Google is truly an all powerful company, unrivaled in its size and scope. Never before has there been a conglomerate with such power over the general populace. Not only does Google supply the world with communication, storage, password protection, internet browsing, and countless other services, but they collect the information of nearly all of their users and sell it to third parties, yet people today are not only generally unconcerned, but they wholeheartedly desire their searches saved and their preferences available to the system at any given time. Many people relish in the fact that your keyboard knows what word you want to type next, or that you never have to type in a full URL anymore, or that you can just save all your passwords to your computer and have it auto fill all your sensitive information, even your credit card.

Recently, Google has been partnering with schools both K-12 and secondary schools to offer their services to school systems. These are called Apps For Education and include a suite of services including Gmail, Vault, Drive, and many others. It is hard to argue that these apps don’t increase productivity between students. Umass has already seen the difference Gmail and Drive can make for both team based projects and individual assignments. It makes it easy with one secure login to access and edit any of your files on any university computer, of which there is a plethora. These services combine very well with a lot of Umass’s recent renovations like the sea of library computers, the computer-equipped classrooms filling the ILC and more buildings to come, the Digital Media Lab, and many others. Umass and Google have truly created a nearly seamless productivity environment here (aside from the Wi-Fi).

Google states that its intentions stem from its beginning at Stanford University. They say that their goal is to enter the educational community and keep those with a desire to learn up to date on the latest technology and information. They imply that their thought is for the good of students, and therefore, the good of the growing world at large. However, some recent news stories and Google’s practices outside of their interactions with schools tell a slightly different story. Google, although it claims not to track students’ data, has been found to collect information on the very students it is saying it is trying to protect. A few stories has shown this to be happening in K-12 schools, but I would not be at all surprised if Google has been tracking all of my web traffic, including the information sent through eduroam and my Umass/Google account.

Google’s presence at Umass is definitely a big one. I can’t remember the last time I did a project without a team using the phrase “put it on the drive” or “make a shared folder.” In less than 3 years, Google has become an intrinsic part of campus and synonymous with team work and productivity.