Several friends and I use this service for an online forum to keep in touch and share ideas, and so far it has worked great. True, it is very simple, but it is free and works well for what we do. The handy thing about Google Groups is none of our members ever actually go to the forum site--all of our interaction is carried on through email. Whenever a member emails to the associated group email, it emails everyone else, and when they reply to that email it associates it with the appropriate discussion and sends an email to everyone in reply. Because emails are constantly being sent to everyone, it keeps everyone active in the forum and no one ever has to leave their email to participate. So far I've had no complaints and highly recommend it in a small group setting.