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Why Buy Microsoft Milk When the Google Cow Is Free?

Posted by samzenpus on from the free-docs dept.

theodp writes "Touring a high school with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt informed students they're eating Google 'dog food' because Microsoft's costs money. 'Why would we use Google Docs over like Microsoft Word?' a teacher asked the class. 'Because it's free!' exclaimed a grinning Schmidt. 'Schmidt's comment,' writes GeekWire's Blair Hanley Frank, 'highlights one of the risks Microsoft faces in the academic world. While Microsoft has started offering schools incentives to use Office 365, including free licenses for their pupils, the company is under greater pressure from its competitors. As more schools like Chicago's face budget shortfalls, free and discounted products from companies like Google and Apple, especially when attached to financial assistance, start looking better and better.' Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis said she'd rather see companies pay more in taxes and fund schools that way, rather than relying on their charity or free software."

8 of 409 comments (clear)

  1. Not the only reason..... by jythie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Both my private and work machines both have MSOffice on them and I still use Google Docs for the bulk of my writing. It is light weight, easy to use, accessible from anywhere, and easy to share with collaborators. Office 365 is a bit better in some of those regards, but still makes collaborating with external entities more difficult.

    1. Re:Not the only reason..... by Thanshin · · Score: 3, Interesting

      accessible from anywhere

      This is what I get, at this very moment, at https://drive.google.com/

      Google Drive
      Currently you can not access the application.

    2. Re:Not the only reason..... by rtb61 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Should schools pay for M$ or take Google's privacy invasive stuff free or is there a third choice. Should the federal provide free open source software under federal core program. Software that is free, has been audited for quality and security, software that is free of privacy invasive elements during and after school use. If all the money spent on software licence had instead been spent on developing software, the government would have produced the necessary software ten times over and been able to distribute for free instead of still paying to this day. Niether M$ nor Google is the answer, they just both keep the problem going, year after year after year, instead of permanently solving the problem with something like https://www.libreoffice.org/.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    3. Re:Not the only reason..... by njnnja · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Although FOSS alternatives keep getting better, they are still (generally) not as easy to set up and use as commercial alternative. On the other hand, to an institution whose entire purpose is to teach people skills, getting them to understand a computer as more than just a glorified typewriter and electronic encyclopedia is a feature, not a bug.

      On the third hand, that might encourage a child's natural curiosity and send them learning about things that are not in the syllabus, which can only hurt the school's standardized test scores. So never mind.

    4. Re:Not the only reason..... by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Of course they could, if they were targeting me. But it's beyond the reach of any automated advertising-data-gathering system, and cannot be easily tied to the social media identity of anyone who downloads from it it. If anyone wants to spy, they'll have to get an actual human to do the job.

    5. Re:Not the only reason..... by FireFury03 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Both my private and work machines both have MSOffice on them and I still use Google Docs for the bulk of my writing. It is light weight, easy to use, accessible from anywhere, and easy to share with collaborators. Office 365 is a bit better in some of those regards, but still makes collaborating with external entities more difficult.

      I don't buy the "people use $foo instead of Office because $foo is free" - we've had plenty of free alternatives to office for years and whilest the likes of OpenOffice are used by indiciduals, they seem rarely used by schools and businesses.

      In fact, I can cite a couple of examples: a (teacher) friend of mine started using OpenOffice to teach kids how to use a word processor. His reason was that the community he works in is pretty poor and running OpenOffice on some old hardware is more within the financial grasp of those families. Once the local authority found out about it he was very quickly made to stop and use MS Office instead. (One wonders *why* he was made to stop - you could suggest that it was just jobsworths not wanting anyone to do anything "non-standard". Cynically I suspect the authority get a cut of MS licence fees and didn't liek the idea of losing that money).

      A second example: the utterly pointless "european computer driving licence" doesn't actually mandate any specific software. However, the exam boards do: most of the "computer driving licence" courses *require* the students to be using Exchange (and I've seen a number of schools migrate from perfectly functional non-Microsoft mail systems to Exchange simply because that course requires it).

      My personal opinion is that if any kind of IT course requires people to use a *specific* piece of software, rather than simply any software with certain capabilities, then there's something terribly wrong with the course. I don't think its any good for society to teach people by rote how to use a specific bit of software rather than giving them the skills to figure out any bit of software that is put in front of them.

      --
      http://blog.nexusuk.org
  2. Re:It's sad big companies don't have to pay taxes by DrXym · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Multinationals use Ireland in the same way called the double Irish system. Ireland allows an Irish registered company to domicile in a tax haven (so it's tax liabilities might be in Bermuda). So multinationals establish 2 Irish companies. The first is legit and employs people and runs sales & services. This company charges other subsidiaries worldwide for its work so the tax liabilities move to Ireland. Then the first company pays the second a massive chunk of its revenues as royalties. Since the second company is domiciled in a tax haven there is no tax on these royalties and the multinational only pays tax on the remainder. And Ireland has low corporation tax for that part too.

    There is supposedly a double Irish Dutch sandwich variant which presumably yields similar results. Apparently the loophole is being closed since most countries are getting so pissed off with tax avoidance / evasion that they're cooperating (or being coerced) into stamping it out.

  3. Yes, they are...just not in "Google Apps" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You are technically correct about Google not showing adds to minors within their Google Apps for Education range of products. But that statement is disingenuous. They still harvest data from every user within GAE and use it to target ads to minors outside GAE. Once they leave GAE and start surfing YouTube (and what minor doesn't), they get targeted ads using data from GAE. Also, the majority of websites use Google AdSense for their site advertising. Every one of those sites that minor will visit will have targeted ads using data from GAE.

    If you don't believe me, here's a good article to read over at SaveGov. Google admits to these practices via a legal deposition filed in California over a class action lawsuit against this very practice.

    I've said it before, and I'll say it again: When a service is free, you are not the customer. You are the product.