Google has announced plans for deeper AI integration within Gmail to help users automate inboxes and tell you what to do next – though this iteration of AI Overviews is hopefully more successful at summarizing your emails than Google has been with search.

The tech giant revealed its Gemini AI will be set loose on Gmail inboxes to build an automated to-do list for users, as well as help dig out useful information from emails via search, and craft automated replies.

The AI-powered systems will first be available in the US in English, with wider availability across languages and regions in the coming months.

"Your inbox is full of important information, but accessing it has required you to become a power searcher," said Blake Barnes, VP of Product for Gmail, in a blog post.

"And even when you find the right emails, you are often left staring at a list of messages, forced to dig through the text to piece together the answer. That’s why we’re introducing AI Overviews."

AI Overviews is the same system used to generate summaries in response to Google search queries – which has been criticized since its launch for misleading information.

When it arrived in Search in 2024, AI Overviews was spotted telling people to glue cheese to pizza or eat rocks – and the challenges have continued, with recent reports that AI Overviews is offering misleading health advice.

How AI Overviews in Gmail will work

In Gmail, AI Overviews will have two primary functions: synthesizing an email conversation into a summary of key points and searching through an inbox to find information.

To use the latter, users simply have to ask a question in the Gmail inbox search bar, Barnes explained.

"Instead of hunting for keywords or digging through a year of emails, just use natural language, like 'Who was the plumber that gave me a quote for the bathroom renovation last year'?" he noted.

"Gemini’s advanced reasoning pulls the answer, instantly summarizing the exact details you need."

Both AI Overview functions are rolling out to Gmail immediately, though the inbox questions feature is only available to Google AI Pro and Ultra Subscribers, while the conversation summaries are available to all Gmail users at no cost.

Google also is testing a new AI Inbox, initially only for "trusted testers" before wider availability in the next few months. This will automatically summarize your messages and pull together a to-do list.

"AI Inbox is like having a personalized briefing, highlighting to-dos and catching you up on what matters," said Barnes. "This lets high-stakes items — like a bill due tomorrow or a dentist reminder — rise to the top."

AI-powered email writing tools are coming to Gmail

Google noted that AI Overviews isn't the first time that AI has been applied to Gmail, as it's been used to power spam blocking systems and to generate Smart Replies.

Indeed, alongside the addition of AI Overviews for searching messages, Google also introduced "Help Me Write", a tool to create or edit emails, as well as "Suggested Replies," which is an update to Smart Replies.

"Suggested Replies can instantly draft an initial response in your tone and style, leaving you free to refine it before giving it your approval," said Barnes. "You can also use the new Proofread feature for advanced grammar, tone and style checks so everything is polished before you send."

The combination of AI Overview summaries of emails paired with Suggested Replies and Help Me Write raises the specter of messages being read by AI and responded to by AI, with only a quick glance and tap of a button by humans.

Help Me Write and Suggested Replies are available to everyone at no cost, while the Proofread tool is being held back for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.

Can you turn off Gmail’s AI features?

Beyond AI Overviews' advice to eat rocks, it's worth noting that generative AI systems continue to make mistakes, so business users – and anyone else – should be aware that accuracy is not guaranteed.

And that's a problem with AI being added to tools, Google or otherwise, without users requesting or desiring them.

This new tranche of AI tools for Gmail are initially only available to American users, but once they start rolling out more widely, it will be possible to turn them off – though that will also mean users lose key tools like spell checking, according to reports from The Verge.

Existing AI features can be managed in Settings in Google Workspace.

A spokesperson for Google told ITPro users will be able to switch off the new features, should they choose.

Users are able to toggle 'smart features and personalization' off in their settings "at any time".

"If you do, you return to the classic Gmail experience," the spokesperson explained. "We believe AI should be an opt-in partner, not a forced requirement."

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Google has hit back at claims of a massive Gmail breach, suggesting recent reports stem from a “misunderstanding of infostealer databases”.

In a post on X, the tech giant insisted Gmail's defenses are “strong, and users remain protected” in a bid to calm customer concerns.

“The inaccurate reports are stemming from a misunderstanding of infostealer databases, which routinely compile various credential theft activity occurring across the web,” Google said.

“It’s not reflective of a new attack aimed at any one person, tool, or platform.”

The company’s sharp response comes after a host of publications reported that 183 million Gmail accounts had been compromised in what one outlet described as a "huge data breach".

Speculation over a breach mounted after a sizable dataset was added to the Have I Been Pwned database, which allows web users to check if their credentials have been compromised.

In a blog post dissecting the dataset, which was collated by researchers at Synthient, creator Troy Hunt noted these records were the culmination of several years’ worth of infostealer activity, instead of a newly discovered breach.

Regardless, several outlets pounced on the situation. In response to a comment under his original blog post, Hunt echoed Google’s response to the coverage.

“I think they're deliberately misleading and designed to drive eyeballs on ads whilst the truth gets buried somewhere further down in the story,” he wrote.

Gmail breach claims are a dime a dozen

This isn’t the first time Google has been forced to push back against reports of a Gmail breach. Indeed, it’s the second in the space of three months.

In late August, reports of a major incident that impacted some 2.5 billion Gmail accounts began circulating online, once again prompting a statement from the tech giant in which it refuted the claims.

In a blog post, Google described reports as “entirely false” and said there was no risk to users.

"We want to reassure our users that Gmail’s protections are strong and effective,” the company said.

“Several inaccurate claims surfaced recently that incorrectly stated that we issued a broad warning to all Gmail users about a major Gmail security issue. This is entirely false.”

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Google has been forced to deny Gmail has been hit with a massive security breach in the wake of a flurry of media reports.

Over the last few days, reports have appeared in a number of publications, claiming that the company had issued a new security alert to its 2.5 billion Gmail users.

Several reports said that users should update their passwords following a breach of Google's Salesforce systems, which had allowed hackers to access a database containing Google Cloud and Gmail users’ data.

In a blog post on September 1st, the tech giant has since refuted those claims, insisting that previous issues pose no risk to users.

"We want to reassure our users that Gmail’s protections are strong and effective,” the company said. “Several inaccurate claims surfaced recently that incorrectly stated that we issued a broad warning to all Gmail users about a major Gmail security issue. This is entirely false.”

"While it’s always the case that phishers are looking for ways to infiltrate inboxes, our protections continue to block more than 99.9% of phishing and malware attempts from reaching users."

What’s behind the Gmail hack confusion?

The confusion appears to have originated in an incident reported by Google involving vulnerable Salesloft Drift instances targeted by the UNC6395 threat group.

The company said the hackers had compromised OAuth tokens for Drift Email integration and had used these tokens to access email from a very small number of Google Workspace accounts.

"The only accounts that were potentially accessed were those that had been specifically configured to integrate with Salesloft Drift; the actor would not have been able to access any other accounts on a customer's Workspace domain," the company said.

"In response to these findings and to protect our customers, Google identified the impacted users, revoked the specific OAuth tokens granted to the Drift Email application, and disabled the integration functionality between Google Workspace and Salesloft Drift pending further investigation."

It advised organizations to immediately review all third-party integrations connected to their Drift instance, revoke and rotate credentials for those applications and investigate all connected systems for signs of unauthorized access.

By August 8th, the company said it had taken measures to mitigate risks for users and alerted all those affected - which was nowhere near all Gmail users.

The attackers had only been active for a limited amount of time before access was cut off. The database contained contact information and related notes for small and medium businesses, and most of the exposed data was publicly-available information such as business names and contact details, it said.

The company did, though, email those affected to warn them that they should be on the lookout for social engineering and extortion attacks.

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Google has announced a new feature to quickly sort Gmail inboxes, with the aim of reducing clutter from ongoing newsletter subscriptions, promotional emails, or blogs.

Through ‘manage subscriptions’, Gmail users can view their active email subscriptions with a dedicated pane.

This allows users to quickly manage subscriptions and rid themselves of unwanted emails that may be cluttering their inbox.

For more detail, the manage subscriptions pane also shows the most frequent senders first, with numbers given for how many emails they’ve sent over a defined period.

Clicking any one sender will show all the emails they’ve sent, the company explained in a blog post.

When a user wishes to unsubscribe from any one sender, Gmail will handle the unsubscribe request from there, making it a one-click process.

The new feature from Google bears similarities to Microsoft’s ‘Sweep’ function in Outlook. This tool allows users to essentially automate their inbox by creating specific rules to move or delete correspondence based on keywords, or even the sender.

Gmail gets the AI treatment

Google has added a slew of new features to Gmail in the past year, with the most significant being various generative AI features available via Gemini within Workspace.

Users can now ask Gemini to summarize received emails, draft or rewrite new emails, and search their inbox for specific messages or attachments based on natural language prompts.

The AI assistant can also draw on Google Drive and Google Calendar to provide context for emails or answer business-focused questions such as “when is the client meeting tomorrow?”.

Read ITPro’s in-depth review of Google Gemini AI for Workspace for more details on how AI is reshaping Gmail.

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Google has removed add-on fees for Gemini in Workspace, though the firm is upping the price of its plans to reflect the addition of this offering.

Gemini will be built into Workspace’s business and enterprise plans without the need to purchase pricey plan upgrades, which previously could add an additional $20 per user per month.

For example, a customer using the old annual ‘Business Standard’ plan with a Gemini Business add-on paid $32 per user, per month, compared with $12 per user, per month for the default Business Standard plan.

The new annual price of the Business Standard plan will increase by $2 though, from $12 per user, per month to $14. Google called this a simplification of the old price plan to bring the “added value” of Gemini to all Workspace customers.

“We believe AI is foundational to the future of work and its transformative power should be accessible to every business and every employee, at an affordable price,” Jerry Dischler, president of Cloud Applications, wrote in the announcement.

The pricing will take effect for new customers and on March 17 this year for those on monthly subscription plans. For those on annual and fixed-term plans, pricing effects will take place on renewal dates, unless renewal dates are earlier than March 17.

Small business customers will not be subject to the pricing changes at this time, Dischler said.

At the start of 2024, Google rolled out price changes specific to its monthly subscription-based plans, upping the cost of ‘Starter,’ ‘Standard,’ and ‘Plus’ business plans by $1.20, $2.40, and $3.60, respectively.

New pricing gives Google a competitive edge

Google’s decision to do away with add-on pricing is a bold move according to Forrester analyst J.P. Gownder, and may put the firm in a stronger position to compete with productivity suite rival Microsoft.

“Until Google’s announcement, embedded solutions required expensive add-on licenses. Google’s bold move here reminds us that products can evolve into features; viable offerings seek monetization in other ways; and tempts us to say Google failed, but it could be a competitive boon,” J.P. Gownder told ITPro.

While it may not be time to switch from Microsoft 365 to Google Workspace, Gownder said Workspace will now be more competitive with Microsoft 365.

“Attractive pricing matters. Especially when, at its new price, Google brings credible performance, a small but non-trivial roster of enterprise clients, and also some differentiated generative AI features, including the innovative NotebookLM and Vids, a video-creation generative AI tool,” Gownder said.

“Despite Google’s appeal, Microsoft 365’s ubiquity and quality remain hard to dislodge. Migrating M365 documents, SharePoint sites, and macros to Workspace remains a monumental effort. Microsoft will, however, feel pricing pressure,” he added.

Gmail users took to social media overnight to voice concerns over speculation that Google plans to scrap the email service. But it was all a hoax. 

An email purporting to be from Google began circulating online on Thursday 22 titled ‘Google is sunsetting Gmail’.

The user notification claimed that as of August 1, Gmail will “officially be sunsetted, marking the end of its service”.

“We are reaching out to share an important update about Gmail,” the fake notice read. “After years of connecting millions worldwide, enabling seamless communication, and fostering countless connections, the journey of Gmail is coming to a close.

“This means that as of this data, Gmail will no longer support sending, receiving, or storing emails.”

Users duped by the hoax were, naturally, concerned, with some taking to ‘X’ to voice complaints over the decision.

Google has since issued a response to the hoax with a five-word post on X, confirming that "Gmail is here to stay".

Gmail is going nowhere 

The notice appears to have been an altered version of a previous legitimate email sent to users last year informing them that Gmail Basic HTML view was being wound down. 

Gmail represents a core product line for Google as part of its Google Workspace productivity suite. The platform boasts more than 1.8 billion active users, according to statistics.

Google has a reputation for scrapping product lines. There's even a website dedicated to projects consigned to the scrapheap.

But axing the platform would be a highly disruptive move from Google, especially considering the tech giant has unveiled a raft of new AI additions in recent weeks. 

Earlier this week, Google announced new features for Workspace powered by Gemini, its flagship large language model (LLM). 

‘Gemini for Google Workspace’ will bring new AI capabilities to Workspace apps including Gmail, Google Docs, Meet, and Sheets.

“Today we’re launching Gemini Business, a lower price offering to help organizations big and small get started with generative AI in Workspace,” the company said. 

“This plan gives them access to Gemini for Workspace — including experiences like Help me write in Docs and Gmail, Enhanced Smart Fill in Sheets and image generation in Slides — for as low as $20 per user per month with an annual commitment.

“Customers can also purchase Gemini Enterprise, which replaces Duet AI for Workspace Enterprise. Gemini Enterprise offers the same capabilities as Gemini Business with more usage. It also includes additional capabilities for AI-powered meetings, where Gemini can translate closed captions in more than 100 language pairs, and soon even take meeting notes.”

Microsoft 365 administrators have been issued fresh guidance to avoid falling foul of new anti-spam policies introduced by Google. 

Google unveiled a raft of changes last week for bulk senders on Gmail that aim to improve security for users. 

The new rules, due to come into effect in February 2024, will require organizations that send over 5,000 daily emails to implement SPF/DKIM and DMARC email authentication for domains. 

Bulk senders will also be required to provide recipients with easily accessible ‘one-click’ options to unsubscribe from email correspondence. 

Google said the changes aim to improve security for users and tackle phishing attacks. 

In its advisory, Microsoft warned administrators that failure to adhere to the new authentication standards risks having communications marked as spam. 

“By setting up email authentication for your domain, you can ensure that your messages are less likely to be rejected or marked as spam by email providers like Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, [or] Outlook.com,” Microsoft said. 

“This is especially important when sending bulk email (large volume email), as it helps maintain the deliverability and reputation of your email campaigns.”

Microsoft 365 anti-spam advice

Microsoft’s advisory noted that using its 365 platform to send mass emails is ill-advised anyway and could result in users being penalized. 

“EOP (Exchange Online Protection) has strict outbound spam controls that can block or segregate your email to a special high-risk delivery pool if it exceeds sending limits.,” the advisory warned.

”Using Microsoft 365 to send bulk (mass) email is not a supported use of the service.”

For users sending bulk emails outside of EOP, the advisory recommended sending bulk emails through on-premise email servers. Additionally, it recommended using third-party bulk email providers for mass email activities. 

“These companies have a vested interest in working with customers to ensure good email sending practices,” the advisory noted. 

For users choosing to send bulk emails using EOP, Microsoft outlined a series of outbound spam protection recommendations. 

This included avoiding sending a “large rate or volume” of emails that causes users to run afoul of sending limits offered by the service. 

The guidance added that this includes not sending correspondence to large volumes of recipients using the bcc field. 

“Avoid using addresses in your primary email domain (for example, contoso.com) as senders for bulk email,” the advisory added. “Doing so can affect the delivery of regular email from senders in the domain.”

Microsoft also recommended custom subdomains for bulk emails, but warned that these must be configured with email authentication records in DNS, which includes SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. 

Google has announced that Gmail users in the United States will be given access to dark web monitoring tools to bolster account security. 

The new features enable Gmail users to leverage Google’s dark web report security platform to see if their personal information has been found on the dark web. 

Google said the move will provide an extra tool for users to improve account security. 

“Previously only available to Google One subscribers in the US, we’re expanding access to our dark web report in the next few weeks, so anyone with a Gmail account in the US will be able to run scans to see if your Gmail address appears on the dark web and receive guidance on what actions to take to protect yourself,” said Jen Fitzpatrick, SVP at Google Core. 

Unveiled yesterday, Fitzpatrick said the new feature will initially roll out in the US before an expected international launch in due course. However, an exact date on this international roll-out is yet to be announced. 

“We’ll soon be expanding access to our dark web report to select international markets.”

Google dark web report: How does it work?

Google’s dark web monitoring features first rolled out in March this year, but only to Google One customers in the US as part of an initial launch. 

The company said at the time that the service will provide users with notification features to inform them if their information had been leaked on the dark web. 

Google said the move forms part of a broader effort to tackle identity fraud due to information stolen in data breaches. 

