First of all, we're talking about YALE UNIVERSITY. They have no cashflow problems.
Whether you have cashflow problems or not, a penny saved is a penny earned.
> It reduces power consumption, thus reducing monthly costs and > increasing eco-friendliness.
Also baloney. Running a few email servers is not a significant cost, especially when you consider how many people can simultaneously use one system. Also, Google is a massive power consumer, so the eco-friendliness of moving the draw from one place to another is nonsense.
Again, it may not be a large cost, but it's still a *cost*. Include maintenance, backups, air conditioning, etc.
Companies like Google work hard at energy efficiency because a 0.5% reduction in their electricity bill is significant to them. They work on things like passive cooling, more efficient algorithms, putting datacentres in cold places, recycling waste heat, etc. Yale's IT dept could not do any of this.
> It makes the lives of sysadmins easier.
Also baloney. I can make your life easier by removing your responsibilities, if you like. If I do that enough, I can remove the hassle of paying you as well.
While this is true, I hope you can see how it's attractive to Yale as a business, to have fewer sysadmins to pay.
Well, the difference is that my ISP main source of income isn't indexing my behavior.
I could go the way of many of the Google bashers, and say "how do you know?".
Lots of people are insisting that Google does all sorts of stuff with your data, despite them explicitly denying it, because apparently lying in a contract is a risk Google would take.
So, why would your ISP *not* sell information gleaned from the email it sees you sending? Presumably the same reason Google won't - because it says it won't.
"An independent third party auditor issued Google Apps an unqualified SAS70 Type II certification. Google is proud to provide Google Apps administrators the peace of mind knowing that their data is secure under the SAS70 auditing industry standard."
I don't know why they don't name the company that did the audit. If you were buying Google Apps, I guess you'd ask them.
Subjective. I had my own mail server. I ditched it years ago for GMail, because in my own subjective view there wasn't an SMTP/POP/IMAP client with as useful a user interface.
Maybe nowadays there are better local mail applications available - but I have absolutely no complaints about GMail from a usability perspective.
I think you misunderstand what a monopoly is. Or you're being wilfully broad with the word.
There is nothing to stop anyone else offering a competing service. To be able to offer it free, they'd probably need to be another giant corporation - but MS, Yahoo, IBM could all do this if they wanted to.
Google's reasons for offering Google Apps for Education as a free service are their own. But we can guess.
1: Many university students are going to become high fliers in business. Giving them warm-and-fuzzy feelings about Google Apps is building the long term market for Google Apps.
2: Education is a "good cause". Maybe someone in Google just likes the idea of helping good causes. Or more cynically, it's good PR.
It includes requests for more information on such things as where the data is going to be stored, why Google is 'generously' providing this service free of charge and without advertisements (i.e., how much privacy/rights do you have with your e-mails)
Besides, it's a deplorable state of affairs when a university can't muster the resources to at least operate an on-site forwarding mail server.
According to TFA, it's going to save 12GB of on site storage per student. If I was a university IT manager and a corporation offered me that *for free*, I'd bite their hand off.
Whoever you are, why spend money when there's an alternative?
Though some of those are relevant too, the important point about the Apple devices is not so much that they support H.264, but that they don't support anything else (at least, nothing else relevant to the Web)
Outside of the Web, I care less. The Web is meant to be somewhere where creating/publishing is free to all (ignoring physical hosting costs).
I was thinking that maybe the stuff posted to Google Video was encoded in Theora and it gets cross-posted to YouTube, while the stuff posted directly to YouTube gets encoded in H.264, but thats just a guess
To support Safari, you have to use H.264 (OK, you can add Theora support to Quicktime, but let's assume very few users do this, and nobody wants to be the arsehole site that forces them to do so) To support Mobile Safari, you have to use H.264 To support Firefox, you have to use Theora. (hence YouTube currently doesn't support HTML5 for Firefox) Chrome handles both formats. Opera: definitely handles Theora, not sure about H.264
To be viewable in all HTML5 browsers, you're going to have to encode twice. The Theora encoding/streaming is going to be free. The H.264 encoding/streaming is going to be gratis until 2016. But once you've started, it's going to be awfully difficult to stop.
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First of all, we're talking about YALE UNIVERSITY. They have no cashflow problems.
Whether you have cashflow problems or not, a penny saved is a penny earned.
> It reduces power consumption, thus reducing monthly costs and
> increasing eco-friendliness.
Also baloney. Running a few email servers is not a significant cost, especially when you consider how many people can simultaneously use one system. Also, Google is a massive power consumer, so the eco-friendliness of moving the draw from one place to another is nonsense.
Again, it may not be a large cost, but it's still a *cost*. Include maintenance, backups, air conditioning, etc.
Companies like Google work hard at energy efficiency because a 0.5% reduction in their electricity bill is significant to them. They work on things like passive cooling, more efficient algorithms, putting datacentres in cold places, recycling waste heat, etc. Yale's IT dept could not do any of this.
> It makes the lives of sysadmins easier.
Also baloney. I can make your life easier by removing your responsibilities, if you like.
If I do that enough, I can remove the hassle of paying you as well.
While this is true, I hope you can see how it's attractive to Yale as a business, to have fewer sysadmins to pay.
