Chapter 3: Getting Started with Gmail, Google Apps, and Drive

In This Chapter

Using Google alternatives to Windows

Setting up your Gmail account

Using Google Docs (Drive)

Moving your domain to Google

In spite of the rivalry between Microsoft and Google, Google’s so important to today’s computer users that Microsoft builds hooks into Windows 8.1 that try to get you to add your Gmail account to the tiled, “immersive” Metro Mail app and add your Gmail contacts to the tiled Metro People app. Of course, Google is happy to return the favor, with easy ways to put your Hotmail/Outlook.com mail inside Gmail, and to import your Hotmail/Outlook.com contacts into Gmail.

There’s a reason why Microsoft wants you to put your Google eggs in its basket. Google has very good competitors to the Microsoft online stable, er, stables, including the following:

Microsoft Hotmail/Outlook.com, the Windows 8.1 tiled Metro Mail app, the mail part of Microsoft’s Outlook, and the desktop Windows Live Mail all compete with Google Gmail, in different ways.

The Microsoft Windows 8.1 tiled Metro Calendar app and the Office Outlook calendar compete with Google Calendar.

The Microsoft Windows 8.1 tiled Metro People app and Hotmail/Outlook.com contacts compete with Google Gmail contacts.

Worth noting: Every app in italics in the preceding list is free if you’re running Windows 8.1. Absolutely free. Microsoft and Google give away the apps to draw you in to their corners, with the hope of selling you something in the future.

You can use Gmail to send and receive mail using your own private domain, and it's free for up to ten mailboxes. So, for example, I can use Gmail to handle all the mail coming into and going out of AskWoody.com without changing my e-mail address and without anyone knowing that I'm using Gmail: All the mail going out says it's from [email protected], and all the mail sent to [email protected] ends up in my Gmail Inbox. It's a feature in Google Apps, and except for one step, it's pretty easy. See the last section in this chapter, "Moving Your Domain to Google," for details.

All this wrangling takes place against a backdrop of increased competition from Apple and new assaults from Facebook. All the companies really want to get you hooked on their ways of working.

Don't forget that "free" services aren't free in the sense of being zero-sum. The companies offering the "free" service gather information about you, unabashedly, and show you targeted ads, in the hope of selling you something. As a poster named blue_beetle on the site MetaFilter (www.metafilter.com/95152/Userdriven-discontent#3256046) put it so succinctly, "If you're not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold."

In the following section, I take a very brief look at Google alternatives to Microsoft products from the perspective of a Windows user.

Finding Alternatives to Windows with Google

Google has a handful of free online products and offerings that warrant your attention. Microsoft has two or three handfuls, but that’s the subject of the rest of this book.

Here are the five Google products that serve as alternatives to Microsoft offerings:

Gmail: A free, online mail program, similar to Microsoft’s Hotmail/Outlook.com. Features change constantly, but it’s fair to say that if you find a feature you like in Hotmail/Outlook.com, it’ll be in Gmail soon — and vice versa. Some people prefer one interface over the other; I’m ambivalent but for now I’ve settled on Gmail, primarily because I prefer the interface. If you use Google’s Chrome web browser, you can even use Gmail when you aren’t connected to the Internet.

Google Drive: A service from Google that gives you up to 5GB of free online storage, similar to Microsoft SkyDrive. I talk about the different online storage services in Book VIII, Chapter 1. Google Drive’s main advantage is its ability to work easily with Google Apps.

Google Docs: Contains online programs for creating and editing word processing documents, spreadsheets, fill-in-the-blank forms, presentations, and drawings. Although the programs are rudimentary, they can work collaboratively — two or more people can edit the same document at the same time, with no ill effect and no weird restrictions. And you can get at your docs from your PC, Mac, tablet, or phone. Very slick, and you don’t need to do a thing.

Google is gradually phasing out the use of the terms Google Docs and rolling all the programs into the umbrella Google Drive. In this chapter, I talk about Google Docs occasionally to give you a reference point for when you see instructions (even from Google!) that refer to Google Docs. But the distinction between Google Docs and Google Drive is fading fast. You can use the terms interchangeably.

Google Apps: A combination of several web apps — Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Groups (see the next bullet), and Sites (team collaboration) — and Google Drive storage with a framework that lets you run your own domain name through Google’s programs.

Think of Google Apps as a way to leverage Google’s software and servers for your organization. It’s free for ten or fewer business users, free for non-profits up to 3,000 users, free for schools up to 30,000 users. Beyond that, every seat costs you or your organization $5 a month or $50 a year.

