Skip to main content

Google’s G Suite for Education app platform now has over 70 million users

Google’s concerted push into the education market is paying off. On Tuesday, the search giant announced that G Suite for Education, previously Google Apps for Education, now counts more than 70 million users among its ranks. That’s up from 60 million users a year ago and 50 million users in October 2015.

G Suite for Education, for the uninitiated, is a collection of cloud-powered apps aimed at grade schools, high schools, and institutions of higher learning. It comprises the Mountain View, California-based company’s core collection of cloud-powered apps, including its Gmail email client, Docs document editor, Drive cloud storage locker, Calendar app, Hangouts chat platform, and more. And it boasts “intelligent features” that “make work easier and bring teachers and students together,” according to the company.

Recommended Videos

Among those features is Explore, a machine learning-powered functionality that automatically translates questions into formulas and offers instant answers, finds related documents in Drive, and performs image searches. It also helps schedule meeting times when invitees are free (or suggests times across groups where conflicts are easiest to resolve), and applies dynamic layout suggestions that “help content shine.”

During a press conference, Rajen Sheth, Google’s senior director of product management for Chrome for Business and Education, said that more than 20 million Chromebooks are now in active use in schools on a weekly basis. Toward the end of 2015, sales of Chromebooks accounted for more than half of all devices sold for grades K-12 in the U.S.

“The Chromebook is going from being just a laptop to something that is a lot more versatile and dynamic […] such that [original equipment manufacturers] can produce many great devices,” Sheth said. “[What] that’s going to do is it’s going to open up the possibilities for OEMs to have an even wider variety of form factors.”

The announcement comes on the heels of new G Suite for Education updates. Google rolled out weekly student progress reports and annotations in August, and it updated the Classroom app, the central hub through which teachers dole out digital homework, with customization features. Shortly after, it added the ability for teachers to attach images to online quizzes and tests, and it launched Cast for Education, a tool that allows teachers and students to fling publicly available videos through school wireless networks,

Earlier this week, Google announced that more than half a million students in the U.K. have used Google Expeditions and the company’s Cardboard viewer to take virtual reality “field trips” to outer space and historical sites overseas, as well as inside the human body. It added 58 new destinations to the Expeditions repository, including Bermuda, Canada, and the Sargasso Sea — for a total of 500 — and updated 35 of the most popular Expeditions with “more detailed” photos, videos, and sound. Finally, it partnered with the British Museum and National Trust for Scotland for Expeditions exploring the Mayan ruins of Quiriguá, as well as Guatemala and a Victorian-era printing factory.

Kyle Wiggers
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kyle Wiggers is a writer, Web designer, and podcaster with an acute interest in all things tech. When not reviewing gadgets…
How to change margins in Google Docs
Laptop Working from Home

When you create a document in Google Docs, you may need to adjust the space between the edge of the page and the content -- the margins. For instance, many professors have requirements for the margin sizes you must use for college papers.

You can easily change the left, right, top, and bottom margins in Google Docs and have a few different ways to do it.

Read more
What is Microsoft Teams? How to use the collaboration app
A close-up of someone using Microsoft Teams on a laptop for a videoconference.

Online team collaboration is the new norm as companies spread their workforce across the globe. Gone are the days of primarily relying on group emails, as teams can now work together in real time using an instant chat-style interface, no matter where they are.

Using Microsoft Teams affords video conferencing, real-time discussions, document sharing and editing, and more for companies and corporations. It's one of many collaboration tools designed to bring company workers together in an online space. It’s not designed for communicating with family and friends, but for colleagues and clients.

Read more
Microsoft Word vs. Google Docs
A person using a laptop that displays various Microsoft Office apps.

For the last few decades, Microsoft Word has been the de facto standard for word processors across the working world. That's finally starting to shift, and it looks like one of Google's productivity apps is the heir apparent. The company's Google Docs solution (or to be specific, the integrated word processor) is cross-platform and interoperable, automatically syncs, is easily shareable, and perhaps best of all, is free.

However, using Google Docs proves it still has a long way to go before it can match all of Word's features -- Microsoft has been developing its word processor for over 30 years, after all, and millions still use Microsoft Word. Will Google Docs' low barrier to entry and cross-platform functionality win out? Let's break down each word processor in terms of features and capabilities to help you determine which is best for your needs.
How does each word processing program compare?
To put it lightly, Microsoft Word has an incredible advantage over Google Docs in terms of raw technical capability. From relatively humble beginnings in the 1980s, Microsoft has added new tools and options in each successive version. Most of the essential editing tools are available in Google Docs, but users who are used to Word will find it limited.

Read more