
Google’s Chromebooks Rule Schools as IDC Pegs Them as Top Sellers in K-12 - sidcool
http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/10/googles-chromebooks-rule-schools-as-idc-pegs-them-as-top-sellers-in-k-12/
======
xorcist
I bought a Samsung Chromebook for travelling. Turns out that they're very
capable. With Crouton I basically get a bare bones Linux laptop. I ended up
using it all the time.

~~~
atmosx
True. And for browsing only, or web-services chromebook (the OS) is as good
and fast as it gets!

------
sireat
My only knock against Chromebook is that Skype is not supported. For many
casual users Skype is still a requirement.

Supposedly there is a way to install Skype for Android on a Chromebook
([http://www.pcworld.com/article/2686712/run-any-android-
app-o...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2686712/run-any-android-app-on-your-
chromebook-with-this-hack.html)) but Skype app did not load properly for me.

I ended up making a dual boot with Lubuntu on it just for Skype.

Otherwise a Chromebook is pretty much sufficient for casual users(my mother-
in- law etc).

~~~
on_and_off
I have switched to Hangouts instead. It only misses interoperability with
similar services like Skype (one can dream).

~~~
ahstilde
Skype and Hangouts have both proven to be difficult to use for me and my
girlfriend in our long-term relationship. Given a steady internet connection,
Hangouts is the preference, as I have found it drains the battery and other
performance less. However, Skype seems to be better if there are weaknesses in
the connection.

------
netcan
I have something in between an observation and a theory about chromebooks,
though I'm not entirely sure about it.

First, I think there's still a big whole in home computing. Windows laptops
are a bundle of compromises that doesn't serve the average home user all that
well. Chromebooks are an appealing concept.

OTOH, the praise of chromebooks since the start always seems to be "these are
cool, they would be great for X" where X is your theoretical aunt, nephew or
neighbor. Enthusiasts also like them as a "2nd machine." At the same time,
while they continue to sell well I see very little of Chrome OS traffic in web
analytics. When the iphone first went on sale, the traffic ramped up
immediately. Android web traffic lagged behind sales a lot more and the build
up took longer, but it was still obvious. Public data seems to be generally
similar.

I don't know how far to take conclusions from that. I realize that certain
sites do experience significant Chrome OS traffic, especially US education
focuses sites. But, for most of the web, Chrome OS seems to be fighting to get
to the middle of the "other" category, with SymbianOS and Playstation as
rivals.

I think Chrome OS is awesome, but still not done. Some sort of a merger with
android, some rejigging of the apps and the basic metaphors might be an
improvement. I know for my part I'd like to get my Dad one, but it doesn't run
Skype so...

~~~
jdeibele
Anecdotally: My 12-year-old daughter uses her phone to text friends and her
Android tablet (Nook running Cyanogenmod) to read books from the library in
the Kindle app. She's constantly dragging around a Chromebook because "it has
better speakers" and the folding screen doesn't need to be held to show
YouTube videos.

The 10-year-old daughter (not old enough for a phone (for us), reads paper
books) drags around another Chromebook for YouTube and writing.

The 8-year-old son uses a Kindle Fire tablet to play games and read books
we've bought.

We replaced the iMac in the kitchen with a Chromebox and that's been hugely
popular. The old iMac was six years old and very slow.

My 10-year-old has had some trouble at her school because they use MS Office
and she's not used to having to save her changes. She's written 6730 words in
her story for English class since the start of November in Google Docs and we
transfer it onto a flash drive so she can take it to school.

My wife and I have MacBook Airs but I would find it tempting to replace mine
with a new Toshiba Chromebook (1920x1080 IPS screen for $330) if my MacBook
died today. I'd like shell access without necessarily needing root access.
Trying shell access meant flipping a switch on the Chromebooks that brought up
a scary warning every time I opened the lid. This was a couple of years ago
and I hope things have progressed.

------
aabajian
I purchased the Dell Chromebook from Dell's education website. It's a slick
looking device that was quite reasonably priced. I find it to be much more
useful than my Nexus 7 or my iPad 2.

~~~
ronilan
Chromebook is like the flipside of that Ballmer quote[1]: "that is the
cheapest computer in the world and it appeals to everyone because it even has
a keyboard"

[1] [http://youtu.be/eywi0h_Y5_U](http://youtu.be/eywi0h_Y5_U)

~~~
alexbecker
That's some video quality.

