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I cringe at the thought that Google would be hosting our email. While they have a great interface (and a pretty well defined spam-catcher), they are an off-site corporation with no responsibility to our university. Their privacy policy differs SIGNIFICANTLY from our privacy statement and AUP. We have very talented staff here, whom can either create their own solution, or procure one that is run and owned by the university. Personally, I find the current solution very hard to use, but I realize that it was a huge step forward from the elm solution we were using at the time. There are lots of new technologies that can be explored to create a new front-end to our email solution: AJAX, Flex, etc. There are lots of varieties of front-end solutions that exist out there that can be modeled after: GMail, Yahoo, Outlook Web Access, MailEnable, and SmarterMail come to mind. As far as your last question of allowing some students to use gMail, while others keep the existing system, that is possible today. All students / staff need to do is do a mail-forward to their gmail account. I know lots of people whom are doing it today with good results. -Nick Kwiatkowski MSU Telecom Systems -----Original Message----- From: MSU Network Administrators Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter J Murray Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2007 11:03 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [MSUNAG] google wants msu.edu? Did anyone else see the half page ad in the State News today (bottom half, page 7A)? Google is asking students to take a survey at http://www.google.com/studentsurvey In the interest of science, I'm posting the questions asked below. How satisfied are you with your school's current email system, compared to other systems you've used (like your personal mail)? What would you like to change about your school's current email system? (choose up to three) I would prefer to use Gmail, Google Talk and Google Calendar instead of my school's current systems? What's the primary way that Gmail, Google Talk and Google Calendar could be better than your school's current systems? Do you have a Gmail account? How satisfied are you with Gmail? Once you've completed the short survey, it says you can click through to see how the other students voted. Is this something the university asked Google to do, or is Google trying to do an end run around the University? Also, is there any plans to increase quota/space and speed with MSU, or is this the first step into having Google host MSU email? What do other NAGers think of the prospect of Google hosting MSU email? Would MSU consider letting students migrate their accounts over (but maintain the current system for those who want to stay with MSU run equipment?)