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Yes, but email is a service, football is a service, teaching is a service. I understand the financial argument but I think that we should consider the interests of the student since, eventually, they will migrate to someone who does. I also happen to think that students could have a better academic and social experience when email, class work, campus events and personal calendar are all integrated. It is the difference between preparing students for life rather than just jobs. -----Original Message----- From: Tony Cooke [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2007 8:52 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] Maybe mail.msu.edu should offer sponsored mail I agree that email serves some role in the "branding" of the student experience at MSU. However, the football stadium is something physical, so to complete your analogy, you'd have to compare it to the MSU email SERVERS... While I can imagine students having their photo snapped with arms draped around two 42U racks in cap and gown, it's probably not going to happen. @msu.edu can be hosted externally for the students with the same [branding] effect as current - hosting location is independent, unlike the stadium. About the targeted advertising: Read Bob Kriegel's post where he states "In order to comply with FERPA's privacy regulations Google crawlers don't traverse student e-mail messages and do not display targeted ads to students." Further, I think there's a lot of arm flailing going on about the whole topic without cause since nothing has been presented to the University yet AND the TOS that is presented can vary from what the public gets for a TOS. In fact, I don't believe that anyone has pointed out yet that there's a "Google Apps Education Edition" TOS which differs from the "general public" TOS. To that end, I don't foresee that University would sign an agreement with anyone on such a grand scale without the lawyers reviewing it... What I mean to say here is that the legal pros and cons will be weighed at a different venue, but we can still focus our positive energy on functionality, technical needs, etc... One more point that I'd like to make is in regards the expansion of mail storage and pumping money into the UI\features: These things all cost on a grand scale. As I understand it, the majority of the reason prompting the U to look elsewhere for student email is simply COST - not stability, usage stats, or features. Dumping more money into the system isn't going to help, and in the worst case, it costs the students more money through tuition and fees to support. -Tony __________ NOD32 2502 (20070904) Information __________ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. http://www.eset.com