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Technology giant Google is set to take over the hosting of Texas A&M student email by the end of the year. Top administrators have signed off on an email outsourcing plan that will ditch the A&M-operated email in favor of Gmail for students and Microsoft Exchange for faculty and staff.

A&M Provost Karan Watson has approved the recommendation of an email committee that met last semester and was headed by Pierce Cantrell, A&M's vice president and associate provost for information.

The overhaul is part of the fallout from a massive $900,000 Information Technology audit concluded last year by Omaha-based Deloitte LLC. A&M estimates the start-up costs for the email switch at about $10,000 and annual expenditures at about $340,000. Comparatively, Cantrell said, the university spends about $1.5 million a year to administer its own email.

Students have access to one gigabyte of email storage now; with Gmail, that space will increase to 30 gigabytes.

Cantrell said the email committee is still in place and will review the changes every few years.