“A lot of this stolen info can be found on the dark web, a hard-to-reach part of the internet that requires a specialized browser to access and isn’t indexed by search engines,” the company said in a March update. 

The dark web report service allows users to scan the dark web for personal information, including names, addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, and email addresses. 

If personal information is found, the service notifies users and offers advice on how to minimize risk. 

“When you enable dark web report, you provide and select the information you’d like to keep an eye on within your monitoring profile,” said Esteban Kozak, director of product management at Google One. 

“And if any matching info is found on the dark web, we'll notify you and provide guidance on how you might protect that information.” 

For example, Google said that if a user discovers their social security number was found on the dark web, it will suggest they report it as stolen to the government or “take steps to protect your credit”.

Dark web monitoring improving security 

The use of dark web monitoring to improve organizational security and ‘horizon scanning’ for security threats has grown in popularity in recent years. 

A recent study found that MSSPs have experienced a rapid increase in demand from customers in the US and UK demanding monitoring services. 

Around two-thirds (65%) of MSSPs said their customers had requested intelligence from the dark web to support security improvements. 

An explainer from Fortinet on dark web monitoring suggests that this process can be used to drastically improve threat intelligence and help organizations identify emerging threats. 

This, the company said, enhances 24/7 surveillance of threats and allows for a broader overview of the threat landscape. 

“Dark web monitoring can help identify sensitive information of clients, employees, and executives that end up on the dark web,” Fortinet said. 

“Using this knowledge, companies can stop criminals from exploiting stolen information.”

Editor's note: Google Workspace review

Original review date: 14 April 2023

Generative AI is now ubiquitous and no more so than within productivity suites. Following the likes of Microsoft 365 and Slack, at Google Cloud Next the tach giant introduced a host of new AI capabilities for Workspace. ITPro will test and review these new features later in the year when they become available. 

Workspace previously used the 'Duet AI' label for its generative AI functions, but that has been binned off for the 'Gemini' banner where every feature will be tagged 'something for me'. This will be used across the most popular Workspace apps with features currently in preview and coming soon for Gmail, Meet, Docs, and Chat in 2024. 

The previews include a 'take notes for me' feature in Meet which allows users to fully focus on their meetings without having to type or write anything. A similar feature is also coming for translations in June that will automatically translate captions in Meet. 'Translate for me' will have support for up to 69 languages, according to Google. 

Original article: When Google launched its G-Suite productivity suite in 2016, it instantly positioned itself as a key challenger to the dominance of Microsoft. Fast forward to October 2020 with its notable rebrand to Google Workspace, and it became evidently clear that Google intended to cater to a remote and hybrid workforce. 

Google Workspace is a valuable productivity suite for businesses of all sizes, ranging from large, multinational enterprises to small businesses. This collection of cloud-based tools can, at first glance, appear quite daunting. 

But once up and running the benefits of platforms such as Gmail, Google Docs, synchronized calendars and more proves hugely beneficial to communication, collaboration, and overall workforce productivity.

Google Workspace offers three distinct Business plans: Starter, Standard, and Plus. Two Enterprise-grade plans – Standard and Plus – are also available. In this instance though, we'll be looking at the Business plan options and their respective pros and cons. 

Google Workspace review: Deployment

Google provides a comprehensive and easy-to-use deployment guide for its Workspace Business packages in addition to administrator training and certification courses. To start this 10-stage process, administrators will want to open the Admin console and run a pilot, which is optional but recommended. This will enable you to try Google Workspace with a selected number of users to evaluate Gmail, test data migration, and assess mobile access. It's worth noting that this does not affect your current mail service. 

If you chose to run a pilot (or skip), the process of adding users accounts is fairly straightforward. Admins can add users individually, or upload via spreadsheet. Google provides a raft of admin tools to synchronize user accounts with Microsoft Active Directory or another LDAP server. 

Activating Gmail for your domain is the next advised step in the deployment process, and again, this is an easily traversed process for admins, making migration or initial deployment convenient and smooth. You will be required to change your domain MX records to direct mail to Google servers, however. Google also recommends admins add an SPF record to your domain settings during this stage of the process. 

Migration tools are provided by Google to import existing emails, calendar events, and contacts to Google Workspace. Data can also be migrated directly from Microsoft Exchange, HCL Notes, or any other IMAP server. Alternatively, Google allows individual team members to import their data by themselves. 

To Google's credit, Workspace deployment is a rather smooth process for admins, but the support doesn't end there. Once deployed, it offers a raft of training guides and resources featuring real-world customer examples to get users started with its suite of applications. 

Google Workspace review: Pricing 

The new AI capabilities will be an extra consideration for businesses, largely because they will come at an extra cost. For businesses starting or migrating to Google Workspace, there are four different packages to select – Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, and finally Enterprise – with different monthly costs for each. 

Workspace is free for 14 days, then after that, you will need to pay $6 per user, per month for the entry-level Business Starter package, $12 per month for Business Standard, and $18 a month for Business Plus. Enterprise customers will have to talk to sales to haggle their exact pricing. For the Gemini extras, Google has said these will come at an extra cost of $10 per user, per month. At face value, it looks like a considerable fee for smaller businesses to accept annually. 

For an SMB with a workforce of 200 people on the Business Standard edition, this would cost approximately $2,400 per month, or $28,800 annually.

It is worth noting that all three editions require a one-year minimum commitment. With this in mind, we recommend a thorough assessment of whether Google Workspace is the 'right fit' and catered to your individual needs.

Google Workspace Business review: User interface

Google Workspace boasts a slick user interface that is easy to navigate. While G-suite had its limitations and at times felt cluttered and obtrusive, Workspace has certainly improved.

Users can easily traverse through the Gmail, Chat, Spaces, and Meet applications via the toolbar situated on the left-hand side of the screen. This makes the process of switching between your email correspondence and workplace chats far easier and keeps your staple applications conveniently at hand to ensure staff are keeping up to date and communicating effectively. 

Google recently issued an update to "simplify" the Workspace user experience across a raft of applications, including Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive. These changes, which Google said aimed to "streamline the daily flow of work" have most certainly added a fresh new appearance. Google Docs, for example, now features a more simple and easy-to-navigate toolbar at the top of every document with updated command groupings that stand out more from a visual perspective. 

Google Workspace Business review: Applications

Google Workspace provides a range of applications as standard. Most of these you will be familiar with, such as Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Drive, and Slides, as well as a dedicated Calendar, Chat, and Meet application. 

These core apps are the heart of Google Workspace and are available in both a browser-based and mobile version. Notably, these aren't available as desktop apps, which is slightly inhibiting. However, users can use applications such as Google Docs and Sheets in an offline mode which offers users the chance to still use them if they're on the move or unable to access the web. 

Workspace also has a range of fantastic third-party app integrations for businesses. These can be downloaded via the Workspace marketplace. Accounting software Xero, for example, integrates seamlessly with Workspace apps including Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Drive.

Other third-party applications that can be integrated with Workspace include: Asana, Okta, DocuSign, Trello, and Copper CRM.

Google Workspace Business review: Starter vs Standard vs Plus

The tiered system under which Google Workspace Business packages now operate can be a tricky process to navigate. But it's worth bearing in mind that these options will be based entirely on individual business needs. While all three offer services for up to 300 users, there are limitations with the two 'lower' tiers – particularly with regard to storage capacity for each individual user.

The Starter edition provides a rather basic office suite with up to 30GB storage for each user in addition to custom email address options and Business editions of Gmail, Google Docs, Drive storage, Calendar, Meet video conferences, and a suite of other useful apps. Under this plan, video meetings with up to 100 people are also available. Administrative controls are also included, such as controls over user access, service policies, and mobile devices. 

Given the price range for this package, this makes for a rather valuable suite of tools for an SMB. But compared to the other tiered options available, it could be argued that this is lacking in certain key areas. 

The Business Standard edition of Google Workspace offers everything available in the aforementioned package, albeit with additional storage options and 'enhanced meeting features'. With 2TB of cloud storage for each user, this certainly provides far greater storage bandwidth for SMBs. Video meetings are also expanded to 150 people and, under this package, the option to record meetings and directly save them to Google Drive is included. 

On the topic of Google Drive, this package also includes shared team drives, making it a far more viable option for teams aiming to create a more unified and collaborative workforce. 

As the name suggests, the Business Plus edition provides the most comprehensive suite of tools available to users, with the addition of advanced controls and archiving capabilities for admins. 

With 5TB of cloud storage for each user, this offers far greater storage bandwidth for organizations on this plan. Similarly, video meetings under the Business Plus edition can be expanded to up to 500 people, making it a viable option for both SMBs with large workforces and enterprises. 

Premium analytics features, security controls, automated mobile device controls, and tracking features make the Business Plus edition a popular choice for larger SMBs seeking a deeper insight into workforce behavior and productivity. 

Google Workspace review: Workspace vs Microsoft 365

The 'great other' to Google Workspace is Microsoft 365. While there are advantages to both, and the decision to opt for either can be wholly dependent on your individual business needs, we found that Google Workspace had a number of key advantages. 

In particular, pricing could be an issue when comparing the two office suites. While this is a marginal difference, for SMBs specifically the overall costs can begin to add up. To add to this, Microsoft offers a far broader range of plans, meaning the process of choosing what's right for your business can become rather complicated. 

Microsoft 365's Business plans are ideal for SMBs and comparable to the business packages offered by Google. These also come in a similar multi-tiered system, starting with Business Basic for £5 per user per month. 

Meanwhile, Business Standard and Business Premium stand at a rate of $12.50 and $20 per user, per month respectively. The Microsoft 365 for Apps package available for businesses is also priced $8.25 per user per month. This includes desktop versions of the staple Office apps. 

Although Workspace offers clear advantages with regard to price, Microsoft 365 does have its own distinct benefits - particularly with regard to storage capacity. Users of Microsoft 365 are offered 1TB of cloud storage capacity for individual users across all of its plans, giving it a notable edge in comparison.

Similarly, Outlook email storage stands at 50GB as standard, compared to the 30GB Google offers through its basic package. Additionally, email storage is separate from overall capacity with 365, meaning that email correspondence won't clog up space in OneDrive. 

Core applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are also available in browser, mobile, and desktop versions. If you're keen on using desktop applications and avoid operating entirely on browser, then this might be a key differentiator for your business.

Google Workspace Business review: Making your decision

Ultimately, the factors which lead you to choose Google Workspace over Microsoft 365 will be dependent on a number of reasons - be it pricing, functionality, or ease of use.

Google Workspace is simplistic in both its design and functionality, making it easy to use for SMBs in the long-term. It is this simplistic design that gives it great charm in comparison to Microsoft, however, which has often been noted for its overwhelming UI and cluttered appearance. 

After allaying fears that it was headed for the scrapheap before celebrating its 20th birthday earlier this year, Gmail continues to prove itself both innovative and reliable.

While it's important that platforms respond to the ever-changing technological landscape we live in with new offerings, there's also something to be said for the platforms that maintain a sense of their core ethos. Gmail does just that by blending elegant simplicity with seamless integration of new features such as generative AI tools or enhanced data and security capabilities. 

Despite the changes, Gmail still allows users to effortlessly blend their workflows with other Workspace apps. It also maintains a near 100% uptime, while constantly expanding its storage capacity. But it's also doing the one thing it set out to do with increasing efficiency; allowing users to communicate professionally over an interface that's as familiar as it is practical. 

Gmail review: Setup

While we're sure we don't have to tell you how to set up a personal Gmail account, using the platform for a business or an organization comes with a few extra steps. To begin with, you'll need to purchase a Google Workspace account, which can be frustrating. Unfortunately, while standalone business Gmail subscriptions would likely be welcomed by many, this is just something businesses have to deal with. There's also a silver lining here, as your company will gain access to the wider Google Workspace environment, which promises online storage, company-wide or team-focused calendars, and video conferencing capabilities through Google Meet.

Once you've signed up for Google Workspace and purchased an account, your company IT or admin team can purchase a new '@yourcompany' domain or use an existing one. If you buy a new one through Google, the setup process should be relatively painless, as the domain will have already been verified. If not, you'll have to verify your domain by finding out who your domain registrar is.

Once your domain's been set up, you can establish Gmail groups to organize meetings and events or work on projects across the organization. Setting up a group is also pretty straightforward, requiring simply that you sign into Google Groups, click 'Create Group,' and enter the group settings and information before it's up and running.

For any growing company, the next logical concern would be managing new and existing employees, ensuring that they have access to their individual accounts and that these accounts are easily secured and managed.

While all you need to do here is set up the necessary information for a new employee, including name, Gmail address, and password, it's worth bearing in mind that each additional user will incur an increase to your bill dependent on what plan you're using.

If your organization is at enterprise scale, you'll have dedicated IT administrators who, through Google, can manage two-step verification systems to protect employee accounts, among other security measures.

Smaller businesses can pursue similar security measures and Google provides a helpful list of steps to take for companies setting up their Gmails. It suggests that admins, among other things, set up recovery information processes and back-up codes in the event two-step verification stops working.

Gmail review: Navigation  

Though few will remember exactly what Gmail's original layout looked like, even new Gmail users would probably be able to work their way around it. That's because, practically speaking, the layout hasn't changed that much. Make it past the login page and you'll still be greeted by the old familiar email stream and folder menu. 

The folder selection tool features all the email categories you'd imagine, including starred, snoozed, sent, draft, scheduled, spam, and plenty of others. If you're finding that the folder list is making your Gmail homepage look slightly too cluttered, you can easily hide it by clicking on the three horizontal lines in the top left of the screen. 

Also featured on the left, just below these lines, is a toggle that allows users to switch between a 'mail' and 'meet' view, streamlining the often parallel office-essential tasks of email sending and meeting attendance. Hitting the 'meet' button transforms the familiar Gmail layout into a new page fit with a list of your day's meetings on the left, a meeting-by-meeting overview taking up most of the space on the right, and options to either start a new meeting or join an existing one.

You can transform the inbox in another way by hitting the settings cog in the top right – this allows you to alter the visual theme of your inbox as well as alter the inbox settings to display different types of messages at the top, whether unread or starred. 

Gmail review: Features 

While simply firing off important emails might be at the top of your agenda, other tasks may call for a greater level of complexity in terms of functionality and feature set. Gmail provides for most of the more nuanced organizational workload requirements, coming equipped with all manner of handy features to improve workflow, efficiency, and communication.

On a staff level, Gmail can cut admin tasks in half through useful integrations with other Google Workplace features such as Google Calendar, which allows daily meeting agendas to be emailed directly to employees. Individual staff members can also get a greater handle on emails, with Gmail allowing users to schedule email sends, request read receipts on emails, and even un send emails in the event of a staff mistake or last-minute change to email content.

On a wider enterprise level, making the investment into enterprise-grade Gmail provides IT staff and admin teams with a considerable set of advantages. Perhaps most notable is Google's guarantee of 99.9% uptime to its enterprise users, with the firm able to brag that it has no scheduled downtime periods. Gmail's claims to 99.9% uptime equate to no more than 45 minutes of downtime per month. If uptime does fall below this figure, Google will add on three days of service to a customer's Gmail contract, with this amount of days increasing in parallel with increasing downtime. 

Gmail review: Business vs enterprise

There are several different plans you can use for Gmail, all with various merits and differing price points. The deciding factor will likely be the size of your business and the amount of value you'll get out of the more advanced offerings.

At the lower end, there's the business edition which comes in three different tiers. There's the 'Business Starter' edition which comes at £5 per month per user, the 'Business Standard' edition clocking in at £10 per month per user, and the 'Business Plus' edition, coming at £15 per month per user. These editions are aimed at businesses with between 1 and 300 members of staff, and all three come with a required 1-year commitment as standard. 

In terms of basic email admin capabilities, these three editions are largely the same, equipped with custom email addresses, multiple addresses per user, addresses at multiple domains, admin-controlled mailing lists, and user-controlled mailing lists. Where they do differ, however, is in storage capacity. The business starter edition caps out at 30GB in email storage, while the Business Standard and Business Plus come with 2TB and 5TB respectively. Business Plus also comes with the added 'Vault for email' capabilities, as well as eDisocvery and archiving features. 

The 'Enterprise Standard' and 'Enterprise Plus' require that your organization contact Google directly for a quote on an individualized price, though these editions do offer a greater range of features. 

Both enterprise editions offer flexible pooled storage across your entire organization – essentially unlimited – as well as a whole suite of added security features such as data loss prevention, Gmail log search in BigQuery, and advanced phishing and malware protection. Enterprise Plus goes even further, offering advanced email attachment scanning, upgraded email encryption, and client-side encryption. 

