Feel free to reach out to me via email (jaisen@). I imagine you're hitting the same pain points that many of the customers I've talked to over the last few months are. Hopefully what we're working on will address them and it's not too late.
Stray dog is an accurate description. Groups has not received the updates needed for use in enterprises but it's a current focus area for us (for reasons you mentioned).
Mentioned elsewhere, but Groups is a core part of their business offering. It's how lists and permissions get set up in lots of orgs using Google for enterprise email, docs, etc. View it as an extension of that and you can understand why consumer facing features seem stagnant.
Easier to manage and more secure fall generally end up falling into the same bucket.
We're working on ways to ensure that a group contains the people you expect it to have. Sounds like a no-brainer but this is one of the most common pain points we hear from customers.
Secondly, there's a slew of group settings exposed through groups.google.com which are not exposed elsewhere (Admin console, APIs). We're working on improving that which will help users know what a group's settings are across all the groups surfaces (groups.google.com, Admin console, APIs).
This. So you're highlighting what I feel and see. The need to manage small groups in a singular way. Maybe that's not even worth it but it's all spread across different platforms. I don't really know if a bridge for them all in one place is useful or whether it's just about having the one place to have these private groups.
This is such an important point. I'm living with a generic "group" feature in a SaaS app and it's a nightmare. It's been used by numerous clients for totally different things. These are the weeds that will choke your garden.
This stems from the origin of Google Groups as the OP mentioned. It’s definitely not ideal but we are actively working on making groups more suitable for the various enterprise/business scenarios they are being used for.
(I’m a PM @ Google working on some of these efforts)
GroupMe is still extensively used at universities. I only know a few undergrads who prefer to use it, but most seem to use it as a compromise. I personally hate its UI.
How about group email on demand? Setting up a group takes a few seconds, so does exiting or blocking. Ever imagine doing that with yahoo groups? I have some permanent groups but we have created and dropped so many need based groups. No need to accept the group by logging in here and clicking this and so on.
http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=135
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