In the Longhorn state, you take care of things in a big way. That is certainly true for the University of Texas, which is giving out free email for life to 450,000 University of Texas (UT) alumni and the 50,000 student body.

Named UTmail, the GMail, Google Apps for Education service was rolled out to 35,000 current students earlier this year. Now, according to the Google Enterprise blog and a University of Texas post by President Bill Bowers, the service is getting extended to the alumni, too.

Bowers gives three reasons why alumni should switch to the University of Texas email address:

• To show your UT pride. UTmail provides each alumnus with a free “@utexas.edu” address.
• 25 gigabytes of storage – enough to accommodate about 500,000 average emails.
• Better privacy. Bowers says UTmail will provide greater privacy than standard Gmail accounts because UT’s contract with Google is more restrictive regarding commercial data mining.

Services Angle

The University of Texas switched to Google’s GMail service after students banded together to say they wanted a change. The old system just didn’t cut it. So the university switched to a service. Sounds familiar, huh?

Hook em’ Horns!