About 3 years ago, I pushed for my college to adopt Google Apps. We were on an antiquated system that was falling apart and Google Apps seemed like the best alt

About 3 years ago, I pushed for my college to adopt Google Apps. We were on an antiquated system that was falling apart and Google Apps seemed like the best alternative (not to mention, it was free). Unfortunately, this beneficial student government iniatiative became a bureaucratic quagmire. I was the sole student representative on the university committee that had to ultimately decide the future of our email system and had to go toe-to-toe with the university's ADA person (don't remember her title, but that was her main job duty). While I absolutely sympathize and recognize that email should be accessible to all, this single feature became the one deciding factor between Google Apps and Microsoft Live@Edu. The committee literally favored Google Apps on almost every point of comparison (storage space, mobile access, attachment size, in-line attachments, search, built-in IM), but Live@Edu won out because of its accessibility features. What were these fabled accessibility features, you ask? Just 2 main ones that I remember: a "low-contrast" mostly-black-and-white version of the main client and an antiquated static HTML version of Outlook Web Mail (which also happened to be the primary client in every browser other than IE at the time). Of course, the committee ignored the fact that Gmail also supported this type of feature degradation by simply using an IMAP client. The fact of the matter was that both Google Apps and Microsoft Live@Edu would've been an improvement over the university's old email system (which apparently was accessible enough for more than a decade), but the students' overwhelming preference (90%+), Google Apps, was vetoed because it wasn't "as good" as Microsoft Live@Edu on the accessibility front. Going back to the OP, I wonder if NYU and Northwestern are in the same situation. Is Google Apps still an improvement over whatever they're currently running or is this more of a Microsoft v. Google proxy war?