Why Buy Microsoft Milk When the Google Cow Is Free? 409
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."
Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does Apple look better?
dangerous assumption (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
She is making a dangerous assumption that if tax revenues increased the extra would be spent on schools
Cloud only applications are a disaster (Score:3, Insightful)
2) Cloud office suites make you 100% dependent on their apps. Sure... Google uses "open formats" but as they add features and other companies add features, they lose formatting compatibility.
3) Here kid, the first one is free. Using free cloud software is great while it's free. Where's the guarantee that it will always be free? When it's not free, how much will it cost? Will I actually be able to move?
4) Are you seriously asking me to trust Microsoft, Google or Apple more than the other? This just is laughable. They're all a bunch of crooks. The only difference is, at least for now, Microsoft has governments around the world already treating them like crooks, so they at least have to try to be honest. Apple makes absolutely no pretenses of being an honest player and Google... they scare the shit out of me.
In the end, the best solution is a cloud player which has a clear means of licensing their software and running it within your organization without them being involved. So far as I know, Google doesn't even try for this. Microsoft does have a product, but it's not easy to get.
So for now, I'll use desktop and mobile apps and cloud storage. Thank you very much.
P.S. - It's scary how I am not nearly as worried about government spying, I simply accept it as part of life. But Google really scares the shit out of me.
Similarly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:dangerous assumption (Score:2, Insightful)
Being a Teachers Union, when they say fund schools it means themselves. But you are right, it doesn't mean it will be spent there.
why not LibreOffice? (Score:3, Insightful)
'Why would we use Google Docs over like Microsoft Word?'
Stupid question:
- Word should be compared with LibreOffice
- GoogleDocs should be compared with Office 365
Bespoke Handcrafted Libre (Score:5, Insightful)
The FOSS movement should work to educate such people. Perhaps we should call it Bespoke Handcrafted Libre FOSS because some people equate "free" with "cheap and nasty"
Re: Apple? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Similarly... (Score:4, Insightful)
School administrators are as thick as horseshit. They are not proactive; they only learn things when other people make pretty presentations and suggest benefits that sound good, despite not necessarily being the best for the school. Google and Microsoft are known companies, with huge marketing budgets and lobbying power. LibreOffice is developed by... who? Do you even know? I'll tell you who - a non-profit called The Document Foundation, an organization that I doubt most LO users would even know existed. Not to discredit their hard work of course, but they have virtually no marketing budget and clout. How do you compete with the big guys in making your product an alternative? Word of mouth? Hah!
We know about LO because we're geeks and software is our interest. School admins are not, and instead listen to "trusted" businesses to pitch their products. LO has no chance, because of our fucked up world.
No price != No cost (Score:5, Insightful)
'Why would we use Google Docs over like Microsoft Word?' a teacher asked the class. 'Because it's free!' exclaimed a grinning Schmidt.
It is NOT free. It might not involve a cash outlay but Google isn't providing Google Docs out of the goodness of their heart. You are paying with personal information that they can then sell to others who want to advertise to you. You are trading Google something, it's just not cash. Nothing wrong with that in principle but Eric Schmidt pretending there is no cost is disingenuous. When making this deal with teachers to get personal information of minors it's borderline creepy.
Not the same thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, google is not necessarily free.
Re:Apple? (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple recently made their iWork office suite free. New Macs now come with it pre-installed. That's a pretty good deal compared to the prices for MS office: http://www.microsoftstore.com/... [microsoftstore.com]
Is it free as in bundled with an expensive Mac, or can I get it for free without buying a Mac (download link?)
Good enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Free isn't as important as "good enough". Just because something's free doesn't mean we all dive into it - it has to be *AT LEAST* good enough as well.
The problem MS has is that things like Google Apps for Education"good enough" for almost everyone's uses and - to schools - free. I've put entire schools onto it. Why not? Gigabytes of "always up" storage, accessible from web, PC, Android, etc. Gigabyte-sized inboxes with one of the best email services around (GMail). Integration into your AD if you desire but also manual / CSV user/group management. Enforced signatures on email, group permissioning, all kinds of integration and automation, and switching to them is just a matter of changing your MX record once on any domain you'd like them to handle (and you can always change it back).
Google Apps so that people can work from home on the same documents they created in school. No need to spend fortunes on Office licensing just so that that temporary, occasional member of staff can edit a document.
Google Calendar, which does 99% of whatever I've seen people actually use Exchange calendaring for, with unlimited calendars, no licence fees, no software installation, no onerous browser requirements, no need to expose your servers to the world.
I've seen schools do most of their timetabling through Google Calendar - it's free and good enough, such that they haven't bothered to look for alternatives because, well, why? They don't have any problems with what it does or does not do.
That's before you even get into Google Pages, all the other stuff they offer and their Android device management (which is great - set policies, install apps and remote wipe Android devices remotely for everything in your Google "domain").
Sure, there are power-users somewhere that have problems with it - I am a school network manager and I certainly had other things that I used and just used, say, IMAP or iCal formats to put the data into the things I wanted it in, but hell - for 99.9% of my users it was more than good enough and, because we were a school, free. I've even seen a much larger school use it just to clear some space on their servers so they don't have to upgrade RAID. Give everyone 5Gb of Drive storage and suddenly all that junk they "must have" on their accounts isn't as important any more.
And, if you ask, they will guarantee that your data stays under EU control - and they have a standard EULA that states just that or schools in the EU wouldn't be able to touch them.
