GAE is free to educational institutions like St. Olaf, so how does Google make money?
Google has three objectives with GAE. First, Google has its roots in education (Stanford University) and wishes to contribute to the educational world by offering its products with no out-of-pocket institutional expense. Second, Google hopes to make lifetime Google users out of all faculty, staff and particularly students. Their hope is that when graduates will continue to use Gmail and its associated products for the rest of their lives and perhaps even bring these products into their future business world. Third, Google’s revenue flow is generated by delivering context-sensitive advertisements to the users of its products (e.g. Gmail and Google). When students graduate and if they choose to continue using Gmail, context-sensitive ads would be delivered to them through the Gmail interface.
