Google Apps Tries to Hook 'em While They're Young
Google has given free versions of Apps to colleges and universities for two years now. But as part of the "Going Google" campaign, they've pushed extra hard on educational institutions to adopt Apps. Why?
Even if the core of Google's strategy has been to entice paying enterprises over to Apps, giving away professional-quality email hosting and other solutions to students is the classic "hook 'em while they're young" strategy. From elementary school to college, Google is flooding the market with their products in the hope that these kids will demand it when they enter the workforce.
From Kindergarten to Doctorate
Most of the major additions to Apps in the last year have been aimed at enterprise customers. When Apps left beta, Google laid out a clear roadmap in that direction.
But ever since the new marketing campaign hit the streets, outlets such as the official GoogleAtWork Twitter account and the Google Enterprise blog have spent much of their time talking about the Education Edition of Apps.
Nearly every week, they announce another university that is deploying Apps: this week's was Notre Dame. Google isn't stopping at the university level either. The company recently unveiled a program for K-12 teachers as well.
Younger Workers are the Enterprise 2.0 Engine
In a report on Enteprise 2.0 issued earlier this week, usability guru Jakob Nielsen clearly asserted the importance of the younger generation of employees as drivers for the adoption of new ways of doing business and new software platforms. He also said that this was largely the by-product of their use of social media outside of work:
As people embrace social media in their private lives, they naturally expect to use similar tools within the enterprise. This is especially true for younger workers who use these tools in everyday life.
The corollary in this case would be people embracing Google Apps early in their academic lives.
Google is clearly hoping that as students grow up using Gmail and Google Docs for their academic work, their familiarity will translate directly into enterprise purchases of Apps in the future.
1 TrackBacks
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/12424
Facebook
Sponsored by
-
French Government Chooses Mozilla To Replace IBM and Microsoft For 130,000 Desktop PC's
October 30, 2009 / 11 Comments -
Email + CRM + LinkedIn + Twitter = Hustler's Power Drill
October 28, 2009 / 21 Comments -
Is the Relational Database Doomed?
February 12, 2009 / 111 Comments -
Proton Media: The Most Advanced Collaboration Technology in the Market?
October 30, 2009 / 11 Comments -
Netvibes Goes From Web 2.0 To Enterprise 2.0 In Partnership With Sage Software
November 3, 2009 / 5 Comments
-
Can $890,000 Make MediaWiki Useful?
June 12, 2009 / 10 Comments -
Proton Media: The Most Advanced Collaboration Technology in the Market?
October 30, 2009 / 11 Comments -
Yammer Goes Deep: 50,000 Networks Up and Running
November 3, 2009 / 3 Comments -
Enterprise 2.0: Declaring War Does Not Work
November 3, 2009 / 4 Comments -
CubeTree: Drilling Comments Down to the Cell in a Spreadsheet
November 4, 2009 / 2 Comments
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteEnterprise posts
Well who _doesn't_ try a hooker when they're young? You're nervous and want to make sure you're doing it right, and there's all this pressure. And then your dad, he knows this place, where you can go and take fifty dollars with you and bring a condom. And he shows you how to put on the condom, on a banana, in the kitchen, and then he smokes a cigarette in the back room and tells you not to tell mom. This is a story as old as time itself. It's so pedestrian that there should be a Friends episode about it. Oh, wait... Uh... Google apps. Yeah. No, uh... Yeah. Nevermind.
We've been using Google Apps for staff in my district for a couple of years now, with some usage by high school students for projects. We haven't had students using it at the K-5 level at my school as yet.
Maybe Google isn't so unlike Apple after all.
Apps for Education is great - schools can reduce the cost of email services etc for students and staff, migrate all email content, integrate Apps with their existing security systems.
For a long time Google ensured that schools enjoy the same features as corporate customers, sadly this is now changing.
Reducing the amount of mail or video storage is one thing, as there is a direct cost to Google - but locking out features that are eminently useful in education??
This approach is I believe intended to force schools into using the premiere version of Apps, but I fear it will have the effect of pushing schools away from Google and questioning the motives and drivers behind these moves.
Bad karma, Google.
Sounds like Apple's original approach. You can argue whether or not this worked, but the tools are good--collaborate and communicate from anywhere using almost any device--and businesses at some point will have to adopt some version of this. If the "young" crowd has infiltrated enterprises enough by the point of adoption time, it would stand to reason Google would be in a good place.
Its not just Google Apps which is trying to hook em young. Microsoft is also trying to shed its stiff image and started to offer supposedly cool, easy to use, web based collaboration solutions - namely Microsoft BPOS. Recently, we did a comparison of both products, to see how they face up to each other. You can see it at - http://www.hyperoffice.com/google-apps-vs-microsoft-bpos/