Free is one thing, but Google Apps etc. is good enough that I've actually paid for it (more storage etc.) in the past and would pay again for it in the future. But there are numerous places I've worked where "free" and "more than good enough" are the terms that won the decision. Even in places with annually recurring MS licenses under educational licensing deals anyway.
Re:Similarly... (Score:5, Insightful)
The matter of trust is a personal descision here which I'll simply respect.
But the example with the document sharing is a strawmen, as sharing secret document on a cloud drive with the wrong person is as easy as emailing the same document from a non-cloud storage to the wrong person.
Re:No price != No cost (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the point that hasn't sunken into the people who use Google services. You are not the customer.
The advertisers are the customer and you are the product.
Re: Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
The car costs $30,000, sir. But we throw in the engine for free!
Re:Pay more in taxes (time to bitch) (Score:3, Insightful)
You really don't understand how unions and contracts work, do you? It is not about protecting the poorest workers - why would any union member want to do that? It makes more work for everyone else and makes all look bad. It is about making sure the contract is followed (especially language pertaining to discipline and dismissal) in each and every case.
If a lousy worker is being kept around it is because a manager somewhere is too lazy to do their job and get rid of the worker.
Too many would rather pawn-off a bad worker on another department or group rather than document the problems, attempt corrective actions, and dismiss the worker if that action doesn't improve performance.
Re:Not the only reason..... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is still the Free Software Stigma. Especially for desktop software.
For the most part their arguments against it are rather irrational however, they are persistent.
Argument 1: Free Software comes with no one to sue if things go bad. Now granted MS,Google and the others have a rather iron clad ULA. But it is like the lottery if something happens that there is a gap in the ULA then bang they can sue for damages.
Argument 2: No official support. Now granted there are a lot of online resources, and companies willing to support the products. However there isn't that nice and comfy feeling that you can get the guys from the main source to come in and get things going for you.
Argument 3: Compatibility/Not widely used. Now many open source tools are more widely used then people think, and many tools are very compatible, often more compatible then the upgraded version of the commercial product. However there is that fear that I am the one who is using the next BetaMax in software. For education in technology they incorrectly think teaching people to use office will train the kids to work in business... However it is often the case the products themselves will be so out of date when they graduate that the office only features would be so different that they need to relearn them.
To expand on argument 3. When I was a kid my school felt it was important to avoid Mac's and focus more on PCs with MS DOS. For the fact that MS DOS based systems were the market leader. However, by the time I graduated Windows has taken over So all the skills learned on using a Mac would have transitioned better then using DOS (Especially the dos training was, read the label and run the .EXE, .BAT, or .COM file). While the Mac training had you using more OS features such as copying files, windows management.
Re:Apple? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because they can undercut initial bids to induce vendor lock-in and sell tons of hardware.
The drawback, of course, is that your school's IT department will only have the following conversation:
IT: Hey, we're having trouble with managing these iPads--
Apple: Sorry, iPads are not an enterprise product. It's not designed to be managed centrally.
IT: But you sold us 6,000 of these iPads and told us they would work great in our schools.
Apple: Yes, but it's not an enterprise product. We don't support any kind of central management.
IT: But... each iPad needs an Apple ID, and lots of apps use the ID as the user's name. But the ID can't be changed easily. How are we supposed to create and update 6,000 Apple IDs every year? And there's no way to stop the students from resetting the iPad, particularly if they know the Apple ID.
Apple: We're sorry, but iPads are a consumer product.
IT: But you said they work great in schools.
Apple: Yes, they do. Kids and teachers love them!
IT: Don't you understand the use case for a school? Didn't you even try to?
Apple: Schools are full of people. People are consumers. Consumers buy our products. Consumers love our products. See, it's very simple!
Re:Not the only reason..... (Score:4, Insightful)
1: When is the last time anyone with less than 1000 employees was able to sue a software manufacturer for damages? I want someone with personal experience, not a link. It's just not realistic. Besides, why would you sue over a productivity suite... it's not a customer ERP system?
2: How many times have you needed to contact MS support for an issue with Word? Even Outlook doesn't need support, Exchange does. There is no need for official support for 99% of uses of productivity software.
3: This one gains some traction. That's why I only tried the switch in the plant where none of the users had any idea they were using "MS Office" or "Libre Office". They are mostly consumers of information, and that's pretty easy to switch to another version. Also I recently had to install Libre in the office so a user could open really old
Feel free to use any of those if you need to explain why you are installing free software instead of paying $300 per seat.
Re: Apple? (Score:4, Insightful)
why should I think that apple isn't farming data like google? the only reason google does it is because there are metric tons of cash to be made. I don't see how apple has any profit motive to exploit their customer data. in the limited use of iAds, the industry hates them because apple refuses to share any identifying info.
Re:Not the only reason..... (Score:2, Insightful)
how exactly is updating from openoffict to libreoffice any more difficult then updating from ms office 2010 to ms office 2013?
Re:My experience is just the opposite (Score:2, Insightful)
If the ribbon is your biggest problem with Office, you aren't the kind of person that matters.
People who matter are the ones USING the office products, not the ones who's spend their time dilly dallying with some interface bit they can't seem to get over.
Its really not that big of a deal once you stop making it a big deal. The fact that 7 years later ... you're still freaking out about it, tells us that you don't actually do shit in your office suit or you'd have something that actually matters to bitch about.
Move on, if you ignore it, it really doesn't matter.