Alex Spiers (Learning Innovation & Development, LJMU) alerted me via Twitter to rumours in the 'Internet playground' that Google is considering branching out into educational software. According to the article spreading the rumour, Google plans to fulfil its recent pledge to acquire one small company per month by purchasing Blackboard.
The area of educational software is not completely alien to Google. The Google Apps Education Edition (providing email, collaboration widgets, etc.) has been around for a while now (I think) and - as the article insinuates - moving deeper into educational software seems a natural progression and provides Google with clear access to a key demographic. This is all conjecture of course; but if Google acquired Blackboard I think I would suffer a schizophrenic episode. A part of me would think, "Great - Google will make Blackboard less clunky, offer more functionality and more flexiblity". But the other part (which is slightly bigger, I think) would feel extremely uncomfortable that Google is yet again moving into new areas, probably with the intention of dominating that area.
We forget how huge and pervasive Google is today. Google is everywhere and now reaches far beyond its dominant position in search into virtually every significant area of web and software development. If Google were Microsoft the US Government and the EU would be all over Google like a rash for pushing the boundaries of antitrust legislation and competition laws. This situation takes on a rather sinister tone when you consider the situation in HE if Blackboard becomes a Google subsidiary. Edge Hill University is one of several institutions which has elected to ditch fully integrated institutional email applications (e.g. MS Outlook, Thunderbird) in favour of Google Mail. Having a VLE maintained by Google therefore sets the alarm bells ringing. The key technological interactions for a 21st century student are as follows: email, web, VLE, library. Picture it - a student existence which would be entirely dependent upon one company and the directed advertising that goes with it: Google Mail, web (and their first port of call is likely to be Google, of course), GoogleBoard (the name of Blackboard if they decided to re-brand it!) and a massive digital library which Google is attempting to create and which would essentially create a de facto digital library monopoly.
I'm probably getting ahead of myself. The acquisition of Blackboard probably won't happen, and the digital library has encountered plenty of opposition, not least from Angela Merkel; but it does get me thinking that Google finally needs reining in. Even before this news broke I was starting to think that Google was turning into a Sesame Street-style Cookie Monster, devouring everything in sight. Their ubiquity can't possibly be healthy anymore, can it? Or am I being completely paranoid?
'New Google music service launch imminent' (TechCrunch). As I was saying...everywhere...
ReplyDeleteIt would be an episode, that's for sure. But there's one thing that I *hope* would happen, that would make the purchase good -- both for me (a bbadmin) and for the users.
ReplyDeleteGoogle has _fantastic_ engineering. Blackboard has _poor_ software engineering. Google's coders, given enough time, might be able to unbreak what's been broken for 10 years. Blackboard's programmers seem to be doing an "OK" job with this, but there's still no user testing, user experience engineering, or full regression testing (!!!) going on. Which is depressing. The product also hasn't changed that much in 10 years, it still uses frames. Really, release 9 is a garish combination of 10 years worth of tech stack. The application is in terrible need of a ground up re-write and Google's coders could definitely do it. Then bang it through the same kind of testing and perpetual beta that gmail went through Google Learn Release 10 from Google? I can dream.
And on second thought, maybe they're just after BB's patent/IP/etc warchest.
ReplyDeleteI think you are probably right, Starbuck3733T! An acquisition - were it to happen - would be entirely for strategic purposes. As you say, BB is the accumulation of years of development and software engineering. Google would start from scratch and produce something lean and mean.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what patents BB have... It never occurred to me that they would have pioneered anything new, inventive or novel - but they are bound to have a few. And then there are the registered trademarks, of course...
Hi George,
ReplyDeleteA point of clarification on Edge Hill's adoption of GoogleMail. We have only rolled out GoogleMail for new students from September. Existing students are still using Novell Groupwise although it is likely these will be given the option of migrating to GoogleMail in the next six months. There are no plans to deploy GoogleMail for staff accounts.
Regards,
@MikeNolan
Hi Mike,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the clarification! I wasn't meaning to single out Edge Hill as many other institutions are doing the same thing. Edge Hill was the first that came to mind! I probably should have anonymised the post, methinks!
It'll be interesting to see how many students take the option to migrate to GMail...
I blogged on some of this too. Proper contingencies are needed. Do HEIs have them? Especially in the face of massive public sector spending cuts?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.learnex.dmu.ac.uk/?p=1764
I enjoyed your blog posting ('Google, Microsoft and HE: outsourcing the student and staff experience'), Richard. My discussion of Google ubiquity was obviously in more general terms; but you really get to the crux of the matter within an HE context by analysing the implications at a high level of granularity. Bravo!
ReplyDeleteIs this the beginning of Google being reined in? 'Google faces anti-monopoly probe by European Commission' - Guardian.
ReplyDelete