If Google actually sold your personal information, it would have gone out of business a long time ago as advertisers would just pay once for the data and then use that to target you directly. Google's ad business relies on collecting all your info and then hiding it from everyone else. The second step is not optional. Vendors keep paying Google to advertise on their behalf because only Google knows who is interested in what.
in other words, yes, they sell your personal details...but they don't sell your ID along with it. but they still sell your details.
But how about all those 5 year old kids who have no choice?
That's my point.
OMG. . . YOU'RE RIGHT.... What's going to happen to them someday when they become a consumer and see an ad for something they might be interested in?? Might as well shoot 'em now and save them the horror.
Anyway, apparently you chose to overlook the fact that 5 year olds don't have ads aimed at them by Google per both their Privacy Policy and The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) mentioned to you by MStone. So Google would not be putting together an advertising portfolio on your "5 year old" unlike the insurance companies, school systems, credit bureaus, data aggregators and State And Federal governments for whom you can't seem to find the same anger for their data tracking and sharing efforts. And those guys aren't doing it for benign ad placement. :rolleyes:
That's why I wear a tin foil hat, Google rays man, there everywhere. I have so many questions though, where do I search for the answers, oh God the dilemma it's to much for me, must Google, nnnnnnooooooo.
So I am reading through some of these comments because its so entertaining.
Then this comment gave me the biggest smile when I read it, so funny.
Then I looked at the name.... Relic.
Well I certainly hope this is the same Relic and that you are feeling alright these days. I don't make here all the time, and things have been crazy lately. It's great to see your name. I hope its really you lady, and not a program that you wrote before you died in order to make life-like comments on forums after you died
I remember the only reason I signed up here was I felt compelled to say hi to you.
My son attends a school that issued Chromebooks at the start of last year. I was disappointed, because he had already been using a MacBook for a few years, and we thought it was a good choice for him, with the parental controls, software, etc.
The school administrators said they would have preferred MacBooks, but the Chromebooks were so much less expensive, and they couldn't justify the cost differential. Many parents were dismayed, because we were paying for the laptops anyway, and I would have been willing to pony up the extra cash for a MacBook.
My son adapted to the Chromebook pretty well, but it's nowhere near as good as his MacBook, of course. We only let him use the Chromebook for school work. We had several power supplies go bad throughout the year, and the laptop stopped working by the end of the year. It just couldn't take the wear-and-tear. (His MacBook, which is a few years older, is still going strong.)
I just dropped by his school a few weeks ago to pick up a brand new Chromebook for this year. His original was still under some sort of extended warranty that the school had arranged, so they just let me replace his old one with a brand new one. Hope this one holds up better than the last.
For the most part, I cannot fault the software or the administrative capabilities of the Chromebook. The school is able to administer it pretty well, and the kids use Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Email (restricted to the school domain), and web-based textbooks. (Physical paper books are optional and cost extra.)
My only complaint, besides the fragility of the hardware, is that the Chrome OS doesn't have parental controls built-in like Mac OS does. There are add-on apps available, but my kid figures out how to disable them in, oh, maybe five minutes.
But how about all those 5 year old kids who have no choice?
That's my point.
Children aren't tracked, period, they don't even user their names when logging into their Chromebooks, they are given a student ID, a number, example 123456.[schools name]@gmail.com, Google doesn't know who the students are, just the school. At least that's the way my daughters school does it and if you look in the Goolge education site/forums this is the way most schools do it. There is also no adds of any kind in the education Chromebook, repeat there are no ads, heck a normal laptop or an iPad has more ads then a Chromebook because they can't disable Adsense, even for offsite apps, AdSense is disabled, even if it wasn't, what do you think, company's that are making math tests are sitting around thinking to themselves, you know what's missing here, a boner pill ad. The children don't normally access to Google's search engine when their at school but if they do, again there no adds for educational Chromebooks , Adsense is disabled. Why don't you actually try using a Chromebook and look at the education site for Google before you continue your tyrad.
They don't even allow staff to change this feature
"We’ve permanently removed the “enable/disable” toggle for ads in the Apps for Education Administrator console. This means ads in Apps for Education services are turned off and administrators no longer have the option or ability to turn ads in these services on."
"We’ve permanently 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."
