More Schools To Make Friends With Google?

Google is poised to gain yet another (small) foothold in the American educational system – Georgetown University may adopt the company’s Apps for Education. The college hopes to have a new e-mail system in place by next fall, so the change could take place relatively soon.

More Schools To Make Friends With Google? Google Admits More Colleges To Library Program
Google’s been quite active in the educational community in the past few months. The search engine giant has featured videos from UC Berkeley, sealed a deal with Blackboard, and vastly expanded its Google Books Library Project. The potential arrangement with Georgetown University would fit quite nicely with these recent developments. Also, the search function of the college’s site is already “powered by Google.”

Colleen Nicholson of The Hoya investigated rumors of further Google collaborations. For her article, she interviewed Beth Ann Bergsmark, director of University Information Services. “It’s very interesting but we are in the initial stages of investigation right now,” said Bergsmark.

It seems unlikely that any college would turn down Google’s offering. Nicholson noted that “the new e-mail system is free for schools,” and that, “if implemented, the new Gmail program would increase each student’s mail storage capacity to two gigabytes, or 2,000 megabytes, up from the current GUMail quota of 20 megabytes.”

Some people still have reservations, however. “We have not fully weighed all of the considerations,” said Alexa Kim, executive director of technology services at George Washington University, which is considering a similar switch. “The main concern would be security and privacy,” Kim told Nicholson.

Google tends to earn high marks in those areas, though, so students at both Georgetown University and George Washington University may soon be looking at e-mail systems run by the search engine company.

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