It's worth noting that advanced email delivery options are identical across both business and enterprise editions, which can create a slightly more difficult decision for businesses trying to establish which option is the best value for money.

Gmail review: Is it worth it? 

While Gmail and the required Workspace suite offer a number of enticing features for the prospective business user, it's important to bear in mind the extent to which Gmail stacks up to its rivals. Its chief competitor, Microsoft Outlook, also comes as part of a wider productivity suite, Microsoft 365, and is priced fairly similarly, with the exception of it's highest-end business tier.

Microsoft 365 'Business Basic' is marginally cheaper at £4.90 per user per month, whereas Microsoft 365 'Business Standard' is marginally more expensive at £10.30 per user per month. Microsoft 365 'Business Premium' costs £18.10 per user per month. 

Outlook's biggest advantage comes in its storage capacity, with even the most basic Microsoft 365 plan offering 1TB of capacity per employee compared to the far smaller 30GB that Google offers on its equivalent plan. 

That being said, Gmail is still a powerful offering for businesses as part of the wider Google Workspace ecosystem, and the value of it as an offering will inevitably depend on your individual business needs. 

A malicious browser extension linked to North Korea has been operating undetected to steal data from Gmail and AOL sessions.

The extension, dubbed ‘SHARPEXT’ by researchers, monitors webpages to automatically parse any and all emails and attachments from victims' mailboxes.

It poses a particularly serious threat to machines used by organisations for business operations, as all sensitive information sent via email has the potential to be stolen. Targets have so far been identified within the US, EU and South Korea.

Cyber security firm Volexity revealed the spyware's existence in a blog post, and linked it to a threat actor tracked by Volexity operating under the name SharpTongue, but known publicly as Kimsuky. This entity is believed to be North Korean in origin, and the researchers have linked SharpTongue to attacks on targets linked to national security.

ArsTechnica reports Volexity president Steven Adair as stating that SHARPEXT is installed through “spear phishing and social engineering where the victim is fooled into opening a malicious document”. Phishing is a common vector used to deliver malicious programmes, such as LockBit 2.0 which has been distributed by email disguised as PDFs.

To lay the groundwork for the extension, the threat actor manually exfiltrates files such as the user’s preferences and secure preferences. These are changed to include exceptions for the malicious extension and then downloaded back onto the infected machine through the malware’s command and control (C2) infrastructure.

Once the original files have been switched for these copies, SHARPEXT is loaded directly from the victim’s appdata folder. Once active, the extension executes code directly from the C2 server, which has the benefit of preventing antivirus software from discovering malicious code within the extension itself.

Additionally, running code in this way allows the threat actor to regularly update the code without having to reinstall newer versions of the extension onto infected systems. Indeed, the extension is currently in its third iteration, with previous versions more limited in their browser and mail client compatibility.

At present, SHARPEXT supports Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, as well as a browser called Whale that's reasonably popular in South Korea but not in other countries.

The extension only activates when a Chromium browser is running, and utilises listeners to monitor activity to ensure that only email data is stolen. Global variables track the emails, email addresses and attachments that have already been exfiltrated, so as to prevent unnecessary duplication of data.

In addition to its exfiltration functions, the extension deploys a Powershell script that constantly checks for compatible browser processes, and if found runs a keystroke script that opens the DevTools panel.

Simultaneously, another script works to hide the DevTools window, and anything that could make the victim suspicious, such as Edge’s warning that an extension is running in developer mode.

Volexity has advised security teams within organisations to review extensions regularly, especially those installed on machines connected to highly-sensitive information.

IT Pro has approached Volexity for comment

CloudHQ has released an upgraded version of its Chrome-based web application that enables users to export important Gmail conversations to Google Sheets.

Dubbed “Export Email to Google Sheets,” the app is fully integrated with Gmail and G-suite, eliminating the need for physical storage devices to save data.

"Copying the information in emails from Gmail to Sheets gives small businesses the power to sort, analyze, and prepare email data in ways that simply wasn't possible before," said Naomi Assaraf, co-founder and chief marketing officer, cloudHQ.

Using the email parser feature in Export Email to Google Sheets, businesses can dissect invoices, signup or interest emails, order notifications, email campaign reports, and more for rapid integration with data analytics and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.

Users can also create custom parsing rules to extract target keywords or leverage spreadsheets to filter and organize exported data by standard Gmail nomenclature, including Cc and Bcc. When used to extract and save all text from an email into a single PDF document, Export Email to Google Sheets makes for easy and error-free translation and sharing via a PDF attachment or Google Drive instead of forwarding an email dozens of times.

You can also track bounced and bad emails imported to spreadsheets using a Gmail label for re-examining. You can also link order and delivery tracking emails to supply chain management tools for greater visibility and improved operational efficiency.

"If your business receives a specific type of email all the time, and you use Gmail as your email provider, Export Gmail to Google Sheets is a powerful tool you can use to automate and improve how you respond to those emails," Assaraf said.

Export Gmail to Google Sheets comes with basic and premium plans. The basic plan offers support for 50 parsed emails per month, while the Premium Plan is unlimited.

Gmail has been going through a revolution lately with the addition of Chat one month, then Google Meet the following month. Now, Gmail is getting even deeper for G Suite organizations, as Google looks to make Gmail a one-stop hub for all things corporate communications.

This update will bring Google Meet, Google Chat, Google Rooms, file sharing, task tracking and email right into the space where users spend the most time: their Gmail inbox. It starts with the relative basics, giving all users quick access to Google Chat, Google Meet and Google Rooms without leaving their Gmail app or on the web.

Google Rooms is one of the more robust additions, as you can click “Add Room” and segment off a space for a particular project or team. Within that space, you have a group chat feature, but it goes way beyond that. At the top of the Google Room is a tab named “Files,” where you can share files with the group without creating and tracking loads of folders on Google Drive. There is also a “Tasks” tab that allows you to set tasks for the group and track the progress and due date.

While adding more to your email may seem overwhelming, Google has included a “Do Not Disturb” mode that mutes notifications and lets others know you can’t be disturbed for a specific period.

In the Gmail for G Suite app, you can find the Chat, Rooms and Meet buttons on the bottom. In Gmail for G Suite on the web, you will find these in dropdown menus in the left-hand column, just under the “Mail” dropdown.

With everything grouped into Gmail, this seems like a great way to streamline corporate communications, sharing and collaboration. However, for those already overwhelmed by their inboxes, this could induce a slight panic attack.

Google Calendar had already been a staple of event scheduling and management for more than a decade when the pandemic – and subsequent shift to remote working – made calendar apps an absolute must for any organisation that values productivity and collaboration.

This was rather unsurprising, given that employees went from coworking at the same desk to performing the same tasks while miles away from each other. With the change as severe and sudden, few would have predicted that this working arrangement would become the new norm for the next 18 months, as well as continue with the hybrid working model.

Although video conferencing platforms such as Google Meet and Zoom have often been hailed as the backbone of pandemic collaboration, the contribution of Google Calendar cannot be ignored. After all, it’s the humble Calendar app that made it possible for employees to successfully set up these virtual meetings – and ensure that they aren’t cancelled due to overscheduling or PTOs.

What is more important, however, the Calendar made it possible for organisations to maintain high levels of productivity without over-monitoring their staff and being too intrusive. After all, no one enjoys being spied on. Therefore, by sharing profiles, Google Calendar has made it possible for coworkers to see what other employees are doing, all while making it easier to schedule in a last-minute project catchup – or even some virtual drinks.

Whatever the reason for sharing your Google Calendar profile, read on to find out how to provide your colleague, manager, or even the entire team, with a glimpse into your own schedule.

How to share your Google Calendar with someone

If you're ready to share your Google Calendar with an individual, it takes just a couple of minutes and a few clicks. Here's how it works:

1. Navigate to calendar.google.com to open your Google Calendar. Google doesn't allow you to share calendars from within the Google Calendar app.

2. Find the "My calendars" section on the left-hand side of the Google Calendar site.

3. Hover your cursor over the calendar you'd like to share and click the three vertical dots to the right of it.

4. Click "Settings and sharing."

5. Click "Access permissions" on the left-hand side of the screen

6. Find "Share with specific people" and click "Add people" just below it.

7. Add the person or their email address and use the dropdown menu to determine their permissions.

8. Click "Send."

9. The recipient will then click the emailed link and add your calendar to their list.

How to share your Google Calendar with your team

In a team setting, a shared Google Calendar makes organising events and tracking meetings easier than ever. Check it out:

1. Open a browser and navigate to calendar.google.com to open Google Calendar.

2. Find the "My calendars" section on the left-hand side of your screen.

3. Hover your cursor over the calendar you'd like to share with your team and click the three vertical dots on the right of it.

4. Click "Settings and sharing."

5. Click "Access permissions" on the left-hand side of the screen

6. To share your Google Calendar with your team, add each team member's email addresses and use the dropdown menu to determine their permissions.

7. After adding all team members, click "Send."

If you want to share a calendar with a larger team, start by making a Google Group, which allows you to easily share your calendar with your team and manage permissions accordingly.

To share with a group, simply follow the steps above and enter the Google Group title in place of the individual's email address.

What's nice about Google Groups is if a member leaves the group, they'll automatically lose access to your calendar without you manually adjusting permissions for that individual.

How to delegate your Google Calendar to someone

Google Calendar also allows you to give others full permission to administer your calendar. While having someone else manage your calendar might sound dreamy, we don't recommend granting full permission to many people or groups.

To delegate your Google Calendar to someone else, follow these simple steps:

1. Navigate to calendar.google.com to open Google Calendar and find the "My Calendars" section on the left-hand side.

2. Hover your cursor over the calendar you want to delegate, then click the three vertical dots to the right

3. Click "Settings and sharing."

4. Click on "Share with specific people" on the left, then click "Add people."

5. Enter your new delegate's email address and select "Make changes and manage sharing" from the dropdown menu on the right.

6. Click "Send."

How to make your Google Calendar public

For many, making their calendar public is the easiest option. Fortunately, Google makes doing this remarkably easy. Simply follow the steps below to make your Google Calendar public to all:

1. Navigate to calendar.google.com to open Google Calendar and find the "My Calendars" section on the left-hand side.

2. Hover your cursor over the calendar you want to make public, then click the three vertical dots to the right

3. Click "Settings and sharing."

4. Click "Access Permissions."

5. Click the "Make available to public" checkbox and choose the permissions from the dropbox on the right.

How to unshare your Google Calendar

If you've shared your calendar with someone but no longer want them to have access to it, you can unshare it too. Follow these steps to unshare your Google Calendar with a person or group:

1. Navigate to calendar.google.com to open Google Calendar and find the "My Calendars" section on the left-hand side.

2. Hover your cursor over the calendar you want to unshare, then click the three vertical dots to the right

3. Click "Settings and sharing."

4. Click "Access Permissions."

5. If you've set your calendar to be publically available, uncheck the "Make available to public" checkbox.

6. To stop sharing your calendar with a specific person, click "Share with specific people" on the right, find the user or group you'd like to remove and click the "X" next to them.

7. If you share multiple calendars with an individual or group, repeat the above steps for any other calendars you want to stop sharing.

Google introduced the new Quick Settings menu in an effort to help users explore and use various themes to tailor their Gmail experience. The options included under this new feature range from the ability to change the density of the text to adding reading panes, choosing a specific inbox type and choosing a theme for your inbox. Though these features aren’t completely new, they have been hidden in Gmail's settings, leaving most users unaware of their existence unless they explored every nook and cranny.

The new Quick Setting menu and its wide array of options is on the right side of your Gmail inbox. When making changes, users will see the changes in real time, helping them preview the new themes and settings before activating the changes.

The ability to customize the density of the text and the information displayed is the first option under the Quick Settings menu followed by the different inbox layouts. These layouts include priority inbox, the default layout with categories and tabs and others where users can see certain types of emails first, such as unread first, starred first, important first and more.

There is also the option to turn on reading panes, which makes users feel like they’re using a traditional desktop client. On the other hand, Gmail's colorful themes help brighten up the space and turn the inbox into a personalized den.

Even with all the options, the Quick Setting menu ensures access to Gmail’s full settings screen isn’t disrupted and it's still available at an extra click on the 'See All Setting' button at the top of Quick Setting menu.

During an announcement about the new Quick Setting feature, the company said, “We're making these options easier to find and letting you explore them in real-time, so your actual inbox will update immediately to show you exactly what the setting will do. We hope this makes it easier to set up Gmail the way that works best for you”.

The Quick Setting menu will be available to G Suite customers and enabled by default for personal Gmail users.

Google began releasing Quick Settings for G Suite customers through Rapid Release domains on May 26 and will complete the rollout in 15 days. Users on the Scheduled Release domains will catch a glimpse of the feature starting June 22. Though the company didn't announce when users with personal accounts get to experience the update, we believe they should soon.

Despite being the most popular email service in the world, many are not sold on Google's Gmail service. Whether it's about privacy or just a matter of taste, there are many valid reasons to delete a Gmail account.

Since its launch in 2004, the free-to-use app has built up a user base of almost 2 billion, largely due to the fact it is also bundled in with the Workspace productivity suite (formally known as G Suite). However, in that time there have been a number of issues and updates that have annoyed some users. These include security mishaps, outages, and the ever-increasing use of targeted advertising.

Whatever the reason, it's relatively easy to delete a Gmail account. And even if you're not sure, or happy with the service, it's important to know the option exists and how it's done.

Deleting a Gmail account

Before you delete any email account, the first thing you want to do is make sure all your contact details have been exported. It’s probably worth checking whether there are any emails you want to download or forward to your new email account, before everything is deleted.

You will need to access a desktop or laptop computer with an internet connection, as Gmail apps can't be used to delete accounts. Also, mobile browsers are too difficult to use in these circumstances.

1. In a web browser, go to Google account page: https://myaccount.google.com.

2. Click on the sign-in button in the top right corner and enter the details for the Gmail account you wish to delete.

3. Once you have logged in, look for "Account Preferences" – this will be in the topic boxes in the centre of the web page.

4. Then click on "Delete your account or services".

5. On the next page, click on "Delete Products". You will be asked to enter your password again.

Note: Before you delete your account, it's a good idea to download a backup copy of your data.

6. Follow the "Download Data" link to download a full copy of your Gmail messages via Google Takeout.

7. When that's backed up, click on the trash icon next to Gmail.

At this point, if you use other Google services, you will have to provide an alternative email address to continue using them.

Note: that Gmail may already have a secondary address you used when setting up this Gmail account.

To continue using these services, you will have to send a verification email to this alternative email address. Once that email has been received, click on the verification link to verify the new sign-in address.

Once you have signed in with this alternative email address, the deletion of your Gmail email account will be finalised.

If you have used IMAP to access Gmail, only messages copied to a local folder will be kept. Any other emails will be deleted, and folders synchronised with the closed Gmail account will also be removed.

How to delete Gmail account from phone

As simple and straightforward as it is to delete a Gmail account on a computer, it's also very easily done via a smartphone. Given the way in which the majority of us browse the web and check our emails, it is quite likely that many would have a preference for using their handsets.

How to delete Gmail account from iPhone

1. From the home screen tap 'Settings'
2. Scroll down to 'Passwords and Accounts'
3. Select 'Gmail' and hit the button to 'Delete Account'.
4. After that, it's just a case of confirming the choice by selecting 'Delete from my iPhone'.

How to delete Gmail account from an Android phone

For Android users:

1. Open the Settings menu
2. Navigate to either 'Accounts' or 'Users and Accounts' – it may be different depending on the manufacturer of your device, as Samsung, OnePlus, and Google all have their own UIs.
3. From here tap the Gmail account you wish to remove.

Knowing how to recover deleted emails in Gmail can be a handy skill to avoid overlooking important correspondence and ensure your communications are up-to-date. 

Deleting emails accidentally or in the heat of the moment is common, and we’ve all been there. When dealing with a wave of emails each day, accidentally hitting the wrong button and deleting something is easily done. But don’t worry, it’s possible to recover these deleted emails. 

Gmail has built-in mechanisms to prevent you from losing data, and these tools can also help you to recover emails that you've deleted on purpose but then need to retrieve at a later date.

However, It should be noted that these safety mechanisms aren't foolproof, and you won't be able to retrieve every email in Gmail. It's good practice to ensure that you make a note of any important information outside of your email inbox, just in case anything happens to it. 

That said, understanding how to recover deleted emails in Gmail is an essential tool for any worker.

This guide outlines how you can recover any deleted correspondence, but specifically in Gmail. We also have a guide on how to recover deleted emails in Outlook if you are experiencing a similar situation on that service. 