Children aren't tracked, period, they don't even user their names when logging into their Chromebooks, they are given a student ID, a number, example 123456.[schools name]@gmail.com, Google doesn't know who the students are, just the school.
OMG. . . YOU'RE RIGHT.... What's going to happen to them someday when they become a consumer and see an ad for something they might be interested in?? Might as well shoot 'em now and save them the horror.
Anyway, apparently you chose to overlook the fact that 5 year olds don't have ads aimed at them by Google per both their Privacy Policy and The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) mentioned to you by MStone. So Google would not be putting together an advertising portfolio on your "5 year old" unlike the insurance companies, school systems, credit bureaus, data aggregators and State And Federal governments for whom you can't seem to find the same anger for their data tracking and sharing efforts. And those guys aren't doing it for benign ad placement. :rolleyes:
Anyone with a child has heard "I want that, I saw it on TV". Children have been bombarded with ads for decades for cereal, toys, movies, fast food, etc, etc. I remember wanting to eat spinach because it made Popeye strong, who could forget "I fights to the finish because I eats me spinich"
My son attends a school that issued Chromebooks at the start of last year. I was disappointed, because he had already been using a MacBook for a few years, and we thought it was a good choice for him, with the parental controls, software, etc.
The school administrators said they would have preferred MacBooks, but the Chromebooks were so much less expensive, and they couldn't justify the cost differential. Many parents were dismayed, because we were paying for the laptops anyway, and I would have been willing to pony up the extra cash for a MacBook.
My son adapted to the Chromebook pretty well, but it's nowhere near as good as his MacBook, of course. We only let him use the Chromebook for school work. We had several power supplies go bad throughout the year, and the laptop stopped working by the end of the year. It just couldn't take the wear-and-tear. (His MacBook, which is a few years older, is still going strong.)
I just dropped by his school a few weeks ago to pick up a brand new Chromebook for this year. His original was still under some sort of extended warranty that the school had arranged, so they just let me replace his old one with a brand new one. Hope this one holds up better than the last.
For the most part, I cannot fault the software or the administrative capabilities of the Chromebook. The school is able to administer it pretty well, and the kids use Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Email (restricted to the school domain), and web-based textbooks. (Physical paper books are optional and cost extra.)
My only complaint, besides the fragility of the hardware, is that the Chrome OS doesn't have parental controls built-in like Mac OS does. There are add-on apps available, but my kid figures out how to disable them in, oh, maybe five minutes.
Not all Chromebooks are created equally, it's like any product, you can't generalize, there are now models made specifically for education that can take a real beating, even water resistant. I suggest talking with the school about this, Dell, Lenovo, CTL (especially CTL, you can drop kick it across the room with little drama) and HP all make pretty bullet proof Chromebooks. Here is a guide to help you lock down the Chromebook for your children, you can lock it down just as tightly as any Mac. I don't do it for my daughters ChromeBook as she is old enough but I defiantly do it for my sons, it works very well.
So I am reading through some of these comments because its so entertaining.
Then this comment gave me the biggest smile when I read it, so funny.
Then I looked at the name.... Relic.
Well I certainly hope this is the same Relic and that you are feeling alright these days. I don't make here all the time, and things have been crazy lately. It's great to see your name. I hope its really you lady, and not a program that you wrote before you died in order to make life-like comments on forums after you died
I remember the only reason I signed up here was I felt compelled to say hi to you.
Aaaaaahhhhhh, I love you, yeppy it's me, still flapping away on the ol'e dock of life. Though I'm currently in the hospital, have been for a few weeks I am surrounded by oodles of children who have adapted me as their hospital mom, so I'm not alone during the day. My doctor is predominantly a child cancer specialist, they even stuck me in the child's ward. Though I think it's because they mistook me for a 12 year old boy as my hair is only a inch a half long and my chest is flatter then a beer found on the floor of frat house, I think the doctor took me too literally when I told him I needed to get something off of my chest Thank you so much for reaching out to me and I'm so happy to hear from you again, please stick around, we need more lovely people like you at Appleinsider.
I hear the cutest jokes here;
Group of four-year-olds were trying very hard to become accustomed to school. The biggest hurdle they faced was that the teacher insisted on NO baby talk!
"You need to use 'Big People' words," she was always reminding them. "John what did you do over the weekend?"
