The Web Page builder, with which you build your public-facing Web site, lets you select from several basic layouts, choose colors for text and backgrounds, and so on. Other Web tools I've used for easy Web site creation (including Microsoft Office Live), don't allow you to edit the HTML. Google Apps does, which is nice.

You don't need a hosting service to create and display these public-facing pages. However, the "home page" URL is less than memorable for your customers -- in our case, http://www.

enterpriseofficetips.com-a.googlepages.com. If a user enters just the domain name (that is, www.enterpriseofficetips.com), they're redirected to the Start page rather than the public-facing "home page," which is hardly what you'd expect (or want).

The IT connection

For IT departments, Google provides APIs for data migration, user provisioning, and single sign-on. They also provide instructions for making changes to your Exchange server to integrate with Gmail. In addition, the Premier edition comes with 24/7 telephone support for the administrator, a service we did not have occasion to test. Advertising is turned off by default, though you can include targeted ads if you'd like (why you'd want to is beyond us).