FAS Explores New E-mail Options

Starting next semester, students could find the size of their e-mail storage space multiplied by a factor of nearly twenty, as the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) considers launching a pilot program to outsource undergraduates’ e-mail to an external provider.

Following this fall’s successful launch of Google mail accounts for new students at the Graduate School of Design (GSD), FAS Information Technology (IT) has begun exploring the possibility of a similar pilot program for students in the College.

As with the GSD system, the domain name of students’ e-mail addresses—fas.harvard.edu—would remain the same, although a third-party service would supply the storage space, interface, and all else an e-mail account entails.

To this end, a survey carried out by FAS IT last week polled undergraduates about the features they value most in an e-mail service.

“We’re considering a lot of different options. Gmail is obviously very attractive, but it’s not the only thing out there,” said Noah S. Selsby, a client technology advisor for FAS IT.

The popular Gmail service—offering a range of features including fast searching, integrated instant messaging, and a “conversation view” that groups related e-mails—is an appealing option for students.

Although Harvard has yet to release the results of last week’s questionnaire, Selsby said that what he has seen so far demonstrates that students’ main concerns are the Web interface and storage space. Currently, the storage capacity of FAS e-mail accounts is limited to 100 megabytes, as opposed to the two gigabytes provided by the GSD’s Gmail service.

“The storage capacity of our Webmail is awful. I get everything forwarded to Gmail,” Polina Krass ’11 said.

Gmail is not the only option FAS IT is currently exploring. Yahoo, Microsoft’s “Windows Live @edu,” and other smaller groups are also in the running.

Should Google ultimately seal the deal, some of the company’s other products that are integrated with Gmail, such as instant messaging and Google Calendar, may not be available to undergraduates.

Still, students do not appear discouraged by this possibility.

“We don’t have a chat anyways, so [Gmail] would still be an improvement,” Alexander N. Barrett ’11 said. “I think that people have IMing capacity and calendar capacity through other programs.”

Although outsourcing to Google or Microsoft would be free, cost does not appear to be a significant factor. In fact, many of the alternatives under consideration are not free.

“The take-home is that we aren’t doing this to cut costs, but rather to deliver something the users want. Gmail just happens to be free,” Selsby said.