What Can I Do with Google Apps? Your Personal Extranet, and More Google Apps is a disruptive technology. Like desktop publishing and the World Wide Web before it, Google Apps has the potential to fundamentally change the way businesses and organizations operate. Its reach extends beyond the enterprise: It can also be used to manage clubs or teams and even keep families in touch and organized. In a nutshell, Google Apps is a free, private network within the Internet (sometimes called an extranet). With Google Apps, you can have your own private network without buying server hardware, knowing how to set up servers, or wor- rying about maintenance. Google provides all of the expensive infrastructure, IT management, mail servers, chat system, administrative tools, etc., to create an extranet at no cost to you. Well, almost no cost; it does require that you have your own domain name for your web site. That's a mere $10 per year and Google pro- vides the tools to purchase your domain. Better yet, Google crafted Google Apps to be easy to set up, administer, and use. Your extranet can be accessed from anywhere via almost any computer using a reasonably modern browser. Google will store your documents, keep track of your emails, and even give you access to a community of users who can answer your