ANTenna Blog -- Networking & Communications

The last thing I want hanging around is a 10-year-old e-mail, but both Google and Symantec today announced new developments concerning online e-mail archiving.

For it's part, Google simplified the way it prices e-mail archiving (which is handled by the company's Postini unit). Google Message Discovery lets you buy 10 years of e-mail archiving for a flat fee of $45 per user (you can get buy a year for $25 per user). The service also includes security, spam/virus filtering, and easy search and recovery.

Symantec, meanwhile, is spending $695 million to buy on UK-based MessageLabs, which provides SaaS-based e-mail security and message archiving. According to Andrew Conry-Murray at InformationWeek, "while Symantec's Enterprise Vault dominates the software e-mail archive market, it simply wasn't a player in the online space."

But Conry-Murray also points out that MessageLabs doesn't actually own its archiving service. "nstead, it rebrands an offering from Fortiva -- which was acquired earlier this year by Proofpoint."

Nothing is ever simple these days, but this is all about dealing with equally thorny issues like compliance regulations and possible lawsuits. Nevertheless, you've still got to count today as a good day for online e-mail archiving. Even if I still refuse to take responsibility for any email I wrote 10 years ago.