Here’s a simple fact: no matter what the industry, there are few things quite as nice as a lifelong customer. Here’s another: while attending college, students often establish patterns that they’ll follow for the rest of their days. Now, Microsoft and Google seem to be acknowledging both issues as they promote school-oriented software suites.
Google Apps Education Edition and Microsoft Live@edu have been in competition for some time; they’re both meant to be adopted by universities and then satisfy students’ computer-related needs (email, online storage, etc.). The rivalry recently reached a new level, though.
A few days ago, Google offered a free Google Apps Education Edition webinar, and as part of a post on the Official Google Blog, named 15 schools that had started to use it. Today, a post on the Google Student Blog also published a video of students describing how they use the suite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fcK9HqmSP8Microsoft did its part with a press release about universities all over the world adopting Live@edu. The list includes Washington State University, the University of Sydney, Australia, Alexandria University in Egypt, and a whopping 11 universities in Sri Lanka.
It’s hard to declare a winner. Let’s just say that departments within both Google and Microsoft are doing a solid job.