Google Apps competes more-or-less with Microsoft Office 365 (which isn’t Office at all, but that’s a different story; see the nearby “Office 365 isn’t Office” sidebar).

Google Groups: If you belong to an organization, Google Groups offers an alternative to a Facebook page for keeping the members of the organization updated on what’s happening and to give members of the organization a chance to talk to each other.

One person, the manager, sets up a group at http://groups.google.com. The manager then sends invitations to people, who can respond by joining the group. The invitations can go to any e-mail address — they don't have to go to @gmail.com addresses. Members can post messages to the group, which are then e-mailed to every member of the group.

The manager can set herself up as moderator for the group — in which case, she must approve each message before it’s relayed to the members — or whether the group should be allowed to receive messages un-moderated. She also has control over each individual, such as who can post messages and who will receive them, and she can remove an individual from the group.

Technologically, Google Groups has been more-or-less upstaged by Facebook private pages and by Google+ Hangouts (a real-time video meeting place). But for people who feel more comfortable dealing with e-mail than with Facebook — or cameras — it’s a good option.

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Setting Up Gmail

If you don’t yet have a Gmail account, get one. Doing so is free and easy. Besides, every new Gmail account gets 50 free SMSs. Here’s how to set up an account:

1. With your favorite browser, go to www.gmail.com.

In the upper-right corner is the Create an Account button.

2. Tap or click the Create an Account button.

The sign-up form in Figure 3-1 appears.

Figure 3-1: Signing up for a Google account is free and easy.

3. Fill in the form as creatively as you wish.

If you type a real phone number, Google can use it to help you get into your account if you’re locked out. Similarly, your current e-mail address may help you get back into your account if somebody hijacks it. Don’t let Google change your home page.

In some countries, you’re required to give a valid mobile number, and Google sends you an SMS to verify that phone number before you can sign in. Currently, the United States, most of the countries in Europe, and India require valid mobile numbers, but the requirement can change from day to day. If you’re reticent to give Google your phone number, ask a friend whether it’s okay to use his number, just to get this one SMS from Google. Google says it “won’t use this number for anything else besides account verification.”

It may be worth a beer, or a pizza, if your friend prefers. What are friends for . . . ?

4. (Optional) Turn off the +1 tracker.

I deselect the box that allows Google to use my account information to personalize +1’s on content and ads on non-Google websites. You may feel differently about your privacy, but think about turning it off.

5. At the bottom, tap or click Next Step.

Google offers you a chance to add a public profile photo.

6. Tap or click Add Profile Photo and find an appropriate (or inappropriate) one. When you’re done, tap or click Next Step.

Google thanks you on a job well done. Don’t let it go to your head.

7. Tap or click Continue to Gmail.

You now have an official Google account and a new Gmail address. Google dangles the default Gmail screen in front of you (see Figure 3-2), and it’s already populated with three e-mail messages.

Figure 3-2: Your brand-new Gmail account comes with four e-mail messages.

A good way to get started is to simply send an e-mail to yourself. Follow these simple steps for an orientation:

1. In the upper-left corner, tap or click Compose.

The mail composition pane shown in Figure 3-3 appears.

2. In the To field, type your new Gmail address; add a subject; write a message; and try formatting parts of the message using the string of formatting icons at the top of the typing box.

Figure 3-3: Create a new e-mail message here.

3. When you tire of talking to yourself, in the upper-left corner, tap or click Send.

Wait a minute or two. If you get bored, click the round arrow at the top, to force your browser to look again.

4. When the message arrives, play with it a bit.

Gmail is different from other mail programs. For starters, it groups messages by the subject. With one click, change to a conversation view that looks a lot like the list seen in forum messaging. Its folders — called labels — work differently from other mail programs. Some people like the organization, some people hate it, but it’s well worth taking some time to see whether this method feels better to you than the method you’re using now.

After you have a few messages under your belt, hop over to the Gmail learning center at http://support.google.com/mail and figure out the options Gmail has to offer. They're extensive and impressive. It probably won't surprise you to know that Gmail has search down cold — you can find any message in seconds, if you know the tricks. But you may be surprised to see how Gmail can work offline — when you aren't connected to the Internet (but you have to use the Chrome browser) — and its support for huge (25MB!) messages.

Using Google Docs/Drive

After you get a free Google account (see the preceding section), take a few minutes to see what Google Drive can do for you. Remember that Google Docs and its applications — for creating documents, spreadsheets, presentations, fill-in-the-blanks forms, and drawings — are being absorbed into Google Drive. If you see the name Google Docs while working with Google Drive, it’s only because Google is slow in getting its names sorted out.

