Most of us have groups of people that we need to communicate with on a regular basis, share pictures, collaborate on documents or share opinions. The group could be a committee who is putting on a fundraiser, a board for a nonprofit or your relatives who want to stay in contact. If you are like me, it becomes frustrating trying to weed through the emails, keep track of the latest document version or remember who is in the group.   Yahoo and Google offer free solutions for groups to communicate more effectively. (Note: There are other solutions available outside of Yahoo and Google to solve this problem. Let me know what you use.)    I provide a table below that lays out key functionality available at both of these sites.

Function	groups.yahoo.com	groups.google.com
Members You can set the group up to be private or public. If it is private, then no members can be added until a moderator adds them.   If the group is set as private, then only those people who are members can read the files.	Your members will need to add a yahoo id to have full access to the group. They now have a feature where you can directly add members. The primary way to have members added to a group is for them to reply to an email that is sent to them.	Google requires an id, but you can use your personal email address as your Google id. This eliminates another id you need to remember. It is easier to add members rather than inviting them to join.
Group Email address: Both sites provide the group with one email address. This allows members to send an email to the group email address and every member receives the email. The downside is when someone replies to a message it automatically goes to everyone in the group.	Yes	Yes
Messages/Discussions: Every message sent to the group is archived and available for the group to read. This allows you to see the discussion that has occurred with the message without cluttering up your mailbox and trying to figure out what was said.	Yes	Yes
Files	Yes, plus allows you to create folders to organize files. Yahoo has an option to notify the group when a new file is uploaded.	Yes, but does not allow for folders to be created for improved organization.   Google doesn’t have an option to notify the group of the new file.
Photos	Yes, there is a photo album option.	Although there isn’t a Photo Album option, you can create a Page that is a photo album.
Pages (Web Pages)	No	Yes. You are able to edit the HTML and publish a single page to the web (non- members can see the page). You also have the option to notify members when a new page is created.
Links (create a list of recommended websites for the group)	Yes	Although there isn’t a specific option for Links, you can create a Links Page and publish.
Database (tables)	Yes. Yahoo has several templates for you to select from for a database. They are:  Class Assignments Simple Phone Book Complete Phonebook Music CD Library FAQ Recipes Orders Inventory Contact List	No.
Polls	Yes. This is a great feature for groups who need to vote on a regular basis. With one of my groups, we publish the meeting minutes as a file and post a poll to approve the minutes. This allows us to get minutes published quicker to all members (we only meet monthly).	No.
Calendar	Yes.	You can create a Google Calendar for the group, but is not a direct link in Google.