"I went to visit my Nana."
"No, you went to visit your GRANDMOTHER. Use 'Big People' words!" She then asked Mitchell what he had done.
"I took a ride on a choo-choo."
"No, you took a ride on a TRAIN. You must remember to use 'Big People' words," she said. She then asked little Alex what he had done.
"I read a book," he replied.
"That's WONDERFUL!" the teacher said. "What book did you read?"
Alex thought very hard about it, then puffed out his chest with great pride and said, "Winnie the SHIT."
If Google's goal is not to EVENTUALLY feed these kids ads what is their motivation for selling these Chromebooks for less than cost? Answer that for me.
First they're not Google's Chromebooks. Second what source did you come actoss that gives you the confidence to state as FACT that the companies that do sell them are doing so for less than cost? Mind sharing it?
As for ads I've no doubt that Google plans to serve ads to students when they become old enough. How do you suppose the costs or all the searches you've done in the past 24 hours are paid for? How do you suppose AI gives you a forum to release your pent-up anger on? Search engines, on-line research services and forums are expensive and there's not a lot of evidence that folks like you and me would pay a fee to use 'em.
Children aren't tracked, period, they don't even user their names when logging into their Chromebooks, they are given a student ID, a number, example 123456.[schools name]@gmail.com, Google doesn't know who the students are, just the school. At least that's the way my daughters school does it and if you look in the Goolge education site/forums this is the way most schools do it. There is also no adds of any kind in the education Chromebook, repeat there are no ads, heck a normal laptop or an iPad has more ads then a Chromebook because they can't disable Adsense, even for offsite apps, AdSense is disabled, even if it wasn't, what do you think, company's that are making math tests are sitting around thinking to themselves, you know what's missing here, a boner pill ad. The children don't normally access to Google's search engine when their at school but if they do, again there no adds for educational Chromebooks , Adsense is disabled. Why don't you actually try using a Chromebook and look at the education site for Google before you continue your tyrad.
They don't even allow staff to change this feature
"We’ve permanently removed the “enable/disable” toggle for ads in the Apps for Education Administrator console. This means ads in Apps for Education services are turned off and administrators no longer have the option or ability to turn ads in these services on."
"We’ve permanently 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."
"Like many email providers, we do scanning in Gmail to keep our customers secure and to improve their product experience."
Some might say:
"You know, for a stupid person you sure post the dumbest things."
All email services scan the databases in order to:
Keep spam out,
Keep illegal stuff out, like kiddy porn, copyright material et cetera,
Keep you safe from receiving such things,
Keep them safe from liability, therefore keeping the email service up...for you.
Google does this. My ISP does this. Apple does this. Please, sir, stay calm and no one will be hurt. And take advice from posters here, as they can be very educational to the uninformed.
You have to remember though that anything-but-Apple products are better than Apple products and if you don't think so, you're not impartial enough.
Marvin, if you had checked into it a little more you probably woudl have noticed that both GMial scanning and ads had been completely removed as options in Google Apps for Education back in April. Of course it could have been due to pressure from education groups so good on them if that's what lead to the change, and good on Google if they arrived at the change of policy on their own. My guess is it took a little push. https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/us/intl/en/chromebook/static/pdf/Chromebooks_for_Education.pdf
Like i said before (and proved with numerous links) Google does not care about regulation.
They will break it if it will make them more $.
Its a Trojan horse. Right now they act all nice and they won't spam the ED-Chromebooks. For now. They are merely collecting data to spam them once they are 18. It is truly scary how much information they will get on someone from 12 years of using a chromebook.
And don't forget Google can change their PRIVACY POLICY AT ANY TIME WITHOUT WARNING! Google does not need your consent to change the privacy policy. Again its about their tract record. They have been sued over 100 times and lost dozens of times for privacy breach. Obiviously regulations and their own privacy policy are as worthless as used toilet paper.
If Google's goal is not to EVENTUALLY feed these kids ads what is their motivation for selling these Chromebooks for less than cost? Answer that for me.
