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Comment by young_unixer | Hacker News Reader

> The most successful colonizer has been Google. A recent report indicates that Google’s G-Suite for Education is being used by half the teachers and students in the U.S.

Are you fucking kidding me?

The most successful "colonizer" has always been Microsoft! In most schools around the world the PCs are running Windows exclusively and you are taught how to use Microsoft Office tools.

The influence and vendor lock-in Microsoft have had in the education sphere during the last 2-3 decades is much bigger than whatever Google is doing now.

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That absolutely was true, but today Google reigns supreme, at least in New Jersey. Almost all class laptops are chromebooks, and the low end models are so cheap that it actually isn't crazy at all to hand them out to every student. G-Suite, especially Google Docs has completely supplanted Microsoft products. Few middle- or high-schoolers ever touch them.

I've already read people complaining that kids leave school without knowing how to use a "real computer", meaning Windows.

This was the same complaint people had when Macs were in schools.

Egh, well, I'm a Linux user and software developer, and I've had one job that forced me use a Mac but none that forced me to use Windows.

You're not most people: most people will work in environments that use Windows PCs. I've worked a bunch of office jobs, and every one has used Windows.

Yeah, true. Everything's Windows, so if you expect schools to teach computing in the sense of "... and then you click this button" I suppose they have a point.

I'm just really happy I've never had to use Windows.

That's not colonization. That's just offering a good, low-cost product.

In my school Google Docs caught on because students opted to use them for collaboration. Then teachers caught on. Then the school caught on. Google was successful by first winning the users rather than selling to the school directly (though that has changed with Chromebooks)

Oh absolutely, I was just responding to the idea that Microsoft is completely dominant in education and always will be. Google is offering a service that works, and solves a lot of problems with integrating education and technology.

Ah - yes now I re-read I see it. Thanks!

Same in NY. And it's fine. The primary underlying technology is G Suite, not search. The content available via Classroom is tightly controlled by teachers. There's tons of education products on the market and they're mostly garbage. Software that looks like they have never met a student or a teacher before. Classroom isn't great but it doesn't do much beyond present a list of assignments.

> today Google reigns supreme, at least in New Jersey

What happens if Google randomly closes a student's Google account?

That is very unlikely considering it would probably be a GSuite account.

It used to be Apple. When I was in school (1980s), if the school had computers they were Apples. Even for most of the 1990s this seemed to be the case, at least from what I saw.

> The most successful "colonizer" has always been Microsoft! In most schools around the world the PCs are running Windows exclusively and you are taught how to use Microsoft Office tools.

Years ago I briefly worked adjacent to the MS education team.

One of their KPIs was how close they were to catching up to Google.

Chromebooks came in and swept the market. Microsoft was blindsided, I'm not sure how their efforts to catch up have been going.

Surface Pros are catching on but schools are still using G-Suite instead of MS Office.

Surface Pros are way too expensive compared to Chrome books to buy en masse. I thought they would've figured it out.

My kid’s school is all web-based these days, with Chromebooks and iPads both usable. Perhaps your school is different.

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