Forum Software Reviews

What is Google Groups?

Google Groups is not exactly and precisely a common forum software. It is more a product that is able to manage a community with different tools, and is mainly based on the concept of a mailing list. The mailing list is, besides, the main purpose of this tool, and it has been more and more improved, to support additional features, like hosting a small website, managing anti-spam, theming, groups, files,...

We will see how it could be used and how it could be compared to a classic forum software.

Note that many features will depend on the tool you are using to communicate with the Google Groups you participate. For example, the post editing could be more advanced if you use an offline email client, like Thunderbird or Outlook. Some advanced email box, like GMail or Yahoo! Mail will also provide a WYSIWYG form to create and post your messages. Obviously, in this case, the Preview button is useless, as you directly see what you are going to send.

This is exactly the same with the spell checker. If you use advanced browser, or an email client, the spell checker will be embedded, but this is not mandatory.

From the pure web interface of Google Groups, posting a message is really basic, as it is plain text only. However, from this form, you will always be able to quote existing message by choosing the Replying button on the mail you would like to answer. You could even remove some part of the previous message to quote only important thing. Here is an example

> This is the previous message
> sent by one of your friend

And here is your answer.

> This can, of course, continue several times.

As you can see here ;-)

Private messages, are, as you supposed, simple email address, that you could directly send email to your friends through their email address. Indeed, this is the main way to identify who you are talking with, the nickname is therefore optional.

If you use a GMail account, then Instant Messaging will be bundled, as a Calendar to create appointment with your friends, Avatars, and so on. Of course, Google Groups is really well integrated with other Google services... About this, there is no, for the moment, interesting integration between Google Buzz and Google Groups, so we are still waiting for new improvements from this side.

However, traditional features, that we almost find every time on forum software are not available, or partially present, due to the specific architecture of Google Groups. Polls, for example could not be created, even if you could do something with Google Documents, this is not as easy as what you can do in PhpBB or Simple Machines. Online users will only work for people you already add in your Google Chat Contacts. This is obviously not really smart for mailing list of thousand members.

For all of those features, we note them as Plugin, as this is not present if you only use core features of Google Groups.

Again, most features for users and settings will depend on what email provider you use. If you use GMail, then you will have user profiles, avatars, thread bookmarking (using stars)... and so on.

For other feature, the mailing list system on which Google Groups is relied on will automatically bring classic email features to the software, and basically, unread topics, private messages exportation, email notifications are all naturally available.

Note that threads, on Google Groups, are simply organized with the subject topic of each sent email. If you send an email with a different subject, then you will create a new topic. Note that the tree layout that GMail provides by default is really powerful to follow multiple discussions at the same time, and this is clearly one of the reason why it is possible to manage without difficulties a mailing list with thousand of members.

No possible migration yet.

However, developing a tool that retrieve the entire database of topics and messages from a classic forum software, and send them as email to a newly created Google Groups is possible, and therefore, there is no limitation to import anything to Google Groups.

The Google anti-spam is quite powerful, even if some people are sometimes, able to subscribe your email account without your permission to some spammy groups. The performance are really high, and you never have to wait minutes for your message to be posted and dispatched on email inboxes of the mailing list members.

Of course, using an hosted service will prevent you from customizing everything, but, for some exceptions, it is however possible to modify things. For example, with GMail Google Labs, your users will be able to support additional smileys. We are a little bit disappointed that there is no Google Labs for Google Groups yet, and we really hope it will change in the future.

Of course, the integration with Google Accounts is really tight, as you will only have to give the password of your existing Google Account to be able to log on and create your first group in Google Groups.

Theming and creating pages are really easy to perform, even if you cannot do everything, this is really sufficient for people that want a ready architecture fast.

The norms are respected in Google Groups website, and actually, once you have subscribed to a Google Groups, you do not need to come back to the website, as you can directly discuss from your email box.

Key points and major differences that make Google Groups unique:

• Google Groups is not a classic forum software, so obviously, it provides specific features of its domain. Replying from your email address is for example, really useful and convenient.

Yes, it's true, Google Groups is not a real and classic forum software. This is not the common representation we have of this kind of software, and therefore, it could be surprising to review it for what it is not primarily intended.

However, we could not forget that a forum software exists to support the messages and discussions that are written by a community of persons, and that there is not a single way to do it. Google Groups, and the mailing list system in general, are really well designed to do it as well, and the improvements that Google brought to the classic ML are really impressive, more particularly when it is coupled with GMail and other powerful Google services (Maps, Chat, Documents,...)

The Google Groups website is simple, well organized and easy to understand, and, for the first time, it lets you choose your own way to communicate with your friend: web interface, email client,... This is pretty rare, more particularly when you compare this to other forum softwares that try to recreate personal message box while you already have a primary one: your email address.

Google Groups is really good for this point as well: it makes you control your data at a central place, and you won't have to set your profile information and post your avatar picture for the 80th times, each time you join a community.

We haven't talked a lot about the common features of a forum software, like posting message, administrating content, managing users, but it's simply because this is naturally simple and really ergonomic in Google Groups. Simplicity and ease of use have always been the best point of Google products, and Google Groups follows really well this strategy.

We would advice using this software if you haven't in mind a clear and definitive idea of what a forum should be, because it is so far from a classic forum software that it could not suit your predefined needs. If you do not have this problem, then you will find in Google Groups a perfect and a really easy way to support and increase your community around your favorite subjects of discussions.