It appears that Microsoft is now targeting colleges from around the world to use their Windows Live Mail service. Microsoft offers colleges these services at no cost to the university and in return the university is getting a well-maintained mail server system. Currently there are 72 universities that have signed on with Microsoft and there are still 200 more that Microsoft is going to pursue.
If a university uses this program it will still be able to keep their domain in the email address (example: someone@university_name.edu). This means that the university will not have to switch to a @hotmail.com or @msn.com in order to use the services.
Google has also been offering similar services to San Jose City College in California and will probably go after other colleges as well. Microsoft’s goal for doing this is to promote the Windows Live services to students all around the world. They are not going to advertise in these email accounts according to their agreements, so they are really trying to get people started on their services while they are young and ‘formable’.
I am currently a student of Iowa State University and while I am not a big fan of our Web Mail services, I don’t think that I would like to use the Windows Live Mail services. I have become too accustomed to GMail and I forward all of my email from my school email address to GMail. I also setup GMail so that I can send emails from my GMail account and make it appear that it is coming from my school’s account.
Overall, if Google was to step into my university and offer their services then I hope they would accept it in a heartbeat. However, I would not be so anxious to see Microsoft step in and take over our email system. I think this is all happening because Microsoft is really starting to get worried because of GMail’s amazing popularity.
News Source: BetaNews
I agree with that you say about them doing this to compete with Google. I’ve not used any MSN email service for a few years now but I didn’t like it when I was using it, and GMail can’t be beaten. All of Microsoft’s latest ‘innovations’ have just been reactions to the growing threat of alternatives to their services – FireFox threatens IE, Winamp threatened Media Player, GMail threatens Hotmail and now Google’s other services threaten MSN. How long before they see a similar threat in another OS?
Microsoft will always do whatever they can to stay on the top, but the they won’t be able to stay on top forever.
-Ryan
windows live mail is soo much nicer than ugly gmail