Google Hosted Email
March 8th, 2007
Breaking news on Silicon Republic -
08.03.2007 - Trinity College Dublin (TCD) has become the first university in Europe to introduce Google’s email service Gmail for its students. While the email will retain the TCD.ie domain, the mail system will use Gmail’s technology such as anti-spam and search features.
TCD’s conversion to Gmail will occur over the next few months and the transition is expected to be completed by October.“We are very excited to be partnering with an august and progressive college such as Trinity on this project,� said Google’s European director of online sales and operations John Herlihy.
…
“Through this innovative alliance with a technology leader such as Google, Trinity College will be able to provide technology and service of a very high quality to all its students and future graduates,� commented TCD provost Dr John Hegarty.“As the first Irish university and European university in this domain, Trinity College aims to meet the growing technological needs of all our students with the advanced communication tools which Google can provide in this unique collaboration.
“It’s refreshing to think that a 400-year old institution such as Trinity can engage as a successful early technology adopter,� Dr Hegarty mused.
Perhaps TCD provost Dr. Hegarty should muse about the fact that we set this up in Griffith College 8 months ago. While the service was in beta at the time, with a max of 5,000 accounts, it was enough to cover our first year students who have been using it happily all this time. But as the old adage says, never let the facts get in the way of a good back-patting!
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March 8th, 2007 at 19:34 pm
Oops! Well spotted.
I would have mixed feelings about letting Google into an organisation but a college wouldn’t have as much need (I think?) for confidentiality. Not that I don’t trust Google, I just don’t trust Google :). They really are going to have their hands in everything on the web in the future, or at least buy it up!
March 8th, 2007 at 19:59 pm
Indeed - I’m fond of the whole Google Free Zone thing, but Google Apps is so handy…
March 9th, 2007 at 18:24 pm
Hey James and James’ readers:
Saw the post about Google’s hosted mail. Don’t know if you’d be interested in the more geeky aspects of hosted vs. in-house messaging, but I’m an editor working on behalf of Microsoft to manage the development of a commissioned whitepaper about hosted messaging entitled “The Advantages of a Hosted Messaging Security Solution” by Osterman Research.
The whitepaper has been posted online as a wiki ( http://www.mehsreport.com/ - Head over there and you’ll see my photo.
) and it argues that paying a hosting company to manage your messaging costs less or the same as if you were to build and manage your own messaging system.
The whitepaper is highly opinionated and bases its pro-hosting argument on its belief that the last year has been a critical year for messaging and that it’s only going to get worse from here on in.
You can check out the discussion section of the Executive Summary of the wiki to see where else people are discussing this topic (http://www.mehsreport.com/wiki/Talk:Executive_Summary).
If you’re interested, please throw in your two cents in the discussion.
David
March 13th, 2007 at 17:26 pm
*cough* Patriot Act *cough*
Hosted mail - bfd only coz it’s google. I suppose it saves on bandwidth for bebo.
March 16th, 2007 at 10:11 am
saucer of milk, etc.
The fact it claims is “Trinity College Dublin (TCD) has become the first _university_ in Europe….”. GCD having it earlier doesn’t contradict that at all.
Google’s PR people are looking for a nice sound-byte and a partnership with the most prestigious university in Ireland makes a rather better one than a freebie beta test with a small private college almost nobody’s heard of.
You’d have to remind the provost of TCD who or what GCD is before he could muse about anything.
March 16th, 2007 at 10:53 am
You’re right of course GMc - I did notice that qualification which validates the article. It would still be valid if every third level College and Institute of Technology in the country has been using the system for decades, but as breaking news on Silicon Republic and elsewhere, you must see where the saucer of milk comes in.
It reminds me far too much of Eircom and their self-congratulations over the years - “we rank 1st in the world for broadband availability (*cough* only including countries which have prime ministers called Bertie)”.
Incidentally, the ‘freebie beta test’ is the same as the Education Edition of Google Apps - 2gb accounts and its all free. Perhaps I’m just not a fan of PR news-bytes calling a hand trowel a spade.