How to recover deleted emails in Gmail

It can be fairly easy to accidentally delete an email, or delete something you later realise is important, and Google understands this. Gmail, like many other email platforms, is designed in a way that when the delete button is used, the message is moved to another folder, rather than being removed outright. 

This folder, known as Trash or Bin depending on your region, allows you to review and recover deleted emails as necessary. However, by default, Gmail will only hold these deleted messages for 30 days, after which time the content is lost forever.

There are some exceptions to this rule. Those organizations using Google Vault can implement policies that allow users to recover deleted emails in Gmail that are older than 25 days, provided it meets specific retention rules. 

It's also possible for Admins to recover permanently deleted data - i.e. emails that have been deleted from the Trash or Bin folder - up to 25 days after the date of deletion. This should be seen as a last resort, as once the data becomes older than 25 days, it is truly lost forever.

Note: If you happen to have permanently deleted your email from the Trash, or 30 days have elapsed since you deleted it then you'll have to dig a little deeper. This is because Gmail automatically clears emails from the Trash 30 days after they were placed there. 

The question of whether to use Gmail vs Outlook is a recurring theme for business users given the popularity of both services. They're both easily accessible through a variety of means either through their own dedicated apps or via the web at mail.google.com and outlook.com respectively.

While the likes of Slack, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams would rather we stopped sending emails entirely, legacy messaging systems have proven time and again to be future-proof. And despite the myriad instant messaging services currently available to us, the fact remains that email is still king.

A key factor in email's enduring popularity might well be the need to have an email address to sign up to services like Slack and Zoom, making it something of a foundational service for modern life.

And there are two main contenders which meet our needs in this regard, prompting users to frequently ponder which is best suited to their individual circumstances.

Gmail vs Outlook: A history of both services

Gmail launched on April Fool's Day in 2004, but it certainly was no joke. Gmail quickly became the main challenger to Microsoft's established Outlook service. The web version of Outlook actually started life as 'Hotmail' in 1996, and was changed to MSN Hotmail, then Windows Live Hotmail before finally adopting the Outlook branding used by Microsoft's business email client in 2013.

These days, Outlook caters for business and professional users, offering a range of services matching that of Gmail, while the Mail app is a simplified app designed for the everyday user.

Gmail vs Outlook: Interface

Being the two biggest players in the email space naturally means we're talking about a clean pair of interfaces.

Outlook takes its cue from the Windows Modern UI style, also known as the Metro user interface, while Gmail was, until recently, considered the "uglier" of the two.

This changed in 2018 when a comprehensive redesign saw its aesthetics and user experience vastly improve - looking far more in line with Outlook.

Gmail had previously prioritised simplicity, although some would describe this as plain. The redesign improved on this simplistic feel while retaining the ability for users to concentrate on emails themselves rather than face any distractions.

The reading pane on Outlook is switched off by default, but can be enabled quite simply. Gmail also features a reading pane, which can be accessed through the settings menu.

Gmail vs Outlook: Folders, labels, and searches

One of the most significant things Google did to differentiate Gmail from other email services was to forgo folders in place of labels. This meant that messages can be tagged with specific labels depending on your organisational system, with individual emails capable of carrying multiple labels.

The decision to support labels instead of folders remains a rather controversial topic for some users. However, this does offer an advantage in that emails can be organised into several places at once without the need for messy duplicates.

If Gmail is set up through a traditional email client, labels will appear as folders, and emails with multiple labels will appear in multiple folders.

Outlook does have some good organisational features and includes a traditional folder structure, which does make it an easier experience for some users. The service also has a system of categories. These differ from labels in that they are tags for messages rather than pseudo-folders.

You can apply more than one category to a message, but this will not affect its place in folders. Outlook also automatically tags certain messages with categories such as Documents, Photos, Newsletters, etc. These are known as Quick View folders.

Search is probably why Gmail exists at all. It was part of its raison d'etre when first conceived, the convenience of an email service that could be searched as easily as one would use a search engine. Simply typing search terms into the search bar at the top of the webpage should unearth what you're looking for.

Users can employ more advanced methods by typing in shortcuts such as "from:" or "to:". Additionally, Gmail is reasonably powerful at deciphering typos, able to deliver messages related to or closely resembling search terms rather than taking purely what it is given by a user.

Meanwhile, Outlook boasts similar search facilities with advanced methods of finding the right information quickly. The Quick View folders enable users to instantly search through messages for the last few emails containing photos, for example.

But while Outlook's search function is good enough to do the job, it's nothing exciting, and nowhere near as polished as Gmail.

Gmail vs Outlook: Connectivity

Gmail supports both POP and IMAP, meaning that pretty much any email client on most operating systems will work off the bat with the email service. Even Microsoft Outlook will play nicely with it.

Outlook also supports POP and IMAP, and although in the past it has faced claims of connectivity issues. Nonetheless, it generally handles both well. Outlook also supports Microsoft ActiveSync, which is used to synchronise an Exchange mailbox with a mobile device.

Gmail vs Outlook: Storage and attachment limits

Gmail offers 15GB of storage for free but this counts across Gmail and Google Drive, However, users who choose to upgrade to Google One can expand their total storage space to 100GB or more.

Microsoft also offers free users 15GB of storage per Outlook account, though this can be increased to 50GB if you have an active Microsoft365 subscription on your account.

Outlook users looking to send large files by email might find themselves disappointed, as the service has a 20MB combined attachment limit. For anything larger than this, Microsoft recommends uploading the files to a cloud storage service such as OneDrive and then sharing the link to your files in the email instead.

Gmail also limits the size of attachments to 25MB in size. In addition, the Gmail app only allows you to upload one image at a time. The images are displayed as thumbnails, however, which allows you to check that you've sent the right files and see what you've received before you download it.

Gmail will also detect if you've mentioned attachments in the text of an email but not actually attached anything, and check if you've forgotten to include it before you hit send - which is a useful feature.

If one were to attempt to upload anything larger than 25MB, Gmail will automatically prompt you with an option to upload the file to your Google Drive and then attach the files as a shared drive link to your recipient. In this way, it can be considered a more seamless file-sharing experience than the stop-start route Microsoft has taken with Outlook.

Gmail vs Outlook: Extensions and integrations

Gmail

Being part of the Google Workspace, Gmail is tightly integrated with a range of productivity tools, making it incredibly useful as a workplace tool – beyond just an email app. This integration is also seamless, meaning you can open attachments and other media with tools like Google Docs and Google Sheets.

It’s because of this seamless experience that you’re able to work on files immediately inside Gmail before they are automatically saved to Google Drive – and because you don’t ever have to leave the Google ecosystem, you don’t need to worry about third-party applications potentially changing the file extensions of your documents.

Third-party applications are supported, however, and allow for integrations with various customer relationship management tools, as an example. There are a whole range of ISVs that have tools on Google’s Apps marketplace, which will all play nicely with Gmail.

This third-party integration even extends to social media platforms, and it’s possible to import your contacts and social network from these sites directly to Gmail’s address book.

Gmail’s built-in language tools are also a highlight. For those that encounter messages composed in languages other than English, Google Translate is on hand to quickly translate the contents of the message, with a single button. This is a simple function that is missing from Outlook.

Outlook

Outlook handles most of its extensions and integrations through its OneDrive and Microsoft 365 app family. Regardless of the platform or device you are using, Outlook’s integration experience is largely the same across the board.

Unfortunately, some of the add-ons don’t apply to specific kinds of devices or messages, but thankfully the extensions are supported in Outlook on the web in Office 365, Outlook 2013, and even in Outlook 2016 for Mac.

Despite this, you can easily access OneNote Online, PowerPoint, Excel, and Word through Outlook, as well as something called the Sway tool which helps users to put together multimedia stories and is highly acclaimed.

You can install an add-in by opening the Office Store from within Outlook, or by going to Microsoft AppSource.

Gmail vs Outlook: Spam, filters, and email management

Gmail’s spam filtering function works effectively. And while the occasional spam email does make its way through the filter, you can rest assured knowing that false positives are basically non-existent. Gmail is also useful for filtering out emails that you don’t want which aren’t categorised as spam.

Gmail does match ads with email content, which bothers some users, but these ads are usually filtered into the social or promotions tabs and don't interfere with inbox use. It also offers quite useful tools to prevent you accidentally deleting emails that you need.

Outlook's email and spam filtering is less sophisticated (much of it has to be done manually), but has some features that put it ahead of Gmail. One such feature is Sweep.

Sweep can be used to quickly delete unwanted emails in your inbox, and gives you options to automatically delete all incoming emails from a particular sender, to keep only the latest email, or to delete emails older than 10 days.

Is Gmail better than Outlook?

Both Gmail and Outlook are sophisticated email platforms that have gone through many years of refinement. As such, they are both impressive tools that are neatly integrated into their respective ecosystems. Therefore, this mostly a matter of user preference.

Neither service offers one standout feature that puts it ahead of the other, and both offer a somewhat similar user experience, albeit with a different menu structure.

Gmail’s search function may be slightly easier to use than Outlook’s, and we find Gmail’s user interface more appealing, but there isn’t anything here to justify switching. Both Outlook and Gmail are deeply integrated in their respective ecosystems, and so both will serve you well.

Google has beefed up security for some Gmail users who may need more robust protection against threats.

The Advanced Protection version of Gmail allows businesses at the biggest risk of targeted attacks to secure their mail against phishing and so on with an enhanced security key. This will protect emails and files stored on Drive from being accessed by non-Google services.

Google also said it will also block fraudulent account access with extra steps to verify it's the user trying to use the services rather than an imposter.

"To provide the strongest defense against phishing, Advanced Protection goes beyond traditional 2-Step Verification," the company explained. "You will need to sign into your account with a password and a physical Security Key. Other authentication factors, like codes sent via SMS or the Google Authenticator app, will no longer work."

Users in high-risk groups, such as journalists, business leaders, and political campaign teams that are likely to be hacked or attacked will only be able to access services such as Gmail and Google Photos from the Chrome browser and third-party apps that want to access Drive or other Google-services apps will be blocked.

iOS users won't be able to use Apple Mail, Contacts or Calendar with their Google account anymore, because those services don't support Security Keys. Instead, iPhone and iPad users will ned to download the Gmail, Inbox, or Google calendar apps on iOS.

If an Advanced Protection user ever loses access to their Security Keys, it'll take a lot longer to re-verify their identity -which could be days, Google said.

"A common way that hackers try to gain access to your account is by impersonating you and pretending they have been locked out of your account. To provide you with the strongest safeguards against this type of fraudulent account access, Advanced Protection adds extra steps to verify your identity," Google added.

Anyone wishing to try the new service can buy two security keys - one for a mobile or tablet and one for a computer. They can be bought from Amazon for $25 (19) and $17.99 (14) respectively and then verified with Google before setting up the service.

Google has deployed machine learning technology on its Gmail service that it claims can now block 99.9% of all phishing attempts it detects.

In a blog post, Andy Wen, senior product manager of counter abuse technology at Google, said machine learning had helped Gmail block spam and phishing messages from showing up in a user's inbox with over 99.9% accuracy.

"This is huge, given that 50-70% of messages that Gmail receives are spam," he said.

Wen explained that this dedicated machine learning model selectively delays messages (less than 0.05% of messages on average) to perform rigorous phishing analysis and further protect user data from compromise.

The detection models integrate with the machine learning supporting Safe Browsing, which is used to find and flag suspicious URLs.

"These new models combine a variety of techniques such as reputation and similarity analysis on URLs, allowing us to generate new URL click-time warnings for phishing and malware links," Wen said. "As we find new patterns, our models adapt more quickly than manual systems ever could, and get better with time."

Gmail users in the enterprise will also be warned when replying to someone outside of their company domain to prevent data loss.

"Now, if you try to respond to someone outside of your company domain, you'll receive a quick warning to make sure you intended to send that email. And because Gmail has contextual intelligence, it knows if the recipient is an existing contact or someone you interact with regularly, to avoid displaying warnings unnecessarily," said Wen.

Google has also introduced improvements that will scan messages for ransomware or polymorphic malware.

"We classify new threats by combining thousands of spam, malware and ransomware signals with attachment heuristics (emails that could be threats based on signals) and sender signatures (already marked malware)," Wen said.

More than one million Google accounts have been compromised by a new authentication-theiving malware campaign called Gooligan, according to security company Check Point.

In a blog post, Check Point said the malware steals authentication tokens from infected Android devices, which can later be used to access Google Play, Gmail, Google Photos, Google Docs, G Suite, Google Drive and other data stored with Google.

The Gooligan malware campaign appears to affect 74% of in-market devices, particularly those running on Android 4 (JellyBean, KitKat) and 5 (Lollipop).

Around 57% of these devices are in Asia and 9% are in Europe. Android users can check whether their account is compromised here.

Check Point suggested that, if an account has been breached, users should carry out a clean installation ("flashing") of the operating system on the affected mobile device. As this is a complicated process, however, the company said users may want to power off the device and ask their mobile service provider or a certified technician to 're-flash' the device.

Check Point also recommended changing all Google account passwords once the "flashing" process is complete.

The security company is working closely with Google to investigate the source of this campaign.

Adrian Ludwig, Google's director of Android security, said: "We're appreciative of both Check Point's research and their partnership as we've worked together to understand these issues. As part of our ongoing efforts to protect users from the Ghost Push family of malware, we've taken numerous steps to protect our users and improve the security of the Android ecosystem overall."

To counteract the malware campaign, Google is reportedly notifying affected accounts, revoking affected tokens and deploying SafetyNet improvements.

Google is set to start warning Gmail users when they receive an unencrypted email.

While email encryption is on the rise, it is still far from ubiquitous, Gmail warned, citing a study it carried out along with the University of Michigan and the University of Illinois.

Its findings showed that 61 per cent of inbound emails are now encrypted, up from just 33 per cent in December 2013, when the study began.

However, some countries are stripping emails of their encryption as they come in, Gmail's engineers warned.

In a blog post, Gmail's anti-fraud and abuse research expert, Elie Bursztein, and security engineering lead, Nicolas Lidzborski, wrote: "We found regions of the internet actively preventing message encryption by tampering with requests to initiate SSL connections."

An infographic of the latest research, courtesy of Gmail

Meanwhile, the research uncovered malicious DNS servers that publish bogus routing information to email servers looking for Gmail, allowing attackers to censor or alter emails before they reach recipients.

"While these threats do not affect Gmail to Gmail communication, they may affect messaging between providers," Bursztein and Lidzborski said.

These threats have led Gmail to work on a warning system that alerts users when they receive unencrypted mail.

"To notify our users of potential dangers, we are developing in-product warnings for Gmail users that will display when they receive a message through a non-encrypted connection. These warnings will begin to roll-out in the coming months," confirmed the bloggers.

The stock email app on Android is all well and good but may not be to everyone's tastes.

But don't worry: developers have created countless other email apps that claim to do a much better job of helping you sift from thousands of messages on the quest to reach inbox zero.

Which email apps are best for making you more productive? Which will help you prioritise your day better? We run down a list of the ten best and most popular email apps for Android in 2015.

1 - Gmail

Download Gmail here

Description: Google's official email app may not have the whistles and bells of other apps, but if you are Gmail user this is one to have.

Price: Free

Details: While it doesn't sport as many features as other email apps on the list, this has one of the most powerful search features (you wouldn't expect any less), great notifications and an interface that takes design cues from the web app and Google's Material Design ethos.

The business case: The use of primary colours should make it easy and intuitive to use.

2 - Microsoft Outlook

Download Outlook here

Description: Microsoft's official email app arranges messages according to what's most important to you.

Price: Free

Details: Outlook is Microsoft's email app for Android. It combines contacts, email and calendars all in one app. It goes through your messages determining which are most important, putting other emails into a separate folder to look at later. The app can also schedule meetings, set reminders, attach files and much besides.

The business case: If you find yourself missing messages because of a cluttered inbox, this app can help filter out the unnecessary and pull out what's most important.

3 - Mailbox

Download Mailbox here

Description: Mailbox is Dropbox's email client and one of the first to feature swipe gestures

Price: Free

Details: Mailbox was bought by Dropbox a few years ago and was one of the first email clients on a smartphone to make the process of sorting and replying to emails much easier. In the meantime, other apps have copied these features. It's still simple to use, but perhaps now has been overtaken by the competition.

The business case: If you are looking for an email app that helps you tackle your email mountain; this simple app is the way to go.

4 - Inbox

Download Inbox here

Description: Google's second attempt at an email app

Price: Free

Details: Google likes to make email apps. So here's another one. The app is still in beta but promises to help you focus on what is important to you and show you that first.

