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I think the more likely reason Apple, Google, and Microsoft push their products in schools is to hook students on their products so that they continue to use th

I think the more likely reason Apple, Google, and Microsoft push their products in schools is to hook students on their products so that they continue to use them into adulthood. I find it pretty astonishing that ChromeOS (installed on Chromebooks) for example is so widespread in US schools. This is a 'cloud-based' operating system that that tracks everything you do. To properly use ChromeOS requires you sign-in with a GMail account. Now your personal details are tied to all your activity in the OS (a guest account gives you limited functionality only). Even if that activity data is detached from your account and "anonymised" (a pretty meaningless phrase), this is still means Google captures and saves (and presumably aggregates) the data of millions of US students that they can interrogate and dissect in ways that even they probably don't yet know. Why does the tech community accept this? The kids forced to use ChromeOS don't even have a choice in the matter. It's the adults who decided for them. Online tracking is so normalised now, large parts of the tech community rush to Google's defence. (Does a giant multi-billion dollar corporation need your defence?) It's a pretty depressing state of affairs and shows how little the tech community actually cares for privacy.

zozbot123 8y ago
I don't know of many people in the tech community "rushing to Google's defense" over the phoning-home features in ChromeOS. School administrators have always wanted devices that track what students do on them, and ChromeOS gives them exactly that - similarly for organizations which rely on Google's enterprise services. But aside from these cases, who actually uses Chromebooks? Especially in the "tech community"?
wmf 8y ago
It's not like schools choose Chromebooks because of the spying. They choose Chromebooks because they're cheap and the software is reliable. iOS is equally reliable but much more expensive. Desktop Linux isn't even in the running.
- zozbot123 8y ago
  > It's not like schools choose Chromebooks because of the spying. You really think they don't? They might go for a slightly different angle, like the ease of centrally managing your deployment or whatever, but the gist of it is that they want a device that can be made to act against the best interests and expectations of the end-user.

zozbot123 8y ago

I don't know of many people in the tech community "rushing to Google's defense" over the phoning-home features in ChromeOS. School administrators have always wanted devices that track what students do on them, and ChromeOS gives them exactly that - similarly for organizations which rely on Google's enterprise services. But aside from these cases, who actually uses Chromebooks? Especially in the "tech community"?

wmf 8y ago

It's not like schools choose Chromebooks because of the spying. They choose Chromebooks because they're cheap and the software is reliable. iOS is equally reliable but much more expensive. Desktop Linux isn't even in the running.

zozbot123 8y ago
> It's not like schools choose Chromebooks because of the spying. You really think they don't? They might go for a slightly different angle, like the ease of centrally managing your deployment or whatever, but the gist of it is that they want a device that can be made to act against the best interests and expectations of the end-user.