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Windows IT

You Can Now Manage Windows 10 Devices Through G Suite (zdnet.com) 55

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Google has announced the general availability of a long-awaited feature -- the ability to manage Windows 10 devices through G Suite. From a report: Until today, companies that used G Suite to manage corporate endpoints could only enroll Android, iOS, Chrome, and Jamboard devices. Once enrolled in a G Suite enterprise plan, system administrators at these companies would have full control over the enrolled devices, to ensure that company data was safeguarded from sloppy employees. G Suite admins could enforce security policies related to login operations, file storage, encryption, and other features. Starting this week, the same features are now also available for working with Windows 10 devices, Google announced in a blog post. These include the ability to, among other things: Log into Windows 10 systems using a Google account, control Windows 10 update rules, and change Windows 10 settings remotely.
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You Can Now Manage Windows 10 Devices Through G Suite More

You Can Now Manage Windows 10 Devices Through G Suite

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  • I'll wait (Score:3)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @01:22PM (#60001248)

    ...until I can do it in a G-string.

  • Is there anything Google can't do?

  • Barbarians at the gates (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PingSpike ( 947548 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @01:28PM (#60001280)
    This is actually a pretty clever way to assault Microsoft's castle, assuming Google somehow pulls it off. Now watch as MS changes their API so rapidly that google (or probably everyone, including MS themselves) can keep up. Its going to be a bloodbath, and the users will supply the blood!

    • Novell Directory Services, a quarter century later (Score:4, Informative)

      by mosel-saar-ruwer ( 732341 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @03:07PM (#60001544)
      This is just Novell Directory Services & ZEN management & Word perfect & BorderManager all over again.

      Is there anything of value which Eric Schmidt failed to destroy and/or steal from Novell, back in the day?

      Google sent Eric Schmidt in to ruin Novell just like it sent in to that witch to destroy Yahoo email so that gmail could save the day.

      How can the goyische sheep be so stupid as to allow in the wolves to gobble up all the family treasures?

      Google is like the brain-dead executives in Hollyweird who can't think of anything new stories to tell and instead have to make remakes of remakes of remakes of remakes of films from back in the day when the goyim could still write original scripts for them.

      Google is now reduced to making remakes of remakes of remakes of old software in a desperate attempt to stay relevant.

      • That's an interesting conspiracy theory I hadn't considered, that Schmidt and Mayer were basically sent into sabotage other companies while appearing to be their actual leaders.

        Timeline is a problem with Schmidt, he was the head of Novel before Google was even founded, unless you're imagining some super long game where Novel was seen as a possible real competitor to Google, which seems unlikely considering how hidebound Novel was to being both an operating system and an application vendor.

        It works for Mayer

    • Systems in domain mode will not work with this.
      And windows 10 home will just block the gpos used by this.

    • Why would they change their API, they wrote and published the API specifically so even their competitors would use and support Windows 10 devices. Google is pretty much a bit player in this area so at least currently they are no threat and certainly not one they would sacrifice their entire ecosystem to block.

  • Windows 10 only? Damn (Score:3)

    by slaker ( 53818 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @01:40PM (#60001320)

    I'd be really excited by this if it supported Windows 7 as well. I have a pretty large number of SMB clients that just won't ditch 7, and they're also usually the ones who are on GSuite services. I suppose there's no reason for Google to add support for an otherwise unsupported OS, but it's still very common in business settings.

    • Re:Windows 10 only? Damn (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ayanami_R ( 1725178 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @01:48PM (#60001340)

      I fired my clients doing this. I don't want to be around when that decision bites them in the ass.

      • Well, I never hire anyone who comes to the interview with an iDevice, let alone wears iEarrings (robot antenna (Airpods)), or uses Windows or macOS as his main OS, or thinks systemd is a good idea.

      • So many MSPs won't, as long as they have the recommendations and reasons for upgrading on paper and acknowledged by the client.

        Because when it does bite the client in the ass, they want to be there to sell the upgrade (which will have already sold itself) and clean up the mess.