It features Bundles, which groups messages together; Highlights that show important information without opening the message. You can also set reminders, snooze emails and search for messages.

The business case: If you use Gmail and want to focus on particular emails, this is one to consider.

5 - CloudMagic

Download CloudMagic here

Description: Integrates email with other SaaS offerings.

Price: Free

Details: This Android app provides a unified inbox that works with a host of different email providers such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook, iCloud, Google Apps, Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, AOL and other IMAP accounts.

It also integrates with Salesforce.com, Zendesk, Pocket, Evernote, OneNote, Trello and MailChimp

The business case: A great app to use if you want seamless integration between your email and SaaS to make you more productive at work.

6 Mail Wise

Download Mail Wise here

Description: Turns email into something more akin to messaging

Price: Free

Details: Emails have a certain format encompassing the body of the previous message as well as email signatures and other gumph. Mail Wise strips this out and focuses on the body of the message, making email threads look more like instant messaging. It also sports handy swipe gestures.

The business case: This app cuts to the chase in terms of getting directly to the message.

7 - MyMail

Download MyMail here

Description: The great looking app supports all the major email providers.

Price: Free

Details: This app not only works with the major email providers and any IMAP or POP account, but has a great looking user interface to boot. Each thread shows up photo avatars of the people you are corresponding with. Attachments can be added and viewed within the app.

The business case: The clutter-free interface and how it works with attachments should appeal to business people.

8 Type Mail

Download Type Mail

Description: This email app combines a task list and alarm clock to keep you on your toes.

Price: Free

Details: Type Mail has a user interface that would make you think you are using an iOS device. It can manage an unlimited number of email accounts. You can set quiet hours for when you don't want notifications to pop up and disturb your work. Emails can also be written and scheduled to be sent at a more suitable time.

The business case: This simple email app will work with lots of providers as well as the majority of corporate email servers.

9 - WeMail

Download WeMail here

Description: Heavily influenced by Google's Material Design, this email client groups emails by sender rather than date.

Price: Free

Details: The interface is clean and takes its cues from Google's Material Design. It sorts emails by sender rather than chronologically and organises messages into a more chat-like experience. It can search by message and attachment. It can also compose and reply to emails with voice messages.

The business case: This email app promises to reduce your inbox size by 50 per cent and claims to have the fastest and most advanced email search of any client.

10 Nine Exchange

Download Nine Exchange here

Description: Primarily aimed at Exchange users, this app also works with other email servers.

Price: Free with in-app purchases

Details: This is billed as a fully-fledged email application for Android based on Direct Push technology that synchronises with Microsoft Exchange Server using Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync. IT also works with Hotmail, Outlook and Office 365 as well as other email servers.

The business case: A good alternative to Outlook if you want to use Exchange.

Google has rolled out Inbox by Gmail to iPad and iPhone users, as well as those with the Firefox and Safari web browsers.

The app was firstly available in the German App Store, but has now rolled out in more countries, and - as a beta - remains invite-only.

Taylor Kourim, software engineer at Google, said on the Gmail blog: "It's always hard to know when it's time to share a new product, because there's always just a few more things you want to do. Today we're happy to check off some of these to-dos for Inbox, making it easier to use on more devices and browsers."

Inbox by Gmail was launched last year and turns the email inbox into a 'to-do' list, helping users act on the things required in an email.

That action could be to reply, set up a meeting or pay or bill or book a flight, for example.

When users read an email, it doesn't just disappear into the 'read' pile, but can be filed into 'pinned', 'snoozed' or 'done'.

Pinned puts it in a prominent place - the equivalent as 'starred' in the standard Gmail app.

Snooze will put the email on the backburner until users are ready to deal with it, sending a reminder at a pre-determined time, while Done means any task associated with that email have been completed.

"Done" emails won't be removed from the inbox, but will sit in the background so they don't get in the way of Pinned or Snoozed emails.

The application also groups together similar apps, like promotions, purchases, travel and anything else users want in the same inbox. Each email has a handy preview too, so users can find the right one without trawling through all their emails - or even opening them.

The Inbox by Gmail app was first launched on Chrome and Android tablets.

Google hopes to transform the way people access and use their Gmail accounts with the launch of its new Inbox app, which is currently available on an invite-only basis.

The offering seeks to simplify the way people use their email and make it easier for them to sift through the huge number of electronic missives they receive each day.

The search giant has already started sending out invitations to a select group of users to try the app, who are also invited to pass it on to their contacts too.

Google has also offered those interested in testing it to email the company at inbox@google.com to request an invite as soon as the next batch becomes available.

It does this by bundling together emails of a similar type (for instance, bank statements or online order confirmations), so the contents can be reviewed more quickly.

Users can also stipulate what type of emails they'd like to see grouped together in this way, and Inbox will take its cue from this to ensure any future messages receive the same treatment.

The look and feel of the app shares some similarities with social networks services such as Twitter and Google+ with information presented to users in the form of a news or activity stream, rather than a traditional email inbox.

It has also been designed to ensure important information contained in emails is easier to find by extracting the key details and bringing them to the fore of the app, rather than the entire email.

In a blog post, announcing the launch of Inbox, Google flagged flight itineraries, event information and work documents as key types of information the service would flag to users.

"Inbox will even display useful information from the web that wasn't in the original email, such as the real-time status of your flights and package deliveries," wrote Sundar Pichai, SVP of Android, Chrome & Apps at Google.

Users are also encouraged to use the app to set reminders for themselves, which will appear in their streams as the time to deliver on them approaches.

This feature will be complimented by the inclusion of something called Assists, whereby Google will supply users with access to information from the web to help them complete the tasks they need to do.

"If you write a reminder to call the hardware store, Inbox will supply the store's phone number and tell you if it's open," the post continued.

"If you make a restaurant reservation online, Inbox adds a map to you confirmation email. Book a flight online, and Inbox gives a link to check-in."

Email users should strive to respond quicker to emails and cut out unnecessary words, according to Google executive chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt.

Schmidt, alongside Google's senior vice president of products Jonathan Rosenberg, laid out the ground rules for emailing in a new book, How Google Works.

The pair said being responsive sets up a "positive communications feedback loop" whereby your team and colleagues will be more likely to include you in important discussions and decisions.

"Being responsive to everyone reinforces the flat, meritocratic culture you are trying to establish," said Schmidt and Rosenberg.

The pair, writing in Time magazine, also advised readers to eliminate any words that aren't necessary.

Email users were also urged to clean out their inboxes and handle messages in a last in, first out order as older stuff will get taken care of by someone else.

People should also consider themselves as "routers" of information. When someone is emailed useful information, they should consider who else would find it useful.

"At the end of the day, make a mental pass through the mail you received and ask yourself, What should I have forwarded but didn't?'" the pair said.

Schmidt and Rosenberg warned against using blind carbon copy (BCC) in emails as well as using the caps lock.

They also said that email users should make it easy to follow up on requests by copying themselves in an email and marking it "follow up". A similar technique could also be used to help email users search for information by forwarding on emails to themselves and adding keywords they could later remember.

"This isn't just handy for emails, but important documents too. Jonathan scans his family's passports, licenses, and health insurance cards and emails them to himself along with descriptive keywords," said Schmidt. "Should any of those things go missing during a trip, the copies are easy to retrieve from any browsers."

The Gmail usernames and passwords of nearly five million accounts have reportedly appeared online in a Russian Bitcoin forum, but Google has been quick to play down the leak.

The login credentials reportedly appeared online early yesterday morning inside a .txt file on a Russian Bitcoin Security forum, where it was claimed that 60 per cent of the leaked usernames and passwords were still actively used.

Google has contradicted this claim in a blog post, by declaring that fewer than two per cent of the usernames and passwords listed would have worked.

"Our automated anti-hijacking systems would have blocked many of those login attempts," it states.

"We've protected the affected accounts and have required those users to reset their passwords."

The search giant then went on to state the leaked credentials were not in the public domain because of a direct hit on its email system.

Instead, the company said the details were likely to have been obtained through phishing attempts or attacks on websites that people use their Gmail addresses to log into.

"If you reuse the same username and password across website, and one of those websites gets hacked, your credentials could be used to log into others," the post explained.

To prevent users from having their accounts hacked, the company then goes on to recommend that Gmail users deploy two-factor authentication for their accounts and protect them with strong passwords.

"We're constantly working to keep your accounts secure from phishing, malware and spam," the post added.

"For instance, if we see unusual account activity, we'll stop sign-in attempts from unfamiliar locations and devices."

I'm not playing Buzzword Bingo this week, but I am going to mention BYOD (or Bring Your Own Device, if you prefer) and - as enterprises around the globe will testify - plenty of people do.

The explosion in using consumer devices in the workplace should not have caught anyone by surprise. When such devices catch up with, and in many cases surpass, business kit in terms of sheer power, flexibility and cost, then BYOD becomes a no-brainer. This is a good phrase, as it also sums up what appears at first glance to be some very worrying security news that broke this time last week.

The story claims the mobile Gmail app can be hacked with an impressive 92 per cent success rate. The fact research scientists at a couple of US universities have demonstrated a method by which it's possible, across Android, iOS and Windows platforms no less, to obtain personal data including passwords is surely a nail in the coffin of BYOD?

I'm not convinced, despite the shared-memory side channel-using 'UI state interference attack' being technically very interesting indeed. My 'meh' mode is activated because, practically speaking, it's much less interesting.

Here's the lowdown: a user downloads multiple apps, they all run on the same shared platform, and it's possible for one of those apps to employ that memory side-channel which is found in just about every GUI to access the others.

It was possible to do this 92 per cent of the time with Gmail. Shocking stuff huh? Not as shocking as the detail of what is actually required to get this to work.

First, the app that allows this to happen has to be installed. That's an unsigned app, and one that's carrying malicious code. The kind of app that would be prohibited by any half-decent enterprise BYOD policy, and avoided by any half-brained employee who wanted to keep their job.

However, even allowing for the fact such an app may get installed via a rogue app store or by an idiot user, even then attack success is not a given.

Secondly, on the 'things that are required for this exercise in intellectual masturbation to work' list is the attack would have to take place at the precise, exact, same moment the user was performing the action to be accessed using the target app.

Throw in the third requirement, that all of this is done without user knowledge at any point, and it becomes startlingly clear that in the real world (outside of the rubber walls of the research labs) it's an attack that is very unlikely ever to be successfully pulled off.

This reminds me of something very similar that I was writing about back in 2012, for our sister publication Cloud Pro, under the title of 'Cryptography attack: side-channel cloud threat is all nerd and no knickers.'

Although the side-channel threat is obviously made a lot easier on a mobile device, with regards to the requirement to be running on the same platform at the same time, I stand by the gist of what I said back then. Namely, that if you are an enterprise which follows basic security best-practice strategies, including BYOD policy implementation, then you can move on as there's really nothing to see here except fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Microsoft has escaped the wrath of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), despite complaints being made about an anti-Gmail radio ad campaign the software giant recently ran.

The advert at the centre of the controversy suggested Gmail users should communicate with their contacts in Pig Latin to prevent Google from scanning the content of their emails for ad targeting purposes.

It then went on to claim Microsoft's own Outlook.com does not indulge in this practice, and also gives users the option to opt out from receiving personalised ads.

"To stop Gmail from using your emails, use Outlook.com," the advert stated.

According to an adjudication notice on the ASA's website, two people complained about the advert, claiming Microsoft was misleading listeners by implying Outlook provides greater privacy than Gmail.

"They understood that Outlook also scanned the contents of all emails, for purposes other than targeting ads," the ASA statement continued.

In its defence, Microsoft insisted it only scanned users' emails for viruses and spam, and that using the contents of emails to create targeted ads was a "significant privacy issue".

It then went on to state that it failed to mention its protective scanning procedures in the ad because it was standard practice within the industry, and many consumers will already be aware that it does this.

Therefore, the advert was not misleading listeners, Microsoft claimed.

In response, the ASA said Microsoft has no case to answer, because scanning emails for viruses is standard practice, and as such listeners were likely to expect it to be carried out as a matter of course.

"We noted the ad referred explicitly to Gmail scanning email content for the purposes of targeting ads, and this reference was immediately followed by the statement Outlook.com doesn't'. We considered listeners were likely to appreciate this statement was only in relation to scanning for ad targeting rather than protective scanning," the ASA stated.

"Because the ad made clear that the privacy claims were in relation to ad targeting, which Outlook.com does not carry out, [and] we therefore concluded that the ad was not misleading."

Google has blamed a software bug for the Friday night outage that left users across the world unable to access several of its services for up to an hour.

The search giant apologised for the downtime, which prevented Gmail, Google+, Calendar and Documents users from accessing their accounts, in a statement published on the Google Official Blog.

It confirmed the outage lasted for around 25 minutes for many users, while 10 per cent of them may have been affected for up to 30 minutes longer.

"Whether the effect was brief or lasted the better part of an hour, please accept our apologies we strive to make all of Google's services available and fast for you, all the time, and we missed the mark today," the statement, written by Google's vice president of engineering Ben Treynor, read.

He also revealed the outage had been caused by a software bug in an internal system that generates information that tells other systems what to do, generating an "incorrect configuration" that affected how some of its services behaved.

"Users began seeing errors on affected services at 11.02am (PST), and at that time our internal monitoring alerted Google's Site Reliability Team," the statement continued.

"Engineers were still debugging 12 minutes later when the same system, having automatically cleared the original error, generated a new correct configuration at 11.14am," the statement continued.

"Errors subsided rapidly starting at this time. By 11.30am, the correct configuration was live everywhere and almost all users' services were restored."

Treynor said the team was now working to remove the source of Friday's outage, and speed up recovery times if and when future problems of this nature occur.

Around the time of the outage, Yahoo was forced to apologise after a member of its social media team decided to flag the Google outage from the @Yahoo account.

The tweet stated that "Gmail is temporarily unavailable" and featured a screenshot to back up this claim.

It was later removed, before Yahoo issued an apology to the Gmail and Google team, citing "bad judgement".

A five minute outage that left millions of Google customers unable to use the search giant's web services is reported to have caused a 40 per cent drop in worldwide internet traffic.

Scores of web users across the globe were affected by the outage, which resulted in all of its services including search, Google Drive, Gmail and YouTube - going offline for between one and five minutes on Friday 16 August.

During the downtime, users were reportedly able to access Google services, but were greeted with error messages and other unexpected behaviour when they tried to use them.

At the time of writing, Google was remaining tight-lipped about the cause of Friday's downtime, but had apologised to the "significant" subset of users affected by the outage.

"The problem...should be resolved. We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support," the company said in a post on its service status page.

"Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better."

According to a report by web analytics firms GoSquared Engineering, the downtime created a huge slump in the number of real-time page views it tracked on Friday afternoon.

In a blog post, the company said its findings highlight just how dependent web users are on Google's services.

"Google.com was down for a few minutes...on 16 August 2013. This had a huge effect in the number of page views coming into GoSquared's real-time tracking around a 40 per cent drop," the blog post stated.

"That's huge. As internet users, our reliance on Google.com being up is huge. It's also of note that page views spiked shortly afterwards, as uses managed to get to their destination," it added.

Privacy has been the keyword this week on IT Pro as it has over much of the summer. Google and little known firm Renew have been on the receiving end of some harsh words. The comments also continue to flow in on the Windows 8.1 vs Mac OS X head-to-head with readers picking a clear favourite.

Google justifies its ogling

Google could see its user-base plunge after a filing containing it's response to a privacy class-action lawsuit was published. The web giant controversially claimed that a person who uses its Gmail has "no legitimate expectation of privacy."

"Just as a sender of a letter to a business colleague cannot be surprised that the recipient's assistant opens the letter, people who use web-based email today cannot be surprised if their communications are processed by the recipient's [electronic communications service] provider in the course of delivery," Google claimed.

IT Pro readers flocked to the comments section to challenge the web giant's justification for snooping on emails.

"Sorry, but unless the colleague has either given permission or instructions to the assistant then that assistant is technically guilty of a criminal offence - Interference with Her Majesty's Mail," explained Jaykprime.

"Personally I regard emails that I send out as being private between me and the addressee(s). I do not give Google, or anyone else, permission to interfere with them in any way."

A frustrated Alan went one step further claiming that he was done with Gmail for good.

"I shall definitely stop using my Gmail account from now on. I don't see how Google can justify it with such an excuse," he claimed.

Meanwhile, Simon Nicholls took a more measured approach, asking whether Google also scans information from its other services.

