Unfortunately the trend across the world in education is to cut costs (typically at grave cost to students, no pun intended). Privacy concerns aside, this has t

Unfortunately the trend across the world in education is to cut costs (typically at grave cost to students, no pun intended). Privacy concerns aside, this has the following advantages for the school (I write school from the point of view of smaller educational institutions where this is likely to make a bigger impact and has better chances of adoption): - Cost (sometimes this trumps everything) - Ease of use for teachers (automatic generation of assignment etc. means lesser work for teachers) - Availability anywhere; typically teachers take work home and this means they can have it available outside the school servers - No need to worry about backups etc. Also easier lookup/search (which is Google's strength) e.g. for older assignments instead of trawling through old folders For Google: like every company they want to get their users when they are young since that means a lifetime of usage once they get used/comfortable/dependent to/with/on it. Nothing is better than capturing minds when they are in school when young people are forming their habits which will last for a lifetime. This was also seen in banking industry when some banks introduced kids's saving account etc (not saying learning to save when you are young is a bad thing).