Cooking a burger is not that hard, either. But millions of people are happy to outsource it.
In this case, they're getting the outsourcing for free, too.
Well, the difference is that my ISP main source of income isn't indexing my behavior.
I could go the way of many of the Google bashers, and say "how do you know?".
Lots of people are insisting that Google does all sorts of stuff with your data, despite them explicitly denying it, because apparently lying in a contract is a risk Google would take.
So, why would your ISP *not* sell information gleaned from the email it sees you sending? Presumably the same reason Google won't - because it says it won't.
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138340
"An independent third party auditor issued Google Apps an unqualified SAS70 Type II certification. Google is proud to provide Google Apps administrators the peace of mind knowing that their data is secure under the SAS70 auditing industry standard."
I don't know why they don't name the company that did the audit. If you were buying Google Apps, I guess you'd ask them.
GMail is a horrible bodge [...]
Subjective. I had my own mail server. I ditched it years ago for GMail, because in my own subjective view there wasn't an SMTP/POP/IMAP client with as useful a user interface.
Maybe nowadays there are better local mail applications available - but I have absolutely no complaints about GMail from a usability perspective.
Also, I'm curious as to what point you think you're making by repeatedly using my name. I am knowingly and deliberately not anonymous.
Neither have I personally audited anything about my bank, Anonymous Coward. Yet I still trust it with all my money.
GOOGLE READS YOUR EMAIL. When you sign up with google, you AGREE TO LET THEM DO IT FOR FUN AND PROFIT.
For any reasonable definition of "read" this is simply not true.
They have a privacy policy. http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html
I guess some people are really bothered that a robot picks some keywords out of your mail and updates some stats. I'm not in the least.
As opposed to now, when your choices for email are 1) Yale's in-house email 2) n/a
Except that in both cases, there's nothing to stop you using any of the other webmail services, either free or paid.
If you're just going to assume everyone is lying, then you'd better never buy anything from anyone.
It's pretty easy to create a robust mail server cluster.
It's significantly more difficult to do it at the price Google is offering.
You think Yale wouldn't give data off their own on-site servers to the NSA, if they came waving court orders?
I think you misunderstand what a monopoly is. Or you're being wilfully broad with the word.
There is nothing to stop anyone else offering a competing service. To be able to offer it free, they'd probably need to be another giant corporation - but MS, Yahoo, IBM could all do this if they wanted to.
There is no lock-in on Google's side.
They mine it for ad targeting. And that's all.
I think the main things they get out of it is PR, and graduates with a positive experience of Google Apps.
If only the service came with some sort of assurances about privacy.
Oh, here they are:
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60762
You're just making up what Google does with that data.
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60762
... and on "why offer it for free".
Google's reasons for offering Google Apps for Education as a free service are their own. But we can guess.
1: Many university students are going to become high fliers in business. Giving them warm-and-fuzzy feelings about Google Apps is building the long term market for Google Apps.
2: Education is a "good cause". Maybe someone in Google just likes the idea of helping good causes. Or more cynically, it's good PR.
It includes requests for more information on such things as where the data is going to be stored, why Google is 'generously' providing this service free of charge and without advertisements (i.e., how much privacy/rights do you have with your e-mails)
Privacy concerns for Google apps in general are addressed here:
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60762
It always amazes me when people talk as if people are Google are casually browsing through your email, gossiping about your personal secrets.
Anyone ignorant of the possible problems of things like this need to become educated.
Go on, give us a few. Avoid ones that are easily mitigated.
Besides, it's a deplorable state of affairs when a university can't muster the resources to at least operate an on-site forwarding mail server.
According to TFA, it's going to save 12GB of on site storage per student. If I was a university IT manager and a corporation offered me that *for free*, I'd bite their hand off.
Whoever you are, why spend money when there's an alternative?
If they've achieved an onscreen keyboard that isn't horrible to use, they should be crowing about it more, because it would be a big achievement.
What was that RMS was saying again?
Don't bring attention to RMS's pragmatism. It confuses those who prefer to think of him as a hippy.
You need the Readability bookmarklet.
Though some of those are relevant too, the important point about the Apple devices is not so much that they support H.264, but that they don't support anything else (at least, nothing else relevant to the Web)
Outside of the Web, I care less. The Web is meant to be somewhere where creating/publishing is free to all (ignoring physical hosting costs).
I was thinking that maybe the stuff posted to Google Video was encoded in Theora and it gets cross-posted to YouTube, while the stuff posted directly to YouTube gets encoded in H.264, but thats just a guess
Don't guess. In HTML5:
To support Safari, you have to use H.264 (OK, you can add Theora support to Quicktime, but let's assume very few users do this, and nobody wants to be the arsehole site that forces them to do so)
To support Mobile Safari, you have to use H.264
To support Firefox, you have to use Theora. (hence YouTube currently doesn't support HTML5 for Firefox)
Chrome handles both formats.
Opera: definitely handles Theora, not sure about H.264
To be viewable in all HTML5 browsers, you're going to have to encode twice. The Theora encoding/streaming is going to be free. The H.264 encoding/streaming is going to be gratis until 2016. But once you've started, it's going to be awfully difficult to stop.