Google beta offers alternative to gmail.com

Google has launched a beta for hosted email accounts that feature the user's domain instead of gmail.com.

The hosted Gmail beta, which is going head-to-head with a similar beta that Microsoft launched last year, is offering 2GB of storage, email search tools and a control panel to manage user accounts, aliases and mailing lists, as part of its beta.

The beta is open to businesses, organisations and universities, according to Google's blog site. The search giant points to San Jose City College as one university that is testing hosted Gmail, offering its students email accounts with the domain of jaguars.sjcc.edu.

Google's beta follows on the heels of a similar one Microsoft unveiled in November. The Microsoft Windows Live Custom Domains beta features hosted email and instant messaging.

The Live Custom Domains service, however, was aimed at consumers who wanted up to 20 email accounts with 250MB per address for an existing domain. Microsoft's hosted beta also included security features, such as virus scanning and junk-mail filtering.

The battleground for hosted email accounts appear to be taking shape among the industry titans, but it has yet to be seen whether it will quickly accelerate as did the offerings for large email storage by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.