Google offers free cloud credits to university students

Search giant Google said last week that it would give university students free access to some of the software tools available on its cloud computing service, writes Jonathan Vanian for Fortune.

For students to receive access to the cloud services, university computer science faculty and those teaching related courses can apply online. Currently, only US-based faculty members can apply, but Google said people in other countries should soon be able to qualify too. Some of the cloud tools that will be available include Google App Engine for building apps, Google BigQuery for storing and sifting through large amounts of data, and Cloud Machine Learning for detecting patterns across big datasets. Google said students from Carnegie Mellon University and Duke University have been experimenting with some of Google’s cloud tools.

The free credits are one way Google is trying to popularise its burgeoning cloud computing business. If more university students are familiar with Google’s tools, they are more likely to adopt them once they hit the workforce.
Full report on the Fortune site