In Which Both Google And Yahoo Get Dope-SlappedIn Which Both Google And Yahoo Get Dope-Slapped

I decided to investigate Google Apps for Your Domain primarily so that I could access my personal e-mail using the Gmail interface, without having to resort to mail-forwarding or other workarounds. Apparently, it's a closed beta, and the application asked me a few questions about my "organization," which consists of me (well, there are also my alternate personalities and imaginary friends, but they don't use the Internet because they don't have fingers).

The application asked me to type in the name of my domain, so I entered "wagmail.com." And Google spat out an error message: "You cannot use a Google trademark in your domain name." Huh? I said to myself, What Google trademark? And I peered at the screen closer and spelled out the last four letters of "wagmail." G-M-A-I-L. Gmail. Google must be using a dumb text-parsing tool on the domain names. Sheesh.

Why am I investigating hosting my domain on Google? Because I absolutely cannot find a satisfactory mail client for Windows, even for the low volume of personal mail I receive on my personal account. I've tried Thunderbird, Outlook Express, Outlook, PocoMail, Eudora, the Bat, Opera, and probably more that I'm forgetting, and there are problems with all of them. I like the Gmail interface--I have a Gmail account I use just for newsletters and mailing lists--so I figured I'd give that a try for my personal account.

I'd like to be able to give Yahoo's new beta e-mail interface a try, but it's not available with the pay Yahoo Small Business service, which is what I use. The beta is available for users of the free Yahoo Mail service, but not for paying customers like me. What kind of business plan is that, Yahoo? Every once in a while I hear about how great the beta interface is, but I'm not allowed to use it. Oh, Yahoo, why do you tease me so?