For the last week, gmail has just stopped working for me. Boy, it has not been fun, being locked out of your personal emails. I also use google docs and the story is no different here - I am locked out of my documents as well. I have tried everything that Google has recommended on their discussion groups but to no avail. Initially I thought the problem appeared to be related to accessing gmail from web browsers on a Mac but now I am finding that this problem exists on Windows as well - web browser does not matter. Speculation on discussion groups is that this was caused by Google’s latest update. I have seen reports of this issue as early as couple of months back and to this date, there has not been a fix?

This raises some important questions about free products: Because it is free, does that mean users do not have much say - after all beggars cannot be choosers, they say. There is no customer support number to talk to a human, you can send an email to google, but it says there will be no response from them. All this from a company who has grandiose plans to replace archrival Microsoft from its stronghold position in business apps? I think Google is going through growing pains of delivering its once well known Saas solutions of gmail.

I was one of those users who did not care about ads pasted within my email, but I cannot live without my personal email. Is this what we get for using free products? Do we have any say or are we left on our own?

One of the hot topics these days is the concept of “Software as a service” (Saas). Earlier this decade, there was a lot of hype around ASP (Application Service Providers) and when the dot com bust happened, ASP was one of the victims. Though ASP and SaaS are not exactly the same, many people think they are and call Saas a second incarnation of ASP model. Sucess of services such as salesforce.com has really fueled the success of Saas and everyone seems to be talking about it.

McKinsey recently published a very good article on delivering Saas, which explores the financial, accounting, customer support, developmental and other business and operational implications of Saas. To me, it is a must read for any product manager working in the software industry. The article explores these different implications and calls on all software companies to take Saas very seriously or fear to be left behind. (The article requires registration with McKinsey to get full access, but it is definitely worth the registration process).