Google Apps for Your Domain Expands to Include the Start Page for Organizations

If we sprinkled pixie dust on the Google Personalized Homepage and onto Google Apps for Your Domain, and threw them together on a server, what would happen?

We’d launch the Start Page for organizations, a new feature now part of Google Apps for Your Domain. Available today, the Start Page brings organizations of all sizes a customizable homepage, hosted by Google, that serves two main functions:

• It’s your users’ central access point for logging in to the communication and collaboration services they get through Google Apps for Your Domain, like Gmail and Google Calendar.

• And it’s a page with your own branding that lets you present useful and relevant content to your users – including your own content, Google Gadgets and RSS feeds.

With the Start Page, organizations can make their users’ online experience a little more convenient and useful – capitalizing on those fleeting moments of user attention to deliver information like company news, information on the industry, or links to important resources, like a company directory.

Here’s how it works: Domain administrators create and manage the start page through a simple online interface, locking in the branding and design features and the content modules they’d like all users to see every time they use the page. The content options range from the simple to the sophisticated. Administrators can drop in text, images, or HTML; add RSS feeds; or create a new module of their own. Then the organization’s users can customize the Start Page for themselves by mixing and matching from the set of modules selected by their domain administrator, adding in other gadgets from Google, and incorporating RSS feeds from around the web. There’s also a Google search box on the page.

Companies, schools, and other organizations of all sizes that would rather spend their time and resources on things other than building static web pages from scratch can have a fresh, customizable Start Page up and running for their employees, students and members quickly. Or, for ISPs, retailers, and other businesses that want to extend their customers’ relationship with their brand, the Start Page is a scalable yet customizable way to reach out to individuals.

The Start Page is free, hosted by Google, and available starting today in US English. Organizations can sign up for Google Apps for Your Domain, Google’s powerful set of hosted communication and collaboration services for organizations, at www.google.com/a.