US: Google, Microsoft vie for universities

You can think of it as 'Schoogle', writes John Cox in washingtonpost.com. That would be Google's laid-back but unflinchingly ambitious plan to woo college and university IT departments into outsourcing not just student e-mail but web-based productivity applications and calendaring to the search giant. And a growing number of schools are doing just that. Last week, Google announced that 13 new US institutions had signed up for the free, and ad-free, cloud-based services - bringing the total of 'Googlised' institutions worldwide to 2,000 since the Google Apps Education Edition programme was announced almost two years ago.


Google says there are now a million active users among their students and faculty. To promote the idea, Google also announced it is launching in September the "App to School" road trip, a 10-stop tour, aboard an eco-friendly bus, visiting schools from coast to coast to talk about Google applications and listen to what students have to say about them.

Google is not alone courting both IT departments and, especially, students: Microsoft's presence, with its Microsoft Live online services, makes the courtship a battlefield. Outfitting students with Windows laptops is no longer enough to ensure their loyalty. To meet and hold a new generation that is living on the Web, both companies are turning to a new generation of Web applications.
Full report on the washingtonpost.com site