Los Angeles to Pay Google $7 Million to Host Gmail Email for 30,000 Los Angeles City Workers - 841 Views, 2 Comments

Summary: The City of Los Angeles will be paying Google $7 million to allow the city to move email hosting for all 30,000 of Los Angeles city workers to Gmail. That's right - what tens of millions get for free, Los Angeles will be paying a cool seven million for. Of course presumably by paying for Gmail premium, they will be getting a few other services, like the ability to call in for tech support during normail business hours.
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The City of Los Angeles will be paying Google $7 million to allow the city to move email hosting for all 30,000 of Los Angeles city workers to Gmail. That’s right - what tens of millions get for free, Los Angeles will be paying a cool seven million for. Of course presumably by paying for Gmail premium, they will be getting a few other services, like the ability to call in for tech support during normail business hours.

In a unanimous vote of 12-0, the Lost Angeles City Council voted last week to let Google’s Gmail take over the task of administrating their email, despite efforts from Microsoft to derail the deal which included their flying executives and other MS advocates to Los Angeles to try to convince the city counsel to give the lucrative contract to them, instead.

Said Los Angeles Councilman Tony Cardenas, “The City of Los Angeles, the second largest city in the nation, made a world-class decision today to support a state-of-the art e-mail system.”

Others weren’t so sure, even though they voted in favour of the move.

“It’s unclear if this is cutting edge, or the edge of a cliff and we’re about to step off,” opined LA Councilman Paul Koretz.

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2 Comments »

I love the dry wit - ability to call in during normal business hours. :-)

Comment by Allen MacCannell — 11/6/2009 @ 8:19 am
The idea that what LA is buying is the same thing Google gives away as GMail is quaint, and coming from Anne it almost counts as deceptive because people take her seriously and she knows better. Google is getting $7M *for the transition* of 30k users from GroupWise, and another $17M for 5 years of service. LA gets support and service guarantees, according to the available journalism product on this story.

Users of Gmail or any other free mail service get nothing very valuable. The valuable parts of a mail service are the ones that require thinking skilled humans to do. Freemail users should note that they have no standing to expect that their service will work to any particular standard, will be understandable, will ever meet any particular need, or even that it will not vanish at any moment.

Comment by Bill Cole — 11/7/2009 @ 8:23 pm