Everything’s free, of course.

Here’s how to start with Google Docs, er, Drive:

1. With your favorite browser, go to www.drive.google.com.

2. If you aren’t logged in to Google, provide your Google account and password. Tap or click Get Started.

The Google Drive download page appears, with an interface that’s uncannily similar to Gmail. See Figure 3-4.

Figure 3-4: Google Drive is familiar to anyone who’s seen Gmail.

Google Drive installs a new folder on your computer called, uh, Google Drive (see Figure 3-5). If you drag files into that folder, those files become available in Google Drive on the Internet and on any other PC where you’ve installed Google Drive using the same Google account.

Google Drive also places three icons on your old-fashioned desktop — one each for Docs (the word processor), Sheets (spreadsheets), and Slides (presentations).

3. Open File Explorer and note that you have a new folder called Google Drive. Drag an assortment of files into the Google Drive folder.

Try grabbing a simple Word document, a spreadsheet, some graphic files, some PowerPoint slides, and maybe a PDF. Get a handful of them so you can experiment with the Google Drive apps.

4. Go back to your browser and, once again, go to www.drive.google.com.

All the files that you put in the Google Drive folder appear, as shown in Figure 3-5.

Figure 3-5: Files you drag or copy into the Google Drive folder on your desktop appear inside Google Drive on the Internet.

5. Open one of the documents (a Word document, Excel spreadsheet, or PowerPoint slide, if you have one) that you copied into the Google Drive folder.

If you have the corresponding Office program installed and working on your computer, Google Drive opens the document inside the correct program.

If you didn’t spend the exorbitant amount of money for Office — there’s no Office or Office-wannabe on your computer — and the document’s fairly simple, as you can see in Figure 3-6, Google Drive does a reasonably good job of rendering it — showing it on the screen.

Figure 3-6: Simple Microsoft Office documents render quite well.

More complex documents, though, can have all sorts of problems, from missing pieces to jumbled text. Although Google Drive does yeoman’s work trying to display Office documents, it’s far from 100-percent accurate.

6. To edit the document, click or tap the Open button at the bottom.

A copy of the document is saved in Google format (Word documents become .gdoc; Excel files become .gsheet; and PowerPoint slides become .gslides, for example), which you can then edit.

At this point, converting from the Office format to the Google format is a one-way trip. At least as of this writing, you can’t change a Google document back to an Office document, although Google has at times offered a File⇒Export as Word option. Although you can treat Google documents just like any other file — copy or e-mail them, for example — they can be edited only by Google Drive applications.

Don’t be surprised if the Google applications fall over when converting documents from Microsoft format (or even PDF) to Google format. You’ll see something like An error has occurred and we cannot save your changes. The conversion feature is very much a work in progress.

7. To create a new document, on the Google Drive home page, tap or click the Create button and choose what kind of document you want.

You can create a new document, presentation, spreadsheet, fill-in-the-blanks form (which is stored as a spreadsheet), or drawing (which is stored as a .gdraw file). See Figure 3-7.

Figure 3-7: It’s safer to create new documents from inside Google Drive, rather than importing and switching from Microsoft Office format.

8. Edit the file using the Google Drive apps’ comparatively limited tools (although the spreadsheet app does support Pivot Tables).

In fact, more than one person can edit the file simultaneously.

9. When you’re done, close the browser tab.

Your files are saved automatically, and the latest versions appear almost immediately in the Google Drive folder on your desktop.

After you play with Google Drive a bit, take a few minutes to read the manual. You can find the Google Docs (ooops — there's that word again) help system at http://support.google.com/docs.

Moving Your Domain to Google

The terminology’s confusing. Permit me to review quickly.

Google Docs, now Google Drive, has a bunch of apps — word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and fill-in-the-blanks forms. The apps are tied together with a Dropbox-like, online file storage and synchronization app.

Google Calendar, which I didn't cover in this chapter, is a standalone calendar with lots of advanced features, including the ability to sync with many other calendars. To read more about Google Calendar, go to www.google.com/calendar.

All those apps — word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, forms, drawing, and calendar — together with Google Groups (which is being edged out by other technologies), and 5GB or more of online synced storage, are available free for anybody, any time. I talk about most of the apps in this chapter.

Google Apps is a horse of a slightly different color; it’s ad-supported, so you see ads everywhere you turn. Fair enough.

