstring</body></html>? Or could they, in fact, just ask for plain text? Oh, and the URL they want to retrieve it from is http://mydomain.com/somesillyfile.html ... but y'know some of us are all retro and still use a www. in front of our domain names. Will Google obey the "301 GetTheHellOffMyDomainRoot" redirect?
Get out of here, you're kidding me? Google, master of the über-slick web services, using retro non-automated offline processes to verify my domain? Awww, c'mon! And guess what?
Sorry, we are currently unable to verify your domain ownership using any of the following methods
HTML file
Idiots. Look, it's right here: googlehostedservice
Ok, so my other option is CNAMEs. Although their advice is to point the verification string at google.com, but don't forget the trailing dot - so if you use bind, you want to add something like this to the zone file:
supersecretgooglestring IN CNAME google.com.
... and then all is good. Oh, and they also suggest you search for "CNAME lookup" to find services that will help you test your CNAME entry, but don't bother - the first few pages of search results don't include any such useful services. Great advert for Google's search, guys! Simpler to fire up a terminal and type in 'nslookup supersecretgooglestring.your.domain', which should give you back something like
Non-authoritative answer:
supersecretgooglestring.your.domain canonical name = google.com.
Name: google.com
Address: 66.102.9.104
After some further crawling through the Google Apps website, I figured I'm finally ready to throw the switch, so I updated the server's MX records to point all mail at Google. Let's see if it works. It would have been really nice if there was a "10 steps to Google mail" roadmap of all the things I needed to do, a checklist (with automated testing) to make sure everything was in place. As it is, I nearly missed a few important things, such as "catch-all addresses", which by default discards email. I tell people to email me with whatever_the_hell_they_like@andrewsavory.com, so by default I would have lost a lot of email :-(
Anyway, it's running now ... I've already got 5, no 6, no 8, no 15, no 21 emails in the 'Spam' folder, so looks like so far so good ...
Technorati Tags: critique, email, google, SaaS, social software, www
Posted by savs at August 9, 2007 12:09 PMThanks for the write-up. I don't think I'll switch my own mail to Google, but I definitely am interested in it as an option to recommend to friends & family. If you're inclined to write any more after you've used it for a while, I'd like to read it. Thanks
Posted by: Dave Brondsema at August 9, 2007 2:56 PMThanks for the reminder to use nslookup.
The other thing to remember is when you are setting up your CNAME record on a top level DNS such as Networksolutions.com remember to use a text editor if you are going to do any cut and pasting into the Host Alias area where you need to add your googlehexsupersecretstring.yourdomianname.domain ghs.google.com.
Attempting to copy and paste this directly from the Google Apps HTML page shall hose you! After the 3 DUH I dump the string in a text editor and found quite a mess.
While Networksolutions pushes the change in under 2 hours and the Web site, chat, Google Docs, etc are live in under 1/2 hour the mail address and report on whether you got the MX record right takes 24 to 36 hours, forever to a type A personality like me.
Do not change the default URLs for the Docs, Calendar or Mail clients. If you do you will not connect to them. The web URL can be changed.
Thank you SO much for this. I am in the process of setting my domain up to use gmail apps...I chose the "change CNAMES" method of verification....I copied the string, but being a newbie, did NOT copy the trailing dot, as you so helpfully noted must be included.....so I've already screwed up before even completing the process....Why couldn't Gmail have included this helpful tip in THEIR instructions????....I found your helpful comments and tips while following Google's lead to "search for automated CNAMES lookup on Google.com, at least that produced some useful results, leading me to YOUR comments and instructions!!! Your info appeared after several pages of useless hits...As you said, what a great recommendation for Google search, eh??! Sheesh, unbelievable!! I wonder if any Google apps developers bothered to try testing their instructions FIRST, before posting their very UNHELPFUL instructions for actual client USE? Apparently not...I will post new comments after I complete the process, giving you a progress report...or possibly a "LACK of progress report," as the case may be!! Now I have to go back and create a new CNAME INCLUDING the trailing dot after Google.com. since Google failed to warn me to include it, as YOU did, thankyouverymuch.
I'll be back....