[FC-discuss] Yale switching to Google Apps / Gmail

[Gavin Baker]

Adi Kamdar wrote:
> Hey folks,
> 
> The Yale Daily News ran an article today about how there's 
> almost-definite talk about Yale switching to Google Apps for Education 
> and using Google servers/software to host our email.
> 
> http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/university-news/2010/02/09/google-run-yale-e-mail/
> 
> I was wondering if you guys had any thoughts or good literature on the 
> issues with this (re privacy, data, costs, security, tech, law, etc.). 
> For the most part, the students are overjoyed about this since our old 
> email system is painful to use, so it'd be nice to address usability 
> issues as well.

This was also under discussion at UF when I was there, and is a hot 
topic among the higher ed IT crowd in general. There were similar 
dynamics to the discussion: a lot of students familiar with Gmail 
interface and unhappy with the occasional issues of the local service.

Background reading:
http://www.educause.edu/Resources/Browse/Cloud%20Computing/27148
http://autonomo.us/

As others on the list have expressed, it's hard to draw an unambiguous 
conclusion about this development. I do think it's worthwhile for 
students to articulate their free culture concerns in this area, though. 
Regardless of who hosts it, students' email should have strong privacy 
protection, should be managed by free software, should follow open 
standards, and should be accessible regardless of disability.

-- 
Gavin Baker
http://www.gavinbaker.com/
gavin at gavinbaker.com

It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.
     Yogi Berra (attributed)