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Innovation

What happens if Google's Edu Apps aren't free anymore?

A local technology director tweeted a link tonight to an article on free Web 2.0 tools that eventually go commercial and stop being free.
Written by Christopher Dawson, Contributor

A local technology director tweeted a link tonight to an article on free Web 2.0 tools that eventually go commercial and stop being free. Us educational folks tend to embrace free tools because, well, they're free. The Web is crawling with great tools, many of which are free, or at least free to educational users. Perhaps none is more mission critical to those who adopt it than Google's Educational Apps.

Essentially a free version of their Premier Apps offered to verified educational institutions, Edu Apps can easily replace a whole lot of infrastructure. Extensive email, collaboration, and content creation resources are all built in, for free.

The article I mentioned above points out services like Bubbleshare.com and Wet Paint Wikis that have either shut down or are no longer free for educators, despite relative popularity among schools and teachers. While there are other sites that can take their place, this certainly represents a challenge to educators who need to migrate content, retrain, etc.

Neither of these sites could be considered mission-critical, though. If you've ditched Exchange, stopped licensing Office, and built a culture around sharing resources through Apps, then I think it's safe to classify Google Apps as "mission-critical." So what happens if Google decides that Apps shouldn't be free (or at least not ad-free) for educational institutions?

Don't get me wrong. I don't think this is very likely. In fact, I think it's highly unlikely. After all, Google users in K-12 or college will most likely go on to become Google users for life. Google engineers have also pointed out to me that they can offer this service at virtually no cost to the company since they have built the infrastructure to make Apps easily deployed and have nearly limitless storage and computing power. It's literally no trouble for them, yet builds brand, brand loyalty, goodwill, and future paying customers like nothing else can.

This is more of a philosophical question. As the article that prompted this line of thought points out,

At the end of the day, using a free tool is a gamble. If it’s just you as an individual taking a risk on a free tool, that’s one thing. But if you are recommending these tools to others, spending money and time implementing them, planning lessons, or shifting your “business” to them, you really need to think about it.

Google Edu Apps aren't going anywhere and they're certainly going to be free for the foreseeable future. However, the tools on which we hang our hats are always worth a careful evaluation, especially when they're free.

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