Although Google Apps includes all the apps and services I just mentioned, that's kind of a side issue: Those apps are all free, all the time, anyway. More than the, uh, apps, Google Apps ties together organizations (companies, yes, but charities and clubs and all sorts of other kinds of organizations) that operate with a single domain, such as AskWoody.com or Dummies.com. When your organization (and your domain) hooks up with Google Apps, you get to use Gmail for handling all your mail and you aren't tied to @gmail.com e-mail addresses.

Here are several Google Apps packages that you’re most likely to be interested in:

Google Apps: This is the free edition for up to ten e-mail addresses.

Google Apps for Business: This costs $50 per e-mail address per year. It includes all the free stuff, such as running your domain through Gmail and shared calendars. The $50 also buys your organization 25GB of storage in each account and 24/7 phone support. You aren’t limited to just ten e-mail addresses — you can have tens of thousands.

Google Apps for Education: This is free for schools, colleges, and universities with up to 30,000 users.

Google Apps for Non-Profits: This is free for up to 30,000 users in a 501(c)3 organization; same service as Google Apps for Business. Larger organizations qualify for a 40-percent discount on the Google Apps for Business price.

Why would an individual or small group want Google Apps? Good question. The most persuasive arguments I know are these:

It’s simple, effective, cheap (or free), and easy, especially if you know and like Gmail.

If the Google Drive apps do everything you need — straightforward documents, spreadsheets, presentations — you can save yourself and your organization a ton of money by not buying Microsoft Office.

This, to me, is the crucial question: Do you need to spend the money to get all the frills in the Office apps, or do the Google Drive apps give you enough of what you need? Tough question, and one only you can answer after you try it for a while.

If you set things up properly, you can share documents with everyone in your group, and it doesn’t take any extra work. In fact, you can all collaborate on a document at the same time with basically zero effort.

Everyone can work on the device they prefer; whether the device is a PC, a Mac, an iPad, a Nexus, or an abacus (okay, I exaggerated a little bit), Google Apps has you covered. And you can switch from machine to machine, location to location, without any concerns about syncing or dropping files.

Google’s reliability is second to none. It isn’t up 100 percent of the time, but it’s mighty close.

Before you go screeching to your terminal to sign up for Google Apps, understand that, although the day-to-day use of Google Apps is as simple as using Gmail, setting it up has a couple of gotchas. Converting to the free version of Google Apps isn’t too difficult, but it’d be wise to make sure you understand the steps before you commit yourself.

Also ensure that you understand what will and won't happen with your e-mail after you switch. For example, Google Apps doesn't move your old messages over to Gmail: If you want your old messages to come across, you have to run its migration program. You can find a comprehensive discussion about moving to Google Apps Gmail at http://learn.googleapps.com/gmail.

I assume that you already have a domain name for yourself or your organization. If not, you can register a domain name with thousands of different, web-hosting companies. I use www.greengeeks.com, but your friends may have better recommendations.

In general terms, here’s how to get your domain grafted onto the free version of Google Apps (read all the steps before you get started):

1. Go to www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/pricing.html and in the Google Apps column, tap or click the Start Now button.

Google hides the free version, but it’s there if you know where to look.

The sign-up sheet appears, as shown in Figure 3-8.

2. Tap or click Start Free Trial. A form appears. Fill out the form and at the bottom, tap or click I Accept! Create My Account.

Now comes the hard part.

3. Verify that you do, in fact, own the domain that you’re moving over to Google Apps.

Google gives you three weeks to modify your website by putting a unique identifier on it that confirms it is, indeed, your domain.

Look at the video at http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60216 for details.

Figure 3-8: Sign up for the free service.

Although you may be uncomfortable performing the upload yourself, if you have a person who helps you with your website, he may well find it to be a piece of cake. Google has detailed instructions for more than 50 different web hosts. Yes, it has step-by-step instructions for Go Daddy, in case you were wondering.

4. After you verify that you own the domain and Google confirms that it’s received the verification, change your site so it starts routing e-mail to the Google Apps servers.

You do that by changing the so-called MX Records that are associated with the domain.

This part's easier than Step 3, but it takes some concentration, especially if you're not accustomed to bumping around inside your domain's records. Details at http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=140034.

5. Wait for the changes to take effect.

Usually that’s less than an hour. In my case, it took only a few minutes.

Mail starts flowing to your Gmail account, and you can use it immediately.

6. If you want to move any mail over from your current program to Gmail, follow the instructions at http://learn.googleapps.com/gmail.

All in all, setting up Google Apps is a bit of a pain, but after you’re over the hump, using Gmail for all your mail can be a liberating experience.