------
igravious
"IDC’s new figures for tablets and laptop sales in K-12 education finds that
Chromebooks as a category constitute the best-selling device across the entire
category in 2014"

So, what are the figures?

------
blackoil
MS should release a WinRT for x86 devices, same security as chromebook and
tons of apps. Also believing that it is a new OS and WIndows marketshare in
post PC devices, shouldn't get any trouble with govt for monopoly abuse.

~~~
Maakuth
In what world does WinRT have a ton of apps? Most of the Windows Store apps
are of quite questionable quality, and the selection isn't good either.

~~~
ahstilde
It also doesn't help that no Google apps are officially supported on the
Windows store. Casual users want their Youtube and Gmail! Their lack of
existence (and the dearth of other apps) stopped people from adopting the
platform.

------
fpp
Just completed some work with a large higher education client. There seems to
be a real battle forming in education between Google and Microsoft.

On one side the institutions cash strapped from years of government under-
investment into education and with lots of their infrastructures long beyond
end-of-life.

On the other, large software vendors that - like with FMCG - want to create
their products from childhood onward as everyday items that every child knows
(and will continue to buy for the rest of their lives).

Within higher education, at least in the UK, Microsoft seems to be winning in
the moment.

You have only a (very) small set of universities that are providing Google
apps etc to their students. With HW - BYOD and that latest every second year
student now has her own computer(s)has most likely helped a few of the
universities to stay more easily afloat. Microsoft at the same time has
managed to win over more than 60% of all universities in the UK (to use Office
365).

One reason for that might also be that those universities that tried to
provide Google Apps 1-2 years ago to their students mostly had rather negative
experiences & many issues with the "roll-outs". But an even more important
reason is the continuous dominance of MS Office in the business world - full
proficiency with MS Office does still sound much better on a CV than having
used Google Apps for 4 years.

This is now intensifying with Microsoft providing MS Office for free directly
to all students (including K12) latest from next month on. They have last week
started to give free access to their mobile (iPad, Android - tablet solution
soon arriving) versions and those are now leading the download charts of all
app stores. BTW - real world stats show that about 2/3 students use MS Office
on at least 2 devices (laptop plus 1-3 mobile).

And the battle for the education infrastructures (storage space, business
compute, thin clients - higher edu is one key client for that market) is also
intensifying with MS now getting more aggressive with their virtualised
desktop solution offerings (see also IE as a service).

If Google wants to regain some ground here it needs to provide more turn-key
solutions in the infrastructure area. With day-to-day web based and
virtualised application infrastructure, the OS becomes more and more secondary
for typical end users (HPC / scientific computing / design & engineering are
completely different ballgames and dominated by Apple machines on one side and
linux / unix clusters for the other use cases).

When most mass use and productivity apps can be delivered to almost every
machine including Chromebooks in those ways, the end user OS has fully become
a commodity and decisions are / can be made mainly by the price / cost only.
At that point Chromebooks (together e.g. with NUCs today, US$100 sticks to
plug into monitors running Win8/10 / ChromeOS tomorrow) might become the
cheapest option with all the consequences for the manufacturers (small
margins, scale needed, etc).

~~~
w1ntermute
In my experience at American universities, Microsoft has been successful in
getting contracts with the universities, but students don't actually use their
products. There are some students that use Outlook's web interface for email,
but most forward everything to their personal Gmail accounts. And _no one_
uses Office 365 - everyone knows about & uses Google Docs (again, from their
personal Gmail accounts).

However, I don't think that what students use in universities really matters
when they transition into the corporate world. Even with BYOD, when
everything's on the web, you can just require your employees to use a
particular productivity suite. So I'm not convinced that using free/discounted
education software to gain mindshare among future employees is an effective
tactic.

~~~
fpp
I can only provide some insides with UK universities.

There also students very frequently were using GMail and just used mail
forwarding from their university email accounts.

With at least one large UK university we've seen very strong uptake of the MS
Office apps & email (85% vs 30% in the years before). They also have a large
number of distance learners for which these solutions are substantially better
than what the university offered previously so that might skew the numbers a
bit. Uptake of OneDrive for example was much lower around 40% 3 months after
the roll-out but still rising. Stats that MS provides on this are mainly MS
Exchange (online) based (plus some SharePoint / OneDrive data - the rest of
the stats they provide are at best historic or unusable).

At the same time when the university wanted to communicate with all students
besides their course work, they used Twitter or Facebook and not email.

