> no labor/cost overhead associated with maintaining the server systems and software.
There sure is! It's just serviced by Google instead of you, and funded by your students' data instead of money.
There sure is! It's just serviced by Google instead of you, and funded by your students' data instead of money.
Google does not do whatever analysis you're claiming on education accounts, btw. Sure, they may be leveraging education accounts to get other 'paid' contracts, but they. are. not. monetizing. student. data. While I am myself a little bit of a cynic, sometimes it pays to tone down on the cynicism and see things in a slightly more positive light.
>>No. Google doesn’t assume ownership of any customer data in Google Apps for Education core services, and it says so in our contracts (under “Intellectual Property”).<<
> Google Apps for Education services don't collect or use student data for advertising purposes or to create ads profiles.
Which leaves a lot of possible other uses on the table.
The policy keeps saying things like:
>"Google Apps for Education services don't collect or use student data for advertising purposes or to create ads profiles."
Just make me wonder, well if they're only promising not to use it for advertising purposes then what use are they making of it; why isn't it just "will not use student data for any purposes without express and explicit permission"?
They choose not to do this, arguably because they know what sort of reactions that list would evoke.
No it's simply a long play by Google today Microsoft almost has a monopoly in the workplace because of Microsoft office and windows and how people are used to it when they join the workforce.
Later as more people join the workforce having used Google app more corporations will be will to move to it as the cost of retraining will be less.
If Google let's students use Google apps without mining their data today they can mine it later when they are not students and join the workforce as adults. And anyway they are selling Google services to recover the costs.However, leveraging education accounts to get other 'paid' contracts, and exposing their technology, values, and brand to students at an early age is actually has quite a bit of value. It is a profitable long term move, that can have a very big payoff, if they can get people into the walled garden that is google services as early as possible.
The same value that's currently going to google doesn't necessarily get instantly more palatable in Canonical's hands, but if I were to give a student something to learn on (on which they could quite possibly discovery programming, or systems administration), I'd give them the less-locked-down Ubuntu.
This strategy seems like it leaves less of an avenue to create software, than just consume it (from the web).
Attendance records could be very valuable. If I can determine trends in what days you attend school, which classes you attend, and with which frequency, I might be able to create an even more specific advertising audience to sell to ad publishers. "high school students who showed affinity for Cooking class" (assuming most high schools even offer a home ec/cooking class) might be a very compelling ad segment to some up-and-coming social baking app or something.