"It opens up a whole other can of worms in relationship to other Google services like Calendar and Drive. Is Google scanning my appointments? Are it scanning the documents I have stored? I have an Android phone, but now I'm wondering whether to change all of these next time I upgrade if this is the baggage it comes with," he pondered.

London rubbish bins tracking users

IT Pro readers have also been unimpressed to learn about 200 "smart rubbish bins" dotted around London, which are collecting the information from smartphones with pass by without user permission.

A reader simply known as Me, showed some entrepreneurial flair when they suggested a novel business idea to work around the problem.

"How about an app that keeps an updated list of all the advertisers that make use of 'smart bin' technology so that people like me can avoid buying their products and services?"

David came across as a tad melodramatic when he claimed that the UK is becoming worse that China because of tracking.

"I for one do not wish to see any adverts pushed to my phone, and surely I have the right to shop where I like, and not have rival companies notified. This needs to be stopped in its tracks," he complained.

Reader Aaaashy pulled no punches in calling for the arrest of Renew CEO Kaveh Memari, claiming that the chief was breaking the Data Protection Act, claiming that "it might put off future lawbreakers."

Mac OS X > Windows?

Meanwhile, the battle between Windows and Mac fans rages on in the comments section of over head-to-head. It appears that Mac is the fan-favourite according to readers.

"I was a hard core windows fan, I put up with its niggles and tantrums, until I bought an old MacBook Pro running lion which to this day has never frozen, stopped responding or played up in any way," John reminisced.

"I also disagree that the Windows GUI is better than OSX, I felt the Windows was going downhill after XP."

Henry3dogg who's becoming a regular our roundups theorised that Microsoft's foundations are built on sand, but did offer up a compromise.

"I still have to run Windows to test and support applications. But I only ever run Windows under VMware, generally on a Mac, and keep all of the Windows' applications data directly in the Mac filing system. That way, whenever Windows gets screwed up, I just roll it back and lose nothing.

"Microsoft is built on foundations of sand. Once decent wave and the whole thing will vanish forever."

There were a couple of folks still loyal to Redmond's OS. Most vocal was Optimaximal.

"Can people legitimately say OSX has the better UI when you consider it too is a clusterf*ck of the legacy (Finder) and the nouveau (Launchpad)? The only difference is Apple aren't instigating a shift to the new stuff (yet)," they politely explained.

Google is to provide users with a 15GB pool of storage, which they choose to split between Drive, Gmail, and Google+ accounts however they wish.

Clay Bavor, director of product management noted that people use the Google services in different ways, so the firm will no longer impose limits.

"With this new combined storage space, you won't have to worry about how much you're storing and where. For example, maybe you're a heavy Gmail user but light on photos, or perhaps you were bumping up against your Drive storage limit but were only using 2 GB in Gmail. Now it doesn't matter, because you can use your storage the way you want," Bavor noted on the Google Drive blog.

"We'll also be making updates to the Google Drive storage page so you can better understand how you're using storage space. Simply hover over the pie chart to see a breakdown of your storage use across Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos," he added.

The announcement comes as Google is continuing to make a variety of changes to its products and services. Last week, the internet search giant announced upgrades to security systems on Android devices, as well as production of stronger hardware to help mitigate account hacking.

The changes to Google Drive Storage are expected to be implemented within the next few weeks. Those needing extra space will be able to pay for additional storage. This starts from $4.99 per month for 100GB.

Several Google web products, including the popular Gmail service, appeared to go dark for users on several continents yesterday afternoon.

Google confirmed that "service disruptions" had affected Gmail and Google Drive, its online storage service. The two products are part of Google's Apps suite, a Microsoft Office rival that caters to both consumers and businesses.

By 10:10 a.m. Pacific Time (1.10 p.m. EST), Google's Apps Dashboard monitoring service reported that Gmail and Drive service had resumed.

The company did not specify how many users were affected, or where, but the outage prompted widespread complaints on social media on both coasts in the US and other major markets, from the United Kingdom to Brazil.

Some users additionally reported the outage had affected Google Docs, the company's word-processing and spreadsheet programs, while Chrome, Google's internet browser, also crashed unexpectedly.

"We are currently experiencing an issue with some Google services," Google spokeswoman Andrea Freund said in a statement. "For everyone who is affected, we apologise for any inconvenience you may be experiencing."

Firmly entrenched in the consumer market, Gmail is one of Google's most popular and important product offerings.

The search giant, which has been pushing a corporate version of the email service and its Apps suite to businesses to compete with Microsoft, said this month that the package ill no longer be free to business customers.

Search giant Google has confirmed its email service was hit by an outage yesterday evening.

The service is used by millions across the globe, but many were left unable to access it for at least an hour.

Google confirmed the problem began at 5:42pm on Tuesday evening, but stressed that less than two per cent of its user base were blighted by it.

However, in a further statement, the company said the total number of users affected was closer to 10 per cent.

"The problem with Google Mail should be resolved. We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support," said Google in a statement.

"Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better."

Prior to this problem, Gmail has only been down once in the last three years and seven times in total since the service went on general release in 2007.

Google's attempts to push out a Gmail app for iPhone and iPad failed yesterday thanks to bugs in the software.

The tech giant took to Twitter to apologise for the broken app, saying the bug lay in notifications.

"We have pulled the app to fix the problem. Sorry we messed up," the Google tweet read.

Matthew Izatt, Google product manager, released an official statement, promising a new version would be released "soon."

"Earlier today we launched a new Gmail app for iOS. Unfortunately, it contained a bug which broke notifications and caused users to see an error message when first opening the app," Izatt said.

"We've removed the app while we correct the problem Everyone who's already installed the app can continue to use it."

We have pulled the app to fix the problem. Sorry we messed up.

Google announced the app yesterday, revealing the app would give iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users alerts and notifications when messages arrived.

On the iPad version, Google added the ability to navigate the inbox and read email simultaneously with split view, as with the official Apple Mail app on the tablet.

"We hope the Gmail app makes checking email on the go a little easier," the Gmail team blogged. For now, it doesn't make anything easier.

The blunder came just a day after Google announced a refreshed look for its desktop version of Gmail.

The new Gmail includes features such as brighter colours and larger tabs for conversations, amongst many other tweaks.

Google has created an updated version of Gmail, now available to every user.

The internet giant said the latest version of its email client will be rolling out to everyone in the next few days, but it is available to preview now.

The new Gmail features brighter colors, larger tabs for conversations, amongst many other features.

A dropdown menu on the search bar allows for advanced searching, making it faster to find what users are looking for within their mail. Users can also create filters for any search with this new panel.

Conversation has been redesigned, allowing reading through email threads to look simpler. Profile pictures will pop-up next to users contacts, adding a social element as well as making it easier to see who said what.

"We also stripped out as much as possible so you can focus on communicating with your friends and colleagues," said Google user experience designer Jason Cornwell, in a blog post.

Since users may access their account from a variety of screen sizes and devices, the elements on the screen will now automatically adjust based on the form factor being used.

Google has also added a drop down menu to change the type of display density, including "comfortable, cozy, and compact" settings based on users' preference.

The navigation panel on the left keeps labels and chat contacts in view at all times, but users will be able to resize the labels and chat areas on their own. The arrow keys also help users navigate around the page.

With the help of iStockPhoto, HD themes have been rebuilt to enable high-resolution screens. Users who have a particular theme enabled will see an automatic update of it when Gmail is officially carried over to its new look.

Below is a video outlining the changes:

Google's enterprise version of Gmail is presenting a practical alternative to Microsoft Exchange Online, as together they leave others behind in the email race, an analyst firm has claimed.

According to Gartner, a handful of email providers, such as Novell GroupWise and IBM Lotus Notes/Domino, have lost market success over the past several years. Cisco has even closed its cloud email efforts.

Other than Microsoft Exchange, Google Gmail is the only email system that has not fallen down in this chase.

"The road to its enterprise enlightenment has been long and bumpy, but Gmail should now be considered a mainstream cloud supplier," said Matthew Cain, research vice president at Gartner.

"While Gmail's enterprise email market share currently hovers around one per cent, it has close to half of the market for enterprise cloud email."

Gartner expects cloud email to reach 20 per cent of the overall email market by year-end in 2016, and 55 per cent by year-end in 2020.

Google is responding well to customer input in order to improve front-end features, Gartner said. However, Google's lack of cooperation in back-end features regarding security and compliance may be scaring off large enterprises, it suggested.

Financial organisations report that Google is reluctant to add niche features to Gmail, even though customers feel they are relevant to their business. For example, banks may require a Gmail-integrated surveillance application that Google isn't willing to develop based on limited use and irrelevance for unrelated companies.

"The intense competition between Microsoft and Google will make both vendors stronger and enable them to apply cloud expertise to other enterprise cloud endeavors," Cain said.

Google and Microsoft appear to be such dominant forces that others in the market may find it difficult to compete, Gartner said.

Google has been expanding in numerous areas of the web as it continues to grow, including its social site Google+ and a new flight feature, which went live last week.

ANALYSIS A certain pesky web denizen known as ComodoHacker has been causing a commotion recently.

Last week, he/she claimed a hack on Certificate Authority (CA) DigiNotar, resulting in over 500 fake website certificates being issued for big-time services including Gmail and an MI6 website.

Then Belgian CA GlobalSign stopped issuing authentication certificates after ComodoHacker claimed to have gained access to its servers. They also claimed to have broken into three other certificate authorities outside of GlobalSign and DigiNotar.

The hacker has also threatened to use the fraudulent certificates to carry out man in the middle attacks on organisations in Europe, Israel and the US.

I don't know if this is fixable at all, short of worldwide social changes.

Earlier in the year, another CA known as Comodo was hacked. Can you guess where ComodoHacker got their name?

Outside of the significant cyber war implications, with some saying the DigiNotar hack will have wider connotations than Stuxnet, ComodoHacker has again thrown the whole CA system's credibility into doubt.

Time for a change

There's little doubt something needs to change. It no longer seems sensible to carry on placing all our trust in over 650 CAs, with whom the end user never has any direct contact. They are an invisible force and, in some cases, a weak one. Given their whole business is based on trust, the CAs themselves will be feeling more than tetchy about the current situation.

There are many pertinent questions that need to be asked about the security of the CA system.

"How many of them do you know, let alone trust? Should you trust a state-owned CA more than a commercial concern, or should you trust in market forces and vested interests to override political expediency? Where is the global authority with the mandate and the impartiality to authenticate all those CAs? Who would authenticate the authenticators?" said David Harley, senior research fellow at ESET.

"The problems aren't so much with the technicalities of SSL, as with the difficulties of implementing a system that assumes trust in the provider without a realistic mechanism for determining where you can safely invest that trust."

Harley wasn't sure if the system could be fixed at all. We may be stuck with a flawed framework forever.

"I don't know if this is fixable at all, short of worldwide social changes on the scale of an accelerated continental drift (but in reverse). We've arbitrarily decided to invest trust in CAs, and the opportunities for withdrawing that trust (at any rate without the cooperation of the CAs) are severely restricted (i.e. to take it or leave it)," he told IT Pro.

As any IT guy knows, if you can't fix something, replace it. There are alternatives to the CA system. One of the best, at least according to some big names in the security sphere, is researcher Moxie Marlinspike's Convergence model.

It has been designed to take out the middle men - the CAs - by giving the user greater power. With the Convergence model, users are handed the SSL certificates directly, before asking a number of "trust notaries" to download it too. It then relies on consensus from these notaries to authenticate the web transaction.

I don't believe it would be appropriate to abandon the use of certificate authorities without a clear idea of what could replace it.

To add an additional layer of security, the user goes through a proxy notary so they will remain anonymous to the trust notaries. Sounds like a fine idea, no?

Yet even that model has its limitations. "There are a couple of issues I can see," Harley said.

"Firstly, it throws responsibility for deciding who to trust back down towards the user, whereas the public always wants technical solutions that will save it having to think for itself. Secondly, it has to fight an entrenched commercial model."

Nevertheless, it is a viable option. Time will tell how much support it can gain.

Don't be hasty

If we are to tear down the CA system, it needs to be approached with caution. With any project, especially those involving IT, an incremental approach is almost always best.

Some still argue the CAs have a valuable role, they simply need to be more responsible.

"I don't believe it would be appropriate to abandon the use of certificate authorities without a clear idea of what could replace it. After all, if a criminal gang successfully impersonated the police, few would suggest that we should abolish the police force," said David Emm, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab.

"The key, of course, is trust. And I think a critical feature of this incident is the fact that DigiNotar massively under-played the significance of the breach. If trust in any CA is to be maintained, disclosure of any breach is essential."

Emm is right in saying CAs need to get their act together. A number have been caught out. If any more fall at the hands of hackers, then the case for an overhaul of the current model will gain yet more momentum.

For now, the most astute way forward will be in finding the perfect replacement before any radical change is implemented. Right now, the Moxie Marlinspike model offers a real alternative. It should be explored and tested now. If the decline of the CA's reign over web authentication comes, we need to be prepared.

Certificate authority DigiNotar today confirmed the fake security credential used to carry out man in the middle (MITM) attacks targeting Gmail users was obtained during a hack.

An Iranian Gmail user claimed to have found evidence of a fake SSL certificate for Google services. Such fake certificates can be used to intercept end user web interactions with an MITM attack or set up spoof websites to steal people's data.

There may well be other certificates like this out there that we don't know about. That means almost all internet users are still vulnerable to this sort of attack.

The fake credentials were authorised by DigiNotar after the company's Certificate Authority (CA) infrastructure was hacked. The firm thought it had removed all of the fraudulent certificates from the internet, but it has now become apparent not all were taken offline.

"The company will take every possible precaution to secure its SSL and EVSSL certificate offering, including temporarily suspending the sale of its SSL and EVSSL certificate offerings," a message from DigiNotar's parent company Vasco Data Security International.

"The company will only restart its SSL and EVSSL certificate activities after thorough additional security audits by third party organisations."

DigiNotar warned it was not just Google.com which was affected.

Concerns over timing have been raised as well. DigiStor said it became aware of an intrusion on 19 July, yet the fake certificate for the Google service was issued on 10 July. This means the fraudulent certificate has been in the wild for some time.

The incident was only highlighted by a user going by the name of Alibo, who, thanks to a new feature in Google Chrome, was made aware of the fake certificate via a warning. Alibo claimed the attack was carried out by either his ISP or the Iranian Government, but there is no solid evidence of this.

Certificates are supposed to act as a guarantee that the information a user is accessing and sending is only viewed by safe, recognised parties. This case has again highlighted flaws in the CA system, which relies on the trust of such security credentials and the competency of certificate authorities, of which there are around 600.

Earlier this year, certificate authority Comodo was hacked and credentials for sites including login.live.com, mail.google.com, www.google.com, login.skype.com and login.yahoo.com were issued.

Digital rights campaigner the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said this was the first time a fake certificate has successfully been used in the wild, making it especially concerning.

"The certificate authority system was created decades ago in an era when the biggest online security concern was thought to be protecting users from having their credit card numbers intercepted by petty criminals," the EFF said.

"Today internet users rely on this system to protect their privacy against nation states. We doubt it can bear this burden."

Google, Microsoft and Mozilla have all removed DigiStor from their trusted certificate authority lists. This means websites using certificates from DigiStor will not be accessible via Chrome, Mozilla or from any browser running on Windows Vista and above.

Despite the actions of the big vendors, there are still big concerns over the implications of this particular security event.

"The good news is that the computer security community is now taking this threat very seriously. Unfortunately, the bad news is spectacularly bad: users in Iran (or on any network where an eavesdropper had the key to this certificate) may have been vulnerable for two months," the EFF added.

"What's more, there are hundreds of certificate authorities in dozens of jurisdictions, and several have been tricked into issuing false certificates. So there may well be other certificates like this out there that we don't know about. That means almost all internet users are still vulnerable to this sort of attack."

Office 365 isn't a new version of the Office desktop suite; it's a cloud service offering the key server-based versions of desktop applications Exchange mail server with Forefront malware and spam protection, SharePoint document management (which can also power a public-facing Web site) and Lync Online for communications (presence, instant messaging and audio and video calls).

This is similar to the BPOS cloud service Microsoft has been running, but it has newer versions of the server-side software that are multi-tenant and (Microsoft claims) better suited to running as a cloud service. You also get online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook and some subscriptions even include the full Office Professional Plus suite. There's also an Office 365 marketplace for third-party tools that work with the service.

Office 365 is commonly seen as competing with Google Apps so we decided to look at them both.

Google Apps for Business includes Gmail with Postini spam and malware filtering and basic smartphone management, Calendar and Contacts, Google Docs (including spreadsheets and presentations), Chat, Groups mailing lists, Sites (for both intranet and public Web sites).