------
jokoon
Can you put a C++ compiler or an C++ IDE on that thing ?

~~~
dagw
Not officially. But I've heard of people who've managed to cross compile and
install gcc on Chrome OS in developer mode. Otherwise you can simply install
Linux.

~~~
jokoon
any badly supported drivers ?

~~~
sethrin
+1 what dagw said, also if you have a c720 like me, you will probably be
interested in this:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/chrubuntu/comments/1rsxkd/list_of_fi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/chrubuntu/comments/1rsxkd/list_of_fixes_for_xubuntu_1310_on_the_acer_c720/)

The c720 touchpad drivers made it into the most recent (3.17) kernel, which is
good, but with most distros this will require you to compile the kernel
yourself. I've had issues both with a normal linux installation and crouton
chroots; it's hard to recommend either option wholeheartedly. Generally my
experience has led me to use cloud-based alternatives when I can; it's a nice
experience to boot Chrome OS for the first time, sign in, and have all my
Chrome apps, settings, and wallpaper available in at most a couple minutes. I
can particularly recommend cloud9 as an IDE. Together with a VPS for my "real"
linux work, I am becoming more accustomed to using Chrome OS exclusively.

------
jfuhrman
I hope the schools are aware of the privacy implications for students, who are
essentially captive because they'd have to change universities to avoid being
tracked and are very susceptible to advertising.

From
[http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/03/13/26google.h33.ht...](http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/03/13/26google.h33.html)

"As part of a potentially explosive lawsuit making its way through federal
court, the giant online-services provider Google has acknowledged scanning the
contents of millions of email messages sent and received by student users of
the company’s Apps for Education tool suite for schools. In the suit, the
Mountain View, Calif.-based company also faces accusations from plaintiffs
that it went further, crossing a “creepy line” by using information gleaned
from the scans to build “surreptitious” profiles of Apps for Education users
that could be used for such purposes as targeted advertising."

"A Google spokeswoman confirmed to Education Week that the company “scans and
indexes” the emails of all Apps for Education users for a variety of purposes,
including potential advertising, via automated processes that cannot be turned
off—even for Apps for Education customers who elect not to receive ads. The
company would not say whether those email scans are used to help build
profiles of students or other Apps for Education users, but said the results
of its data mining are not used to actually target ads to Apps for Education
users unless they choose to receive them."

...

"Student-data-privacy experts contend that the latter claim is contradicted by
Google’s own court filings in the California suit. They describe the case as
highly troubling and likely to further inflame rising national concern that
protection of children’s private educational information is too lax."

"Mr. Thiele said his district has used Google Apps for Education since 2008.
Officials there have always been aware that the company does “back-end
processing” of students’ email messages, he said, but the district’s agreement
with Google precludes such data from being used to serve ads to students or
staff members. As long as the company abides by those terms, Mr. Thiele said,
“I don’t have any problem with it.” In an emailed statement provided to
Education Week, Bram Bout, the director of Google Apps for Education, said
that “ads in Gmail are turned off by default for Google Apps for Education and
we have no plans to change that in the future.”"

...

"Those plaintiffs in the California lawsuit allege that Google treats Google
Apps for Education email users virtually the same as it treats consumer Gmail
users. That means not only mining students’ email messages for key words and
other information, but also using resulting data—including newly created
derivative information, or “metadata”—for “secret user profiling” that could
serve as the basis for such activities as delivering targeted ads in Google
products other than Apps for Education, such as Google Search, Google+, and
YouTube."

"The plaintiffs allege that Google has employed such practices since around
2010, when it began using a new technology, known as Content Onebox, that
allows the company to intercept and scan emails before they reach their
intended recipients, rather than after messages are delivered to users’
inboxes, regardless of whether ads are turned off."

"While the allegations by the plaintiffs are explosive, it’s the sworn
declarations of Google representatives in response to their claims that have
truly raised the eyebrows of observers and privacy experts. Contrary to the
company’s earlier public statements, Google representatives acknowledged in a
September motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ request for class certification
that the company’s consumer-privacy policy applies to Apps for Education
users. Thus, Google argues, it has students’ (and other Apps for Education
users’) consent to scan and process their emails."

"In November, Kyle C. Wong, a lawyer representing Google, also argued in a
formal declaration submitted to the court in opposition to the plaintiffs’
motion for class certification that the company’s data-mining practices are
widely known, and that the plaintiffs’ complaints that the scanning and
processing of their emails was done secretly are thus invalid. Mr. Wong cited
extensive media coverage about Google’s data mining of Gmail consumer users’

>Mr. Wong’s inclusion of the following reference to the disclosure provided to
students at the University of Alaska particularly caught the attention of
privacy advocates: The University of Alaska (“UA”) has a “Google Mail FAQs,”
which asks, “I hear that Google reads my email. Is this true?” The answer
states, “They do not ‘read’ your email per se. For use in targeted advertising
on their other sites, if your email is not encrypted, software (not a person)
does scan your email and compile keywords for advertising. For example, if the
software looks at 100 emails and identifies the word ‘Doritos’ or ‘camping’ 50
times, they will use that data for advertising on their other sites.”

“The fact that Google put this in their declaration means we take it as true,”
said Ms. Barnes of the privacy watchdog group EPIC. Google’s sworn court
statements reveal that the company has violated student trust by using
students’ education records for profit.”

From a Google filing in court about Gmail privacy:

>Indeed, “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he
voluntarily turns over to third parties.” Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735,
743-44 (1979).

>it's "inconceivable" that someone using a Gmail account would not be aware
that the information in their email would be known to Google.