The same exact thing can be said about Apple, Microsoft or any other company that sell their products to schools, get'em while their young. I never said that their wasn't an end game or that Google was doing this out of charity or the kindness of their hearts, I'm not naive. You have this knack of putting words into others people mouth, like the comment you made about me comparing my Pixel to the iPad, I never said or suggested anything of the sort, just that I owned one. Yes, like when Apple sells iPads to schools, Google want's to introduce their products to children so when their older they will hopefully stay with them, what's your point, everyone does that including the shoe manufacture that the child is wearing. This has been done since the very first Apple II or IBM XT, I don't see why this has to be some huge conspiracy. Again, Google doesn't know who the individual child is or building a profile on them specifically, it's all general information, some child at this school, not Billy Thornburg, from a family of 5, likes Star Wars, thinks girls has cuddies, etc. Your being a little too paranoid here and about the wrong entity, it's government agencies that you need to worry about. As long as Google keeps my specific private information to themselves and just shares the general, like I'm interested in Midi controllers to those who sell those type of products, then honestly I'm not all that worried. Ads will never go away, it's how sites like Appleinsider for instance are able to function, so I would rather see ads that I am interested in then crap that I am not and this is only possible by tracking me. What exactly do you have to hide, the internet isn't private any longer and nor should you believe for a second that it is.
I surf and store information as if everyone has access to it at all time, everyone is snooping, this is the reality we are living in, I never keep financial information in the cloud unless it's my bank or broker, communication is over a VPN and I have a dedicated app for their service. I only purchase item from supplies that I trust and use an American Express card with the best anti-fraud features possible, etc. Though to be honest I mostly buy my goods directly from local stores and in person. You can't live your life in fear and this little crusade of yours is really only beneficial to you, everyone here knows that Google collects user data to better understand their buying habits, make their products more personalized, maximize profits, etc.Their not selling your personal information to other firms, it would mean the death of them. I happen to know a few people who work for Google, grew up with two of them and have visited their campus in Switzerland many times, that's how I got introduced to the ChromeBook, received the Pixel as a gift, a lot of wonderful hard working people are working for them and I cannot in good conscious believe that they would involve themselves in a company that would knowingly want to destroy people lives, hurt anyone or conduct shady business. I know about the stories you have posted, the lawsuits and yes Google over steps the boundaries on privacy and they defiantly need to slow their role with a lot of things but I believe they are starting to get the hint. The biggest privacy concerns I have are from Social media, Facebook and other such sites, because it's people sharing information about other people that should never become public, not a single firm who has at least some rules that need to be followed. I'm going to back off now because we're just going in circles and I'm dizzy, I concede you win, congratulations, I hope its everything you've always dreamed it would be. You get a car, and you get a car, everyone here get's a car,
You have to remember though that anything-but-Apple products are better than Apple products and if you don't think so, you're not impartial enough.
Google I think is really trying Marvin, I really do and as I actually have a child who uses a Chromebook for school I can confirm that there are no ads, even on the Google search page. You can verify this by asking some of the parents over at the Google forums for education, their really nice over their. Google doesn't scan student emails any longer http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/04/30/google-stops-data-mining-students-email/
I'm also not saying Chromebooks are better then Apple products for education, never, ever my point, I'm just saying Chromebooks aren't bad either, quite the opposite they can be really good teaching companions. Some of the custom sites my daughters teachers make are really quite good, not only does my daughter have access to all of her homework, study materials, books in PDF forms, etc. but when she's sick or is visiting me during the day at be at school she can retrieve her homework lessons online, the school is even going to start using Hangouts to stream lesson when students can't be there, That's cool.
Google I think is really trying Marvin, I really do
Google is a publicly traded company with a business model that operates on advertising. What any company tries to do is make the best success of the business model they choose. They push it as far as they can get away with. Fans on the outside try to project a persona onto companies to make them feel better and make definitive statements on their behalf like "children aren't tracked, period". Then when it's found otherwise, it changes to 'oh, well they don't do it now so just ignore that they tried to, they're still good people'.
I believe some of the people at Google are good people and the founders at least seem ethical but as a whole it is a publicly traded company that hires people to promote a business model that monetizes people's information and that will be evil at times. Google needs to be treated as objectively as any other company in order to have a 'balanced' discussion.
In sum, then, we have learned from Google’s own statements that:
Ad serving remains a standard option in Google Apps for Education,
Even when ads are turned off (as they currently are by default) Google still data mines student emails for ad targeting purposes, and
Google’s consumer privacy policy is incorporated in standard Google Apps for Education contracts.