There's a control panel for managing users and what they can do with the Google Apps tools. You can also control user access to various other Google services like Picasa (which may get more important as Google combines personal and Google Apps accounts into a single account type) and add third party services from the Google Apps Marketplace.

Office 365 is commonly seen as competing with Google Apps so we decided to look at them both to see how similar the services really are and how they compare to each other.

Administration interface

As cloud services, you manage Google Apps and Office 365 online. Despite the simple layout, the Google Apps control panel is confusing until you learn where everything is. Options are scattered between Domain Settings, Settings, Advanced tools and the various links from the Dashboard tab which duplicate the Settings hierarchy. The Dashboard is also cluttered with adverts for optional tools in the Google App marketplace and adverts for new features.

The Google Apps admin page is cluttered with adverts for new features and third-party tools.

The Office 365 admin console is cleaner and better laid out, with a pane for switching between managing users, services and domain, clear explanations of what the main management tools are for next to the links to manage them. There are also handy shortcuts at the bottom of the window and links to relevant resources and community discussions.

By comparison, the Office 365 dashboard is clear and well laid out; you can see immediately what to do.

Google Apps has two levels of administration rights; the 'super admin' who has full access and admins to whom you can delegate some administration tasks. You can give different users a different mix of rights but you have to remember who can do what.

Office 365 has five named admin roles; you can give someone the rights to manage billing, passwords, users or services if you don't want them to have full admin rights. If you need more granularity, you can also set up administrator roles for Discovery Management, Records Management, UM (Unified Messaging) Management and other tasks in the Exchange Control Panel. It's more complex than Google Apps, but enterprises will welcome having the option.

Winner: Office 365. Microsoft's administration interface is not only better organised, it's also easier to handle when delegating management rights to others.

Setup and user management

There's a setup guide to get you started on Google Apps which walks you through things like verifying the domain you're using , creating user accounts and changing your MX records to point to Gmail (you need your own domain to use Google Apps). It's mostly clear and simple, but the duplicated instructions and sometimes circuitous inteface make setup a very fragmented experience. Setting up the Postini spam service tells you it may take up to an hour and again you have to change the MX records to redirect mail to the Postini service and configure some settings in Google Apps email by hand - all of which should be far more automated and suggests that Google has still not fully integrated the Postini acquisition with its platform.

Office 365's Forefront Online Protection for Exchange, SharePoint and Lync Online are running by default so all you have to do is create or migrate users. You only need to configure settings if you want to use an optional vanity domain, to get finer control or if you're integrating with on-premise servers. Thankfully the guides to doing this are clear and detailed.

You can create Office 365 users individually assigning admin rights and turning on services for them at the same time - or by importing a CSV file. You can also connect to an existing on-premise Exchange server and migrate users and mailboxes, or synchronise with your Active Directory to manage Office 365 users with roles and policies the same way you manage existing users (so you can delete a user in AD and they're removed from Exchange Online). You even get PowerShell cmdlets that let you configure Office 365 from the command line.

The Forefront rules and filters are very powerful but the interface is more complex.

To create Google Apps users you can set them up one by one in the control panel or import a CSV file - but most enterprises will use the Google Apps Directory Sync to get user details from AD or Lotus Domino, which the setup guide doesn't cover. This is a one-way sync and you have to leave the tool running on your local server and make changes to users in AD and propagate them up to Google Apps. To migrate mailboxes you have to run an Outlook sync utility individually and you can't migrate distribution lists, so you have to recreate them. It's initially confusing which tools you need for synchronising and migrating different information and settings to Google Apps, especially as the help pages often refer to old tools that have been replaced.

What Google Apps calls 'groups' are merely mailing lists. To control who gets which Google services you need to set up organization units. These cover both the core offerings like Gmail and the wide range of other Google tools whose terms and conditions your business will be deemed to have accepted if users from your business sign in with their Google Apps account - so this is mainly useful for disabling access to Picasa or YouTube if you don't want to accept those terms.

If business users sign into other Google services with their Google Apps account, the business is bound by the terms and conditions, so you can block this.

There's a separate option for whether users get access to functions and features from Google Labs, which could be a new option in Gmail or a tool like Google Moderator for managing a question and answer session at a company meeting (it's unclear what happens to these tools as Google recently announced that it is shutting down Google Labs). You can also use organization units to restrict which domains users can send email to, but you can't use them to control any other settings so it's nothing like as powerful as AD groups. You can't delete an organization without moving or deleting the users first, and deleting a user gives you the choice of deleting their documents or moving them to another user.

Both Microsoft and Google promise single sign-on. If you have Active Directory and AFDS 2, Office 365 users can use their Windows login to sign on to the local network (including any business apps you've integrated with that login) and to Office 365 services. Your Google Apps sign in gives you access to all the online Google services (including services that aren't part of Google Apps if the administrator allows this). It's possible to use a SAML bridge and the provisioning API to make that work with your in-house LDAP directory and local apps, but this is far from trivial to set up and it won't work with Google desktop applications.

Winner: Office 365. Microsoft's product is easier to set up and integrate into your company's existing infrastructure.

Mail server, malware and spam

Office 365 has a simple interface for basic admin options like managing passwords and security groups but you can also use the full Exchange Online interface. This is identical to the Web interface for Exchange Server, so it will be very familiar to Exchange admins. You get a comprehensive set of tools for setting up features like role-based access control, transport rules (such as adding disclaimers to external email) and reports to help you track down any problems along with auditing logs for compliance. If you don't need them then you can stick to the basics and be set up in minutes.

All the key email management features in Office 365 are available through a straightforward interface if you don't want to use the full Exchange interface.

Gmail has vastly fewer options because you don't get to control a mail server, although you do have some control over routing and mail gateway settings. The options are mostly on the level of setting up a vanity URL for users, choosing whether users can use Gmail Labs and chat or allowing Docs results to show up in a Gmail search. With Google looking after the mail server, most businesses won't need more admin options.

There are useful features in Google Apps that aren't turned on by default, and the interface is basic but clear.

Both Google Apps and Office 365 have a mailbox limit of 25GB. There's isn't an archiving option from Gmail, but with Office 365 you have a choice between third-party archiving services or a specific Office 365 plan with unlimited storage for email archiving.

Google Apps for business includes Postini Services for spam and malware detection, but you can't use it is you have multiple domains or if you want to use the Postini Discovery ediscovery and archiving service (in those cases you need to pay for Postini spam services separately). The Postini admin console is separate from the main Google Apps console and has tabs for viewing and deleting or approving messages detected as junk or viruses in the past three days, a week or for as long as it keeps records. The only option for virus blocking is whether you get email notifications that a mail has been quarantined, so you can check and release it if it's a false positive.

For spam you can whitelist individual senders, domains or mailing lists and block specific addresses or domains, set up inbound and outbound content filters for specific words, phrases or patterns and create attachment filters by size or type. You can also choose five levels of spam blocking, from lenient to very aggressive, and use category filters to put more emphasis on blocking explicit, 'racially insensitive' and financial spam. Oddly, IP whitelists to avoid spam filters go under the email settings pane, not in the Postini configuration page.

The Forefront admin console is also separate and has a very different interface from the rest of Office 365; it's powerful but also confusingly complicated for anything except checking quarantined email - we'd like to see this simplified for admins who don't already have Forefront expertise. What you get are the powerful Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) tools; not just malware and spam filtering, but options to safelist specific IP addresses, options for auditing and tracing messages and extensive filtering rules for both inbound and outbound email. You can therefore write rules to stop your users emailing out confidential information such as credit card numbers. You can upload dictionary files when you have a lot of values to use in a filter and manage rules by type; there are a lot more options compared to Postini.

Neither service lets you add additional reputation services or real-time block lists, but both let you use SPF for your own reputation - only Google Apps supports DKIM so far.

Winner:Tie. There's no outright winner in this category. Gmail is perfect if you want to get up and running as quickly as possible, while Office 365 provides fine grained controls and capabilities that will suit particularly fastidious organisations.

Mobile management

With Google Apps for Business, you can manage Android devices (as long as they run Android 2.2 or later). You can set a policy that enforces a password of a particular strength and wipe lost devices and users can remotely locate or lock their phone or make it ring. You have to manage rolling out device security as it requires an app users download from Android Marketplace, but turning on device security stops them using Android Marketplace until the app is installed (there's a direct link to get around the chicken and egg problem here).

There's also a connector to allow you to manage BlackBerry users of Google Apps from a BlackBerry Enterprise Server, and options for applying password and other device policies to smartphones using Google Sync or Exchange ActiveSync, which can end up as a confusing mix of management options.

Fine control of smartphone security in an interface that will be familiar to any Exchange administrator.

Office 365 has a more unified and comprehensive approach. Exchange Online gives you the same mobile device management as Exchange Server using ActiveSync Policies which work to some extent on virtually all smartphones including Android, iPhone. BlackBerry and Symbian as well as Windows Mobile and Windows Phone. You can enforce strong passwords and encryption, control individual device features (like Bluetooth), configure sync options like whether attachments can be downloaded on a phone and wipe devices automatically if the password is wrong too many times. You can also block or quarantine specific mobile devices from connecting. Users can even block or wipe their own phones.

Winner: Office 365's unified and comprehensive approach to smartphone management makes it the clear winner here.

Document management

Google Docs has no equivalent to SharePoint Online. Sites is a nice simple tool for creating internal or external Web pages and with Google Docs, you can control whether users can publish or share documents outside the business and whether documents default to being private or public. Otherwise sharing is an ad hoc thing that users control.

SharePoint Online combines workflow, document management and Web publishing and it looks professional straight away.

SharePoint Online combines Web page authoring for external sites with a full document management tool with libraries, lists, templates, discussion tools, shared calendars, RSS feeds, workflow, check in and check out options and version control plus powerful search options. Your Team Site includes pages for every user where they can blog, share links and documents or access their files on the move. Taking advantage of all the options is more complex but it's also far more powerful.

Winner: Office 365 has much more capable sharing features, but these are correspondingly more complicated to manage. If you need them though, then it's worth bearing with.

Chat and talk

Google Chat is the same simple but powerful tool available to the public; users can see presence for Google Apps contacts inside Gmail and start a text, voice or video chat from there once they've downloaded the plug-in. Alternatively they can use the Windows Google Talk software for text and voice chat or file transfer. Management is minimal; you can block chat outside the organisation or just warn users but you can't block file transfers.

Microsoft's Lync Online is more powerful. The extensive management options let you choose whether users can transfer files, make audio or video calls and talk to people outside the business or just colleagues.

Users can see each other's presence and status in Outlook and Outlook Web Access (including information from someone's Exchange calendar), and in any Office app where you're collaborating. It's possible to start a chat, voice or video call from there or from the Lync client. Microsoft is also promising Lync clients from a range of smartphones, offering IM first and voice features later. If you have an in-house PBX you can also set up unified messaging (like dialling phone calls from Outlook) and integrate voicemail with Exchange Online although we weren't able to test this.

Lync Online automatically federates with Windows Messenger and AOL for instant messaging.

Lync Online automatically federates with Windows Messenger and AOL for instant messaging. It can also federate with on-premise Lync servers if permitted by the server admin.

Google Apps can federate with any XMPP service, but to make that work you have to edit the SRV record in your domain by hand (or ask your domain hoster to do it for you), and you then get federation with all the services Google is connected to - you don't get to choose which are allowed or blocked. Similarly, you can allow users to chat with any Gmail or Google Apps user or block them all; you can't pick and choose which Google Apps-using companies they can communicate with and you can't block or allow chat access for specific users (individually or by groups).

Lync Online also incorporates the features of LiveMeeting; you can switch from an IM chat to an online meeting with up to 250 people with audio, video and Web conferencing, and you can schedule meetings in advance through Outlook. If you want to let people phone in to a meeting without needing Lync (customers for example), you can buy an audio conferencing service for Lync Online from BT.

Winner: Office 365. Google App's chat and messaging features are fine for most users, but for more fine-grained controls, Office 365 is better.

Online apps

Online apps like Google Docs are primitive compared to the richness of the full Office suite. In general, the features of the Office Web Apps and Google Docs are broadly similar, but while many like the sparse interface of Google Docs for its simplicity, the Office Web Apps tend to have the edge in sophistication.

Create a PowerPoint presentation in the Office Web Apps and you get good-looking themes and images you place are automatically sized to fit; a Google Docs presentation starts out in plain black and white and the designs aren't as appealing.

The Office 365 Outlook Web App has good self-service features for users (and you only see the admin links if you're an administrator).

Office Web Apps make inserting images from your hard drive the same simple experience it is in a local app. Google Docs gives you a wider choice for inserting images from a URL or a Google image search in a document, but it's a completely different dialog box in a presentation where inserting an image has fewer options and is a clunkier experience. The mismatch of features between different document types in Google Docs is more extreme and more jarring than in the Office Web Apps.

Sharing is better integrated in Google Docs, with a big blue Share button on the page that opens a popup dialog box. The Office Web Apps make you save the document and take you away from the editor to choose who to share it with, and take you back to viewing but not editing the document. This is because Microsoft assumes that you won't share a document until you've finished working on it. Updates appear live in Google Docs; this also happens in the OneNote Web App but the other Microsoft Web apps make you save your own changes to see edits by other users.

There are many features in both Outlook and Outlook Web that are missing from Gmail from macros to Quick Steps. Gmail equivalents tend to have fewer features which some users prefer because they're simpler. Gmail's stars, labels and priority buttons let you do much the same things as Outlook's flags, categories and folders with the advantage that a message can have multiple labels instead of being in only one folder.

You can turn an email into a Gmail task and then make a reminder, although this isn't quite as immediate as setting a follow-up flag for a specific day directly on an email. Filters the Gmail equivalent of Outlook rules have far fewer actions; in Outlook you can play sounds, send an automatic reply or even print a message that matches a rule. Gmail does include all the mostly commonly used ones though such as filing, forwarding and deleting messages.

Google Apps for Business Gmail users finally get the option to request read receipts, but these have to be enabled by the administrator and Gmail doesn't respond to delivery or read receipt requests in emails sent from Exchange. Gmail only shows the request when you close the message (Outlook shows it when you open the message) and you have to decide for each message as Gmail doesn't have Outlook's don't ask me again' checkbox. Even more irritating; if you don't want to send the receipt the button you click is marked not now' and Gmail will ask you again every time you read the message.

Apart from creating resources using Google's complex naming structure, you have only a few controls for calendar sharing.

Google Calendar can include shared resources - like rooms and projectors that need booking - which you create by typing in the details one at a time. Oddly there isn't a drop-down picklist to ensure the resources are given consistent names or a wizard to help with the complex naming conventions Google suggests, so you could end up with six conference rooms and one meeting room if you're not careful. If you follow the convention suggested, all resources that start with the same three letters will be grouped into a hierarchy but you can't do this manually.

Exchange Online has templates for creating resources like rooms (as well as equipment that isn't in a fixed location); you can even say which users can reserve rooms without permission and how often.

The Google Calendar features for end users aren't quite as powerful or complex as in Outlook, but you get the important options like overlaid calendars and recurring appointments. The Quick add tool that lets you type in a sentence, including the day and date of what you need to do, which then sets an event on the right day at the right time is a phenomenal time saver.

Winner: Tie. The Microsoft Web Apps for crediting documents are more sophisticated than Google's equivalents, but Google Docs has better sharing and collaboration features. Exchange Online has a plethorea of configurable options, but many organisations won't need these and may prefer Google's less feature-packed but also less cluttered approach.

Office and working offline

Depending on which plan you sign up for Office 365 includes download rights for the professional version of Office 2010, which includes OneNote, Publisher and Access as well as the usual Word, Excel and PowerPoint. You can load and save documents from all of them into the SharePoint Online site included in Office 365 and use the online collaboration features to edit documents at the same time in the main apps.

Depending on which plan you sign up for Office 365 includes download rights for the professional version of Office 2010.

This is a bargain; you get the full power of Office and the back-end servers that enable all the features, from using Information Rights Management to control who can distribute a file to asking people to update a database by replying to email. One great feature for businesses; you can host PowerPoint presentations online and present to a group of people on the Web, letting them ask questions and make comments ideal for training or sales pitches.

Also available are the publicly accessible Office Web Apps; Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote all but PowerPoint let multiple users edit the same document at the same time. SharePoint synchronisation neatly takes care of making documents available offline as well as accessing them from anywhere online.