~~~
wfjackson
I remember reading somewhere that Google announced that they're now stopping
using emails in Apps for Business and Apps for Education for building ad
targeting profiles.

Very surprising to know that the paid Google Apps for Business were also being
used that way, but this being primarily an ad company, not surprised that they
were making misleading and false statements to the public on their web site
until they were compelled to explain in federal court, where apparently they
couldn't continue lying under the threat of heavy fines or jail time. Only
Google knows what other data is being used to track people for showing ads.

I doubt many people are aware that their Android phone's location might be
being tracked for monetizing ads.

[http://www.datadrivenbusiness.com/google-quietly-testing-
off...](http://www.datadrivenbusiness.com/google-quietly-testing-offline-
store-visits-tracking)

I am debating getting a Nest, but all this makes me queasy.

~~~
eitally
We've been an Apps customer (20,000+ seats) since 2009 and have always been
told our content was not scanned or otherwise used for advertising purposes
(and of course no ads are displayed, either).

~~~
wfjackson
From [http://googleforwork.blogspot.com/2014/04/protecting-
student...](http://googleforwork.blogspot.com/2014/04/protecting-students-
with-google-apps.html)

>removed all ads scanning in Gmail for Apps for Education, which means Google
cannot collect or use student data in Apps for Education services for
advertising purposes.

>We’re also making similar changes for all our Google Apps customers,
including Business, Government and for legacy users of the free version, and
we’ll provide an update when the rollout is complete.

I believe the data gathered was used to target ads shown in other Google
properties, like YouTube, and that Content OneBox was scanning all emails. See
this:

>The plaintiffs allege that Google has employed such practices since around
2010, when it began using a new technology, known as Content Onebox, that
allows the company to intercept and scan emails before they reach their
intended recipients, rather than after messages are delivered to users’
inboxes, regardless of whether ads are turned off.

Looks like the ads checkbox applied to only ads being shown in Apps, not to
the data being collected from the emails on the backend to build ad profiles.

------
threeseed
Subsidised, cheap laptops sell well in schools. Amazing.

~~~
seanflyon
Subsidized?

~~~
wutbrodo
I assume he means subsidized by the value that Google is getting out of the
sales other than the purchase price (because it increases Chrome usage which
increases Search usage). I suppose he's not technically wrong (even if it's an
indirect subsidy) but it's a bizarre usage of the term and it could apply to a
LOT of device vendors.

~~~
jackalope
I think it's fair to say that if your kid comes home with a ChromeBook that
you didn't purchase, it's being subsidized somewhere. My local high school
just issued them to all freshmen. What I find a bit odd is that if there is
any paperwork involved, it's not "Do you give us permission to lend a laptop
to your child?", it's "Your child must sign this pledge not to abuse this
device." I support the program, but the responsibility goes two ways, and I
expect the school district to advocate student privacy over the lure of "free
stuff."

~~~
eitally
I don't think Google is giving them away (at least not in the US). This would
have been funded by the school district. In my area (North Carolina), some
have chosen Windows, some tried Ipads, and some are using Chromebooks.
Generally peaking ,the ipads fair the worst and the trend is moving in favor
of Chromebooks. Even if the hardware is free, there is still the need for an
administration license, too.