I is not immediately clear to from reading the article what exactly happens when the student is logged in with their student ID but using other Google services outside of Apps for Education such as YouTube. It doesn't explain if the student email scanning data is currently being used for targeted ads at this time or if it is in preparation for such activities at a later date. I was surprised that Google offered an ad supported Education model to the schools, which makes no sense to me, but if true then obviously they would need to data mine even though they don't know who the students really are since they are anonymous. In the case that the schools were using the ad option, it is up to the schools to inform the users and parents that email scanning would be used to target ads. But if they are not serving ads in Apps for Education then the school is not under any obligation to inform the users even though data mining is still occurring.
As mentioned in the article, the contract that each school makes with Google could supersede the default privacy policy and prohibit the email scanning if the school were to insist on that. My guess is that most schools don't know this is possible and part of the contract states that the schools cannot make public or discuss any aspect of the contracts.
Good find... It doesn't explain if the student email scanning data is currently being used for targeted ads at this time or if it is in preparation for such activities at a later date. I was surprised that Google offered an ad supported Education model to the schools, which makes no sense to me,
They don't even have the option any longer.. Marvin's article pre-dates changes put in place by Google back in April
Comments
If Google actually sold your personal information, it would have gone out of business a long time ago as advertisers would just pay once for the data and then use that to target you directly. Google's ad business relies on collecting all your info and then hiding it from everyone else. The second step is not optional. Vendors keep paying Google to advertise on their behalf because only Google knows who is interested in what.
in other words, yes, they sell your personal details...but they don't sell your ID along with it. but they still sell your details.
You can opt out of Google everything
Oh, I do; I simply don't use anything Google.
Oh, I do; I simply don't use anything Google.
good for you.
But how about all those 5 year old kids who have no choice?
That's my point.
I agree; Google should be legislated to be made available for 18+ only.
OMG. . . YOU'RE RIGHT.... What's going to happen to them someday when they become a consumer and see an ad for something they might be interested in?? Might as well shoot 'em now and save them the horror.
Anyway, apparently you chose to overlook the fact that 5 year olds don't have ads aimed at them by Google per both their Privacy Policy and The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) mentioned to you by MStone. So Google would not be putting together an advertising portfolio on your "5 year old" unlike the insurance companies, school systems, credit bureaus, data aggregators and State And Federal governments for whom you can't seem to find the same anger for their data tracking and sharing efforts. And those guys aren't doing it for benign ad placement. :rolleyes:
That's why I wear a tin foil hat, Google rays man, there everywhere. I have so many questions though, where do I search for the answers, oh God the dilemma it's to much for me, must Google, nnnnnnooooooo.
So I am reading through some of these comments because its so entertaining.
Then this comment gave me the biggest smile when I read it, so funny.
Then I looked at the name.... Relic.
Well I certainly hope this is the same Relic and that you are feeling alright these days. I don't make here all the time, and things have been crazy lately. It's great to see your name. I hope its really you lady, and not a program that you wrote before you died in order to make life-like comments on forums after you died
I remember the only reason I signed up here was I felt compelled to say hi to you.
My son attends a school that issued Chromebooks at the start of last year. I was disappointed, because he had already been using a MacBook for a few years, and we thought it was a good choice for him, with the parental controls, software, etc.
The school administrators said they would have preferred MacBooks, but the Chromebooks were so much less expensive, and they couldn't justify the cost differential. Many parents were dismayed, because we were paying for the laptops anyway, and I would have been willing to pony up the extra cash for a MacBook.
My son adapted to the Chromebook pretty well, but it's nowhere near as good as his MacBook, of course. We only let him use the Chromebook for school work. We had several power supplies go bad throughout the year, and the laptop stopped working by the end of the year. It just couldn't take the wear-and-tear. (His MacBook, which is a few years older, is still going strong.)
I just dropped by his school a few weeks ago to pick up a brand new Chromebook for this year. His original was still under some sort of extended warranty that the school had arranged, so they just let me replace his old one with a brand new one. Hope this one holds up better than the last.
For the most part, I cannot fault the software or the administrative capabilities of the Chromebook. The school is able to administer it pretty well, and the kids use Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Email (restricted to the school domain), and web-based textbooks. (Physical paper books are optional and cost extra.)
