What a deal!

Google rocks, what can I say. I swear that soon, google will take over the internet, and offer everything to everyone for free, and still somehow manage to make zillions of bucks in the process.

I'm referring specifically to Google Apps for Your Domain. For a long time now, I've just had all my racketradio.com email hosted at my website, but forwarded to my blittz gmail account. Well now, I don't even need to have my website touch my email, Google will be the host for the mx records and everything. The biggest reason I'm so happy about this is that if I ever need to move my website to a new server (maybe even my own linux box) I don't have to worry about learning how to configure the new server to handle email.

Basically it comes down to this. Go to namecheap.com (or any other domain registrar), buy a domain name, get signed up on Google Apps for Your Domain, and presto, for under $10 a year (just the price of the domain name) you can have google host your website with 100 MB of space, and up to 100 email accounts, all with 2+ GB of room. Throw in some extra's like a calendar, and google chat, and your all set. So thanks to Google Apps, what once cost a few bucks a month, now costs a few bucks a year, yay Google!

Update: I just learned that Microsoft Office Live has something similar (also in beta). Their's has 30 MB of webspace, 10 GB / Month of bandwidth, and 5 email accounts (at 2 GB per account). The biggest difference is that Microsoft will register a domain name for free. If you cancel Microsoft's services (after the 60 day waiting period), you will still own the domain name, but you will have to pay for it through Melbourne IT, which costs $35/year.