

Berkeley Explains Why Google Trumps Microsoft - nextparadigms
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/12/berkeley-google-docs-microsoft/

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quanticle
>But when you consider the university’s efforts to accommodate what students
and faculty are already using — and its ultimate choice of Google — it raises
a larger question. Why do schools even provide an email account anyway? Gmail
and most web-based clients are free. Schools — especially state school
strapped for funding — could save on huge infrastructure costs by cutting the
email systems and just letting student use their own accounts.

Why? Verifiability, that's why. Students still use the "I didn't get the
e-mail" excuse. Having a University controlled mail system allows
administrators to see that the message went out _and_ that it arrived at
destination.

When I confirmed the forwarding between my University e-mail and my GMail
account, I had to click past a very stern warning saying that I was now
responsible for my own e-mail and it would be my responsibility to ensure that
my e-mail address was up-to-date and that official university correspondence
was still getting through. In other words, I couldn't use the "I didn't get
the e-mail" excuse, even when the email _actually_ never arrived. I never had
any issues, but I don't know if that was just because I was lucky.

We have to remember that e-mail is not a reliable protocol. Mail delivery can
fail for any one of a number of reasons. If you're using e-mail to convey
financial information (like billing reminders or due dates), you have to take
that into account. Having both mailboxes under your control allows you to add
a layer of verification on top of SMTP.

~~~
spot
yea this really jumped out at me. it's not just to verify receipt, it's all
kinds of control (eg going into a box and deleting a message). the journalist
is blindingly ignorant of the domain. i guess they were just desperate to
provide some kind of insight of their own at the end.

~~~
georgemcbay
Isn't this a bit circular? You need a controlled university email system... so
that you have control over it?

If users were expected to get by using their own email addresses, there'd
never be a reason to go in and delete a message for them.

The author's musing about why the university even needs to run an email system
is more valid than I think either of you above are giving credit for (I think
the verify-ability issue is also overblown.. university students should be
held to a personal responsibility standard where you don't need technical
'verify-ability'... these aren't high school students).

However, I can think of at least one area where not providing an official
school email address would become a problem -- many student educational
discount programs require an .edu address.

~~~
quanticle
>university students should be held to a personal responsibility standard
where you don't need technical 'verify-ability'... these aren't high school
students).

Fair enough. But, in my experience, "my" generation doesn't know any more
about computers than their grandmothers. In theory, you could insist that they
be responsible for their own e-mail. In practice it'd be a disaster. Even if
the e-mail system were perfect, messages would still get lost. Messages would
still get accidentally deleted. Having an e-mail system under university
control means that mistakes can be undone by the central helpdesk as well as
the user.

Another issue with allowing personal e-mail is archiving. If the university is
under legal obligation to archive emails, it's much simpler to have a central
e-mail system that all messages pass through. That way, there's no legal
liability resulting from messages not being archived properly.

------
WalterGR
Also see the HN post "UC Berkeley chooses Google apps over office 365 based on
this analysis (berkeley.edu)"

164 points by davidacoder 4 days ago | 57 comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3380527>