My only complaint, besides the fragility of the hardware, is that the Chrome OS doesn't have parental controls built-in like Mac OS does. There are add-on apps available, but my kid figures out how to disable them in, oh, maybe five minutes.
Children aren't tracked, period, they don't even user their names when logging into their Chromebooks, they are given a student ID, a number, example 123456.[schools name]@gmail.com, Google doesn't know who the students are, just the school. At least that's the way my daughters school does it and if you look in the Goolge education site/forums this is the way most schools do it. There is also no adds of any kind in the education Chromebook, repeat there are no ads, heck a normal laptop or an iPad has more ads then a Chromebook because they can't disable Adsense, even for offsite apps, AdSense is disabled, even if it wasn't, what do you think, company's that are making math tests are sitting around thinking to themselves, you know what's missing here, a boner pill ad. The children don't normally access to Google's search engine when their at school but if they do, again there no adds for educational Chromebooks , Adsense is disabled. Why don't you actually try using a Chromebook and look at the education site for Google before you continue your tyrad.
Google turns off ALL ads for education levels K12 and below as stated on their Education site. http://googleenterprise.blogspot.ch/2014/04/protecting-students-with-google-apps.html
They don't even allow staff to change this feature
"We’ve permanently removed the “enable/disable” toggle for ads in the Apps for Education Administrator console. This means ads in Apps for Education services are turned off and administrators no longer have the option or ability to turn ads in these services on."
"We’ve permanently 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."
http://www.google.com/edu/privacy.html
Excellent informational post as usual Relic.
For Sog's benefit here is a sample Google Apps for Education agreement.
https://www.csd509j.net/Portals/1/Student/GoogleStudentAgreementForm.pdf
Anyone with a child has heard "I want that, I saw it on TV". Children have been bombarded with ads for decades for cereal, toys, movies, fast food, etc, etc. I remember wanting to eat spinach because it made Popeye strong, who could forget "I fights to the finish because I eats me spinich"
Not all Chromebooks are created equally, it's like any product, you can't generalize, there are now models made specifically for education that can take a real beating, even water resistant. I suggest talking with the school about this, Dell, Lenovo, CTL (especially CTL, you can drop kick it across the room with little drama) and HP all make pretty bullet proof Chromebooks. Here is a guide to help you lock down the Chromebook for your children, you can lock it down just as tightly as any Mac. I don't do it for my daughters ChromeBook as she is old enough but I defiantly do it for my sons, it works very well.
Aaaaaahhhhhh, I love you, yeppy it's me, still flapping away on the ol'e dock of life. Though I'm currently in the hospital, have been for a few weeks I am surrounded by oodles of children who have adapted me as their hospital mom, so I'm not alone during the day. My doctor is predominantly a child cancer specialist, they even stuck me in the child's ward. Though I think it's because they mistook me for a 12 year old boy as my hair is only a inch a half long and my chest is flatter then a beer found on the floor of frat house, I think the doctor took me too literally when I told him I needed to get something off of my chest Thank you so much for reaching out to me and I'm so happy to hear from you again, please stick around, we need more lovely people like you at Appleinsider.
I hear the cutest jokes here;
Group of four-year-olds were trying very hard to become accustomed to school. The biggest hurdle they faced was that the teacher insisted on NO baby talk!
"You need to use 'Big People' words," she was always reminding them. "John what did you do over the weekend?"
"I went to visit my Nana."
"No, you went to visit your GRANDMOTHER. Use 'Big People' words!" She then asked Mitchell what he had done.
"I took a ride on a choo-choo."
"No, you took a ride on a TRAIN. You must remember to use 'Big People' words," she said. She then asked little Alex what he had done.
"I read a book," he replied.
"That's WONDERFUL!" the teacher said. "What book did you read?"
Alex thought very hard about it, then puffed out his chest with great pride and said, "Winnie the SHIT."
First they're not Google's Chromebooks. Second what source did you come actoss that gives you the confidence to state as FACT that the companies that do sell them are doing so for less than cost? Mind sharing it?
