Google will need to learn what customer service is to get any traction in corporate land. I can get decent support from an actual person with a single MS subscription. With google for business we can't even get an email address.

More importantly, they need to understand legacy support and deprecation. AWS and MS have seller track records on backwards compatibility and EOL policies, while Google's feels worse than a garage startup at times.

Yes, and that’s what they’re doing through education with Chromebooks.

Education with Chromebooks is their strategy to get a foothold in corporate services? Seriously?

I can’t tell if this is a joke or serious.

Wasn't that a large part of Microsoft's strategy? I remember taking an "IT" class in high school in the early 00's that was 100% focused on learning MS Office. People bring what they know into the workplace.

It absolutely is. I started using google suite in 5th grade when my school district gave everyone an account. There's effectively 0 chance of me switching to Microsoft now. They're creating life long customers before the customers are able to think for themselves.

It’s a disaster though, honestly. Their partners are not very good and the support is really weak from Google. And ChromeOS, as much as I wanted to love it, just isn’t very polished. I spent a year with it and really found it lacking.

The volume purchasing story is a mess when compared to Apple’s offering.

My kids school has chromebooks, but according to the kids, they are always out of power, and they suck, so all the kids bring their own iPad instead.

The Chrome Enterprise sales team basically forced us to work with a third-party reseller. I won't name them, because they were nice enough folks, and it's not their fault that Google hates their customers.

The forums for the reseller were full of school IT folks trying to figure out how to provision hundreds of machines at a time. You can pay the reseller $15/device to have them do it, but it adds and indeterminate delay in receiving your devices. Many of the staffers were talking about having in-service days where