        My agreement with you on this is that the mess is always a last minute crisis and a massive opportunity cost that sacrifices good customers' services and seldom results in an experience where you're not blamed anyway. Plus these are

      • Re:Windows 10 only? Damn (Score:4, Informative)

        by cusco ( 717999 ) <brian@bixby.gmail@com> on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @06:01PM (#60002230)

        You must not have clients who use very expensive long-lived equipment. There are shitloads of hardware out there like MRI machines, sawmills, building automation systems, etc. etc. which are running anything from DOS to Win95 to XP to Win7 because there is no upgrade path for the control software. When a company spends $50,000-$5,000,000 on a piece of hardware they're not going to discard it because the OS is considered obsolete.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by pdscomp ( 637112 )
          That isn't the use case of this service though... This is providing a Google-provided MDM-type device management essentailly for Windows 10 corporate laptops similar to what you can already do with Android and iPhone. I have more one-off Oscilliscopes, PXE chassis, LabView boxes etc. in my environment than I'd care to admit running out-of-date embedded Windows OSes--none of these have a web browser installed or are even connected to a network where they could go out and access Google. They either have the

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by cusco ( 717999 )

            I was responding to the poster who had "fired his clients" who were running out of date OSs. I work in physical security, a lot of that equipment is meant to last 20-30 years, and have been around plenty of other hardware for which the control software has no viable upgrade path. Until recently a local utility had a knee-high pile of 386 laptops running DOS 3 because the control hardware wouldn't run on anything higher (and no, emulation wouldn't work). They had bought a half million dollar communication

        • If I had clients that had those devices and wanted to be cloud joined to something like google then yeah damn straight I would fire them in a hearbeat. nothing wrong with being stuck with legacy devices like that, expecting to be able to manage them via cloud solution like google is just insanity I would want no part of.

    • but it's still very common in business settings

      I understand it being common in the consumer world but we should not in any way shape or form be encouraging or making it in any way easier for business to continue to use outdated software with security vulnerabilities.

      And before someone talks about ${OLD_EXPENSIVE_PIECE_OF_HARDWARE} let me preempt you by say, WTF is that doing on a remotely managed network!

    • Considering that extending the support for Windows 7 cost more than a Windows 10 license, it may look like they have chosen to depend their company's future on unpatched computers. I would really like the formal risk assessment they have done for that...
  • That could be big.!

    But our company moved away from G Suite and deep into SharePoint Office365 set up. HQ says it is not motivated by any desire to save money and it is for "productivity enhancements". Accountants heavy into Excel and lawyers deep into Word hated G Suite it seems. And they made enough fuss and forced the switch, it seems.

    Functionally G Suite used to be miles ahead of MS when it came to collaborative editing. But MS has caught up. MS is leveraging its huge pre-installed base of native apps

    • (Example: Email "All leads, please update the hardware needs for the next year in this google doc link". Immediate spike in several hundred people editing the doc simultaneously. Google handled it well. Microsoft is struggling there. ).

      Why would you ever want to be able to do things this way anyways?

      This "simultaneously editing a document" is neat, but also stupid. A solution looking for a problem.

      • The only thing accounting understands is Excel. Billion dollar ledgers are balanced by home grown macros written by accountants. They want team leads to enter data into a spreadsheet directly. Developers and team leads are pretty low in the hierarchy. They will do what they are told to do to get a measly 1TB RAM upgrade.

        Why cant IT create a simple page where people post their data and it collects and builds a spreadsheet for the accounting? Yeah, good question. But you are talking to the choir here. IT wo

        • I never got the "IT this and that".
          What IT is supposed to do is a management issue. If the accountants do not have the tools they need, their managed have failed, not IT.

      • This "simultaneously editing a document" is neat, but also stupid. A solution looking for a problem.

        I guess you've never worked in a team that need to produce one final document. ... Or never been the person in charge of preparing that final document. It's so much easier to just throw a template on sharepoint and let people at it and tell them "the document needs to be final on Thursday". I have better things to do than chase people and hold their hands.

  • I have an offline account for a reason. I'm forced to use Windows 10 and the offline account is the only refuge of sanity.

  • Does this mean we can lose the domain, and along with it the need for an extra $100 per station to buy Pro versions of Win 10?

    The only things we use Pro versions for are Group Policy and WSUS, which only (really) work on domains. If G-suite can do the management without needing a domain, home versions (which can’t join domains) should work fine!

  • I trust my employees more than Google (Score:3)

    by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @02:44PM (#60001490)

    or Microsoft.

    After all *I* vetted them.
    As opposed to condensed Google (G Suite) employees and condensed MS emoyees (Windows), which, if they were employees, would literally not even pass the criminal record test.

  • Why when AD controllers can do that and more?

  • So they can remove the local admin form an system that only has one user?
    also force cloud login to an laptop?? At least you can join wifi (Not ones with any wifi captive portal)

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