SharePoint is a great tool, but without knowing what you are trying to
accomplish, it's going to be hard to give any advice. Please give some more
details, and we can give you some guidance.

In addition to the details on what you are doing, has you boss indicated why?
Beyond the pricetag (and nothing is truly free), are there things with
SharePoint he does not like that lead him to think about dumping it?

Well, I think Father (he is a priest; I am a Catholic religious brother...) is
just thinking about cost. Our sharepoint site costs about $700 per year. I
have done a lot of research on the subject, and am convinced that sharepoint is
the way to go. It is much more professional, versatile and private. We have
had our sharepoint site (hosted) for a year now. Right now it serves up
official documents and announcements and a calendar for the priests in our order
throughout the country (about 100 people all together). I can foresee that we
might also use it for the submission of financial and legal reports as well.
Father doesn't seem to see past our immediate needs, but I am thinking more of a
long-term vision. Our hosted SS is managed by a private company, so they would
not log our info like the Big G would. The only advantage I can see to using
Google is that it is free and self-integrated. But I have also seen where a
user can get his account blocked by actions on other G-related places (such as
youtube) and then he couldn't access any other G-related sites! That in itself,
in my opinion, is enough to deter the thought!

I know this is a SharePoint group, but I have recommended Live Workspace for a
few clients. They essentially wanted something plain and simple to use.
http://workspace.officelive.com/en-us/

So it sounds to me like sharepoint is underutilized. If not, present its value.

On the flip side, are you fore-seeing its unused value and have you
communicated/demonstrated it?

Is this just a matter of getting on the same page with the boss, dept
heads, etc. In other words, sharepoint out of the box can paralyze
folks. Its a fulltime job just to match its potential to real needs.

There is no real comparison to gmail. Two different products. So maybe
gmail can compliment sharepoint in some way. If you move your
documents happily to gmail and the company doesn't know the difference
- then I'd wonder if you really needed sharepoint in the first place.

Details are king. Let us know what you find.

I think about SharePoint in the following terms (YMMV):

SharePoint at its core is web-based file sharing. Conventional LAN file
shares have some major drawbacks: you have to be on the LAN to access them,
and it's difficult to include and utilize metadata. and. SharePoint began
by addressing these two issues. [Today's SharePoint also includes document
management features like global search and workflow.]

If you ask, "Why do people share files?", the short answer is, "They're
collaborating". So SharePoint includes collaboration features like
check-out/check-in, announcements, calendars, and discussions. This is the
basis of the "teamsites".

It is common in today's project-oriented workplace for people to work on
several project teams. Some integrated view of multiple teamsites is
needed, so SharePoint includes portal features like MySite. [Today's
SharePoint also includes "social" features like "Colleague Tracker".]

Now that SharePoint is collecting all those eyeballs, it becomes attractive
as a business application platform. Data views, Business Data Connector,
Key Performance Indicators, and so on follow.

With so much web-based business function co-located on the SharePoint
platform, it is also attractive to integrate content management; hence the
Publishing feature.

So you can consider SharePoint an integrated suite of web-based applications
for file sharing, collaboration, business information, and publishing. If
all you need is file-sharing, there are simpler alternatives.

Alex is exactly right: details are king. The problem is that the details
of the work that people need to do are often hidden from the person who
makes the decisions about what platform they will use.