Although offline access to Gmail and Google Docs (without the deprecated Gears plugin) is still only available to Google employees, Google recognises that offline document access matters. You can run software to sync Outlook with Gmail, Calendar and Contacts, and to move Outlook Notes to Google Docs (though they're read-only, it doesn't sync notes filed in folders - and if you use Outlook on multiple PCs you have to run the tool on all of them because categories, follow-up flags and other settings don't sync fully otherwise).

There's a connector toolbar for Office that lets you sync documents to Google Docs; the latest release fixes many of the problems in the first version, but it's not as polished as the SharePoint integration and converting files into Google Docs for editing online doesn't preserve all document features (the same thing happens when you open an email attachment in Google Docs). You can't edit watermarks, smart art, charts or footers in Office Web Apps, but you can see them in the read-only viewer and they're preserved in the document so you get them back when you open it back in Office. Google Docs doesn't show those details and doesn't keep them if you edit the document. Even fonts and line spacing can change when you move Office documents in and out of Google Docs.

Winner: Office 365. Microsoft's offline support is far from polished, essentially being dependent on SharePoint and subscription access to the full Office suite, but this is also, unsurprisingly, far more capable than Google's cumbersome and crude offline tools.

Service levels and support

The Google Apps dashboard repeatedly told us that there might be a problem with an unspecified Google Apps service; whenever we clicked through to the dashboard all the services showed as having no issues, but seeing the warning virtually all the time was concerning. Office 365 has a similar service health dashboard; neither service had any major outages or failures while we were testing them, but Office 365 didn't keep warning us of non-existent problems.

Despite frequent warnings about a problem, Google Apps didn't record any disruptions to the service.

Both services promise 99.9% availability. Google Apps measures this on a monthly basis with a credit of three days of service if the SLA is not met in a month; Office 365 credits 25%, 50% or 100% of the service cost if the SLA falls below 99.9%, 99% and 95% respectively.

Google Apps has no planned downtime; Office365 does schedule maintenance when usage is likely to be low for example Lync might be unavailable for five minutes at 1am on a Saturday morning and dates and times are listed five days in advance in the support area.

Support is definitely better with Office 365. Support is requested using the admin console and your requests are managed there, but 24-7 phone support is also available with response times from 15 minutes to four hours depending on the severity.

Issues with Office 365 can be broken down by exactly which part of the service is affected.

Google Apps also has 24-7 phone support but only for critical problems that involve more than half your users and affect the Google Apps Web services. If the problem was with mobile emails you'd be stuck with email support, which doesn't cover weekends.

Winner: Office 365, but only just. It's tough to judge how reliable a cloud service is, but Microsoft's technical support has better availability which is reassuring.

Verdict

Google Apps has a flat price of 33 per user per year; Office 365 has a range of prices from 6.50 to 17.75 a month, depending on whether you want Office, Office Web Apps, SharePoint, Lync or archiving it can be more expensive but you can choose what services you want to pay for and there are discounts for volume pricing (including transferring existing Exchange and SharePoint server licences to Office 365).

Google Apps is in a constant state of flux.

Google Apps is in a constant state of flux; the whole service is migrating to a new platform, there are two versions of the control panel available, there are options to give users access to previews of new interfaces and features from Google Labs which itself is going away, with no indication of what happens to the features it provides and new features like return receipts arrive periodically. Getting continuous, instant improvements is one of the benefits of cloud services, but if you're managing the service and supporting users you might prefer Microsoft's approach where updates come at regular intervals and you can choose whether to adopt them immediately or by a specific date.

That underlines one key difference between the two services that has little to do with features; Office 365 has the professional feel of a service planned in advance and designed for administrators; Google Apps has the feel of a service that has grown by leaps and bounds, but sometimes in a rather haphazard way that's not always consistent.

In the end, the two services are both powerful but they suit different audiences.

In the end, the two services are both powerful but they suit different audiences. If your business already uses Microsoft tools, Office 365 is the logical progression, giving you server workloads that integrate with and make the most of your existing investments. It's a comprehensive, powerful, end-to-end cloud platform for business that doesn't make you do everything online, which many businesses find a step too far. You can have all the power of Exchange and SharePoint without the bother of configuring and running them.

If you need a mix of on-premise and cloud services, having to manage both Active Directory and the Google Apps control panel is more work than being able to do everything through System Center. Google Apps is a better fit for businesses starting from scratch online with no legacy systems who can benefit from the simplicity without having to keep the service in sync with on-premise tools, but it has definite limits.

MICROSOFT OFFICE 365 SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Operating system: Windows XP SP3 or later; MacOS X Leopard 10.5 or later; Windows Server 2003 or later Office client: Office 2007 SP2; Office 2008 or later; Lync 2010 Administration and Office Web Apps: a modern web browser Active Directory-based features: single forest GOOGLE APPS SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Modern web browser

Yahoo has been called on to change its terms and conditions so it can't legally scan user emails.

The internet giant was criticised by Which?, the consumer group, which said Yahoo had introduced changes to its T&Cs so it could scan emails for data to use for advertising purposes.

Yahoo said its scanning technologies were being implemented to block spam as well as to offer relevant adverts to users.

Yahoo should abandon these changes before the crucial bond of trust between it and its users is damaged beyond repair.

Big Brother Watch director, Daniel Hamilton, said today the email provider's actions were "disappointing," calling on the company to go back on its decision.

"Web users have a right not to see their personal messages trawled through in order to boost Yahoo's advertising revenue," Hamilton told IT Pro.

"Yahoo should abandon these changes before the crucial bond of trust between it and its users is damaged beyond repair."

A Yahoo spokesperson told the BBC a box would appear asking for users' consent before any scanning ensued.

The technology will "look for keywords and links to further protect you from spam, surface photos [photos sent from friends which then won't go straight to spam] and in time, serve users with interest-based advertising," the spokesperson said.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has been in touch with Yahoo about the scanning feature, but no action will be taken for now.

"We've spoken to Yahoo about their email scanning feature. As with any business or organisation that changes the way its customer data is used, Yahoo has an obligation to be upfront with their users to make sure their information is being processed fairly," an ICO spokesperson said.

"This includes making sure they have clear and accessible privacy notices which will allow users to make informed decisions in relation to privacy and other aspects of the service."

Yahoo isn't the only provider which carries out email scanning. Google does the same with Gmail, saying it does so to filter spam and identify potentially harmful material.

With the weather getting steadily warmer this week, some companies are flaunting what they've got while others are wrapping up, hoping nobody notices what's going on underneath. It's been a sweaty, torrid week in the world of technology

Windows 8 gets all touchy-feely

Microsoft surprised everyone by showcasing a completely new interface for the next version of its flagship operating system, Windows 8. A touch-based interface, highly reminiscent of Windows Phone 7, sits on top of the standard windows and cursor. The video shows gestures reminiscent of the Blackberry Playbook's, as well as hits of a Microsoft app store and evolved versions of existing features, such as Aero Snap.

The timing of this revelation, just a few days before Steve Jobs' keynote showcasing MacOS X Lion and iOS 5 at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference, didn't surprise any of us here at IT PRO though.

There are still many unknowns about Windows 8 what other new features are there? What are the system requirements? Will Microsoft update Office and its other applications to take advantage of the new touch interface? When will it be released and how much will it cost? Why not release a separate version just for tablets? Just how worried is Microsoft about tablets in general and the iPad in particular? Will these questions never end?

Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!

The timing couldn't be more delicious. Just a few weeks after American officials stated they would consider a cyber attack to be an act of war against the US, Google reveals Chinese hackers had infiltrated Gmail accounts belonging to Chinese dissidents and US officials, amongst others.

The prospect of full-blown military fisticuffs, however remote, sent the survivalists in the office rushing to their bunkers, while the more sensible among us donned tinfoil hats and headed down to the pub.

Someone wanted to send details of the rendezvous coordinates by email, but thought better of it. Speaking of tin foil hats

Unwarranted health panic of the decade no. 375

The UN's World Health Organisation (WHO) released a report looking at the current state of research about the possible health effects of mobile phone radiation, concluding that it could 'possibly' cause cancer in humans.

The problem is a lot of the existing research is flawed or incomplete, as this cogent and well-written blog post by Cancer Research UK details.

Still, that won't stop lots of hysterical hand-wringing by the red tops.

China's Foreign Ministry today said it could not accept accusations from Google the Chinese Government was making it difficult for Gmail users to access the service in the country.

Yesterday, Google released a statement saying disruptions to the online email service not been a technical issue but a "Government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail."

However, the Chinese Government has fought back with a statement this morning.

"This is an unacceptable accusation," ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a regular news conference.

The relationship between the super-power state and Silicon Valley giant has been well documented over the past year.

In March 2010, Google threatened to pull its operations out of China after it accused the country of massive hack attacks to become known as Aurora on Gmail accounts of human rights activists.

This was added to in November of last year when a Wikileaks cable showed communications between a Chinese contact and the American Embassy in Beijing admitting the hack was down to the Politburo.

Google has accused China of targeting its Gmail service in the country, claiming the Government had carefully engineered problems with the client.

Chinese companies and customers had complained about disruptions to their Gmail accounts in recent weeks, reports suggested.

"There is no technical issue on our side. We have checked extensively," a Google spokesperson said.

"This is a Government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail."

The claims come after China reportedly clamped down on internet protests, some calling for a "Jasmine Revolution," following similar campaigns across the Middle East.

Earlier this month, Google complained about a number of politically motivated attacks on its users, although there was no mention of Gmail then.

Google said a vulnerability affecting Internet Explorer (IE) was exploited in the attacks.

The flaw in MIME HTML (MHTML) a protocol used by applications to render certain kinds of documents and bring together different content onto one HTML file - was publicly disclosed in January.

This isn't the first time Google has blamed China for attacks on its users.

In what became known as the Aurora saga, the web giant threatened to pull out of the country, claiming Google data had been stolen and Gmail accounts of human rights activists had been compromised.

Businesses were also reportedly targeted by the same hackers, including financial services firm Morgan Stanley.

The Chinese administration has denied the accusations, however, calling them "groundless aims to denigrate China."

A WikiLeaks cable released by the New York Times towards the end of last year further implicated China in the attacks.

The leak claimed to cover communications from a Chinese contact telling the American Embassy in Beijing the Politburo had ordered a hack attack on Google.

Google has blamed a bug within a storage software update for the email wipes affecting thousands of users over the last two days.

Many Gmail account holders found their emails and contacts had been almost completely erased.

Google explained, in some rare cases, software bugs could hit several copies of the data, so it didn't help in this scenario that the company had multiple copies of user data in numerous data centres across the world.

Google also backs up user data to tape, where such software bugs cannot affect data.

However, it also takes longer to restore such data from tape and this is why it has taken Google hours to bring email back to some Gmail users.

Ben Treynor, vice president of engineering and site reliability czar at Google, said the search giant was "very sorry."

"The good news is that email was never lost and we've restored access for many of those affected," Treynor said in a blog post.

"Though it may take longer than we originally expected, we're making good progress and things should be back to normal for everyone soon."

Google also downgraded its estimate of the total number of users affected by the issue from 0.08 per cent to 0.02 per cent of Google Mail users.

At 7:46pm yesterday, access had been restored for a third of the affected users, with Google saying it was continuing to restore the remaining 0.013 per cent of accounts.

Meanwhile, Google has been updating its Gmail Contacts service to make it easier for users to manage their accounts.

Administrators can now quickly add email addresses to groups and pick from a contact's multiple email addresses to use on a group-by-group basis.

The business impact

Nathaniel Borenstein, chief scientist for Mimecast, said the Gmail wipes were a concern for businesses as well as consumers.

Recent Mimecast research showed 85 per cent of under-25s send work related emails or documents to or from personal email accounts, potentially placing their company's data at risk.

"With workers keen to mix and match personal and business technologies in order to maximise their flexibility and productivity, IT departments need to quickly work out how they can protect corporate IP and ensure compliance in the face of this cultural shift," Borenstein said.

"While using personal email accounts for work can give employees greater flexibility, businesses can quickly encounter problems if they allow individuals to send valuable intellectual property outside of the secured corporate environment."

Thousands of Gmail users have seen their accounts wiped of both messages and contacts, it has been reported today.

Users took to the web to complain about having their inboxes almost completely emptied.

"All mail was gone. I also got some notifications which you will get when you have a new account. Seems something must have been reset," one posted on the Gmail Help Forum.

"All messages, labels, settings gone, everything reset to defaults. Looks more like a Gmail bug than a hacking incident," another added.

Google confirmed there was an issue with the email service.

"This issue affects less than 0.08 per cent of the Google Mail userbase," Google said on its Apps Status Dashboard.

"This is a revised estimate. Google engineers are working to restore full access. Affected users may be temporarily unable to sign in while we repair their accounts."

By 03.40am, Google said Gmail had been restored for "some users" and it expected all affected accounts to be fixed "in the near future."

This is not the first time Gmail has been hit by a glitch.

In the latter half of 2010, a bug in the service caused numerous emails to be sent from accounts by mistake.

Again, Google forums were filled with complaints from users something the firm will want to avoid if it wants to be a real challenger in the email client space.

Restrictions on corporate email have driven tech-savvy employees to work around the system, using personal email accounts to jump over hurdles and putting company data at risk.

Some 85 per cent of workers under 25 dubbed the Gmail Generation' use personal email for work purposes, according to research by Mimecast.

This means a large amount of intellectual property from businesses has ended up stored on public servers without the company's knowledge and in turn could lead to data breaches.

"With social networks and personal email a ubiquitous part of their life, the way email is used by this demographic is bleeding into the workplace so it is not surprising that expectations for workplace technology are shifting accordingly," said Nathaniel Borenstein, chief scientist at Mimecast.

As much as the move may be careless, it isn't intentionally malicious, according to Borenstein who suggested that workers only took these measures to ensure their "productivity and flexibility."

In fact, more than half of the under 25's said they would not use personal accounts if they had an work mailbox with unlimited storage.

The report found 36 per cent of incoming email was not work related and also discovered more than 300 work emails were sent via personal accounts per person every year - half of these with attachments.

"Unprecedented change is afoot as a new generation of people who have had lifelong exposure to technology enter the workforce, bringing with them unique challenges in the provision and management of email and other technologies for companies," Borenstein added.

"The proliferation of social networks and mobile devices has transformed the communications landscape within companies; employees increasingly mix and match technologies, using devices and platforms interchangeably to find workarounds... Employers need to work out what they are going to do in the face of this cultural shift."

Google has adjusted the service level agreement (SLA) of its application offering to remove any scheduled downtime.

Google Apps, which includes Gmail, IM and Calendar, previously had a clause enabling Google to take the service down for scheduled maintenance.

The company has now removed this clause and, although it admits unscheduled downtime will always be a possibility, it hopes to achieve ambitious uptime of 99.99 per cent.

In a blog post late last week, Matthew Glotzbach, Google's enterprise product management director, said: "Unlike most providers, we don't plan for our users to be down, even when we're upgrading our services or maintaining our systems. For that reason, we're removing the SLA clause that allows for scheduled downtime."

"Going forward, all downtime will be counted and applied towards the customer's SLA. We are the first major cloud provider to eliminate maintenance windows from their service level agreement."

He also confirmed any unscheduled downtime would be counted.

"Previously, a period of less than ten minutes was not included," Glotzbatch added. "We believe any instance that causes our users to experience downtime should be avoided period."

One of the reasons companies have cited for being nervous about the move to a public cloud model was unsuspected downtime, leaving them unable to access mission critical applications.

However, Glotzbath claimed the average of seven minutes downtime each month for Gmail in 2010 was better than many on-premise alternatives.

He quoted research from the Radicati Group, which claimed average downtime for on-premise email was 3.8 hours per month, making Gmail 32 times more reliable than the average email system.

Google has made a move in the battle against spam with the introduction of a new authentication offering.

The search giant claimed it was the first company to make simple DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) authentication available on a free email client.

DKIM is a signing standard designed to separate an email from spam and thereby ensure the message reaches the intended recipient. Google has made it available for all Google Apps customers for outgoing messages.

To enable to DKIM technology, administrators simply need to head to the Advanced Tools tab in the control panel and switch the service on.

"Once again, the power of the cloud has made it possible for us to bring this feature to millions of customers quickly and affordably," said Adam Dawes, Google enterprise product manager, in a blog.

"As more email providers around the world support DKIM signing, spam fighters will have an even more reliable signal to separate unwanted mail from good mail."

He claimed spam and phishing "epidemics" were not abating. However, recent figures may hint otherwise.

Over Christmas there was a serious dip in spam thanks to a number of mega botnets all but shutting down their spamming activities.

Security researchers have thus far been at a loss to explain why botnets, such as the behemoth that is Rustock, went practically out of contention.