As for ads I've no doubt that Google plans to serve ads to students when they become old enough. How do you suppose the costs or all the searches you've done in the past 24 hours are paid for? How do you suppose AI gives you a forum to release your pent-up anger on? Search engines, on-line research services and forums are expensive and there's not a lot of evidence that folks like you and me would pay a fee to use 'em.
Like this you mean?
http://safegov.org/2014/1/31/google-admits-data-mining-student-emails-in-its-free-education-apps
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-scheff/google-apps-for-education_b_5083478.html
You have to remember though that anything-but-Apple products are better than Apple products and if you don't think so, you're not impartial enough.
Some might say:
"You know, for a stupid person you sure post the dumbest things."
All email services scan the databases in order to:
Keep spam out,
Keep illegal stuff out, like kiddy porn, copyright material et cetera,
Keep you safe from receiving such things,
Keep them safe from liability, therefore keeping the email service up...for you.
Google does this. My ISP does this. Apple does this. Please, sir, stay calm and no one will be hurt. And take advice from posters here, as they can be very educational to the uninformed.
I dunno - at least netbooks were somewhat useful without a network connection.
Marvin, if you had checked into it a little more you probably woudl have noticed that both GMial scanning and ads had been completely removed as options in Google Apps for Education back in April. Of course it could have been due to pressure from education groups so good on them if that's what lead to the change, and good on Google if they arrived at the change of policy on their own. My guess is it took a little push.
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/us/intl/en/chromebook/static/pdf/Chromebooks_for_Education.pdf
Like this you mean?
http://safegov.org/2014/1/31/google-admits-data-mining-student-emails-in-its-free-education-apps
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-scheff/google-apps-for-education_b_5083478.html
You have to remember though that anything-but-Apple products are better than Apple products and if you don't think so, you're not impartial enough.
Google I think is really trying Marvin, I really do and as I actually have a child who uses a Chromebook for school I can confirm that there are no ads, even on the Google search page. You can verify this by asking some of the parents over at the Google forums for education, their really nice over their. Google doesn't scan student emails any longer http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/04/30/google-stops-data-mining-students-email/
I'm also not saying Chromebooks are better then Apple products for education, never, ever my point, I'm just saying Chromebooks aren't bad either, quite the opposite they can be really good teaching companions. Some of the custom sites my daughters teachers make are really quite good, not only does my daughter have access to all of her homework, study materials, books in PDF forms, etc. but when she's sick or is visiting me during the day at be at school she can retrieve her homework lessons online, the school is even going to start using Hangouts to stream lesson when students can't be there, That's cool.
Google is a publicly traded company with a business model that operates on advertising. What any company tries to do is make the best success of the business model they choose. They push it as far as they can get away with. Fans on the outside try to project a persona onto companies to make them feel better and make definitive statements on their behalf like "children aren't tracked, period". Then when it's found otherwise, it changes to 'oh, well they don't do it now so just ignore that they tried to, they're still good people'.
I believe some of the people at Google are good people and the founders at least seem ethical but as a whole it is a publicly traded company that hires people to promote a business model that monetizes people's information and that will be evil at times. Google needs to be treated as objectively as any other company in order to have a 'balanced' discussion.
http://safegov.org/2014/1/31/google-admits-data-mining-student-emails-in-its-free-education-apps
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-scheff/google-apps-for-education_b_5083478.html
Good find.
In sum, then, we have learned from Google’s own statements that:
I is not immediately clear to from reading the article what exactly happens when the student is logged in with their student ID but using other Google services outside of Apps for Education such as YouTube. It doesn't explain if the student email scanning data is currently being used for targeted ads at this time or if it is in preparation for such activities at a later date. I was surprised that Google offered an ad supported Education model to the schools, which makes no sense to me, but if true then obviously they would need to data mine even though they don't know who the students really are since they are anonymous. In the case that the schools were using the ad option, it is up to the schools to inform the users and parents that email scanning would be used to target ads. But if they are not serving ads in Apps for Education then the school is not under any obligation to inform the users even though data mining is still occurring.
As mentioned in the article, the contract that each school makes with Google could supersede the default privacy policy and prohibit the email scanning if the school were to insist on that. My guess is that most schools don't know this is possible and part of the contract states that the schools cannot make public or discuss any aspect of the contracts.
They don't even have the option any longer.. Marvin's article pre-dates changes put in place by Google back in April