Review

Google Apps for Dummies is a fairly detailed guide to the suite of Google applications: gmail, chat and google talk, calendar, presentation, docs, notebook, page creator, and the site administrator tools. I read this concurrently with Google Apps: The Missing Manual, and the Dummies book is better. It is more task-focused, more concise, and covers much the same ground as The Missing Manual.

The google apps all have simple, intuitive, and easy to use interfaces, so it is tempting to think that a book like this is not of much value. But because of the sheer number of apps, and the somewhat strange relationship between the google apps suite and individual applications, I think this book might be useful to someone who is setting up google apps for a domain. In any case, it is all too easy to develop a sort of ‘target fixation’ when using an application, and not notice significant features. This book can help avoid that.

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