Google, the Internet search engine that started as two Stanford University students’ research project and became a household name, has launched a campaign to make its services more useful and accessible to college students.
On Sept. 4, Google made accounts for Gmail, its e-mail service, available to anyone with a college or university e-mail account – that is, any e-mail address ending in .edu.
Gmail accounts were previously available only through an invitation by a current Gmail user.
Group Product Marketing Manager for Google Inc. Debbie Jaffe says Gmail accounts work well with school e-mail accounts because school-related e-mail messages can be forwarded to a Gmail account, enabling students to take advantage of Gmail’s storage andsearch capacities.
Because Gmail accounts have more than 2.5 gigabytes of storage space, there is no need to delete old messages. University e-mail accounts currently have 250 megabytes of storage space.
Gmail accounts are now also available to anyone with a mobile phone number in the United States.
All of Google’s user services are offered for free. The company stays afloat through advertising revenue. “Sponsored links” alongside Google search results earn money for Google every time a user clicks on them.
Computer algorithms scan Gmail messages for key words and run sponsored links next to e-mails that correspond with the e-mail’s content. For example, an e-mail from a friend about getting together to make pancakes might pop up with sponsored links about pancake recipes.
These same algorithms help Gmail users search through old e-mail messages.
But privacy is maintained. “No human individuals or third parties ever look at private e-mails,” Jaffe said.
Joe St. Sauver, director of user services and network applications at the University, said that while he uses Gmail only casually, he doesn’t think the sponsored ads generated for e-mail messages make Gmail less secure than any other e-mail service.
People concerned about the security of their e-mail should consider using an encryption client, such as those available at www.GnuPG.org, St. Sauver said. PGP encryption clients can be installed on all computers and used with all e-mail service providers.
Other Google features include Calculator, which allows one to type a mathematical equation into the main search page (www.google.com) and get a numerical result; Google Scholar (scholar.google.com), which searches scholarly journals; and Picasa (picasa.google.com), a computer program that can be downloaded and used to organize photos.

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