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U of Texas Offers Free Lifetime E-Mail to 450,000 Alumni

University of Texas at Austin is offering lifetime e-mail to its alumni at no charge. The Gmail-powered e-mail accounts--named UTmail--were rolled out this past spring to 35,000 existing students. UT extended the service to their more than 450,000 alumni as a way to keep them connected to the university.

All UT Mail users receive a free "@utexas.edu" address, 25 GB of storage--the equivalent to roughly 500,000 average e-mails--and enhanced privacy features, including restricted commercial data mining. UTmail, unlike standard Google Gmail, is not processed by Google's advertising system, so messages are delivered in an ad-free environment.

UT characterized this move as a way to endorse its brand among its extensive alumni base. The university is working with Texes Exes, a UT alumni network, to promote the new e-mail service.

"Our alumni love now having a UT e-mail address for life," said Leslie Cedar, CEO of Texas Exes, in a prepared statement. "The fact that it is powered by Google with its awesome search engine and suite of cloud-based office applications makes it even better. Also, the UTmail version of Gmail gives us more capacity and security than the consumer version of Gmail."

With the move, UT joins a growing number of institutions across the globe that are moving their e-mail services to Google. The university is offering UTmail free of charge and will not receive any revenue for this service.

About the Author

Kanoe Namahoe is online editor for 1105 Media's Education Group. She can be reached at [email protected].

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