The Google empire continues to expand, and it wants to conquer college campuses next.
The search engine giant, founded by Larry Page and university alum Sergey Brin, announced yesterday the company will offer its e-mail service, Gmail, to all college students with a .edu e-mail address free of charge.
Although Gmail has always been free, an invitation from another user was necessary before the service could be used. But for university students, that has changed, Debbie Jaffe, group product marketing manager for Google, said in a conference call yesterday.
To make a new account, a student can visit www.google.com/university/gmail and provide his or her name and university e-mail address.
Students will have the opportunity to change their Gmail account settings so the .edu e-mail address will still appear on the recipient’s screen, even though the e-mail is sent through Gmail.
Gmail is known for its storage capabilities – 2.5 gigabytes of space in their inboxes; on average, a laptop has 40 gigabytes of space.
The accounts are also enhanced with Google search technology, which allows users to search within their inboxes for names or terms.
By creating a Gmail account, students can also have access to Google Talk, a client similar to AOL Instant Messenger that allows free phone calls using Voice over IP technology.
Gmail is still in its testing phase and it’s unclear when it will be released to the general public, Jaffe said.
Jaffe said Google will be marketing these products toward students, a first for the company.
“We feel that these particular products are very useful to university students, and frankly, in the past, we haven’t done a ton of marketing,” she said. “Google has marketing programs running that include print ads on campuses, ads on websites such as Facebook and on the Google website itself.”
Google offers its services at no cost to consumers through the use of sponsored links and advertising on its website.
Contact reporter Adam Lewis at lewisdbk@gmail.com.
