7 gigabytes was nice, but Live@Edu offered 10 gigabytes. And a 25GB SkyDrive. For free. I’m talking about email storage, of course, and Google announced today that it was increasing the sizes of its educational customers’ inboxes to a full 25 gigs. This matches their offerings in Google Apps for Business (their premium, paid version of Google Apps) and puts them well beyond the limits of Office 365 for Education.
According to the Google Enterprise blog,
Starting next week, new schools that migrate to Google Apps for Education will see 25GB mailboxes. Existing customers will see their mailboxes grow over the course of the next few weeks.
Although this is a nice move from Google, especially for schools migrating from large Exchange or Lotus Notes implementations, most people don’t tend to hit their email quotas. Where they do often hit their limits is within Google Docs storage, which remains at a mere 1GB (more can be purchased, but the beauty of Google Apps for Education is the robust set of services offered for free). I have to hand this one to Microsoft - If organizations (or even individual users) truly embrace the cloud, then they shouldn’t need to have Box.net accounts for additional free cloud-based storage. One cloud to rule them all, right?
Perhaps the bigger news is Google’s announcement of 25 additional marquee schools and districts who have adopted Google Apps for Education. The new users range from Boston Public Schools to the NYU Stern School of Business to the University of Maryland.
The battle for the educational enterprise continues. Fortunately, as usual, it’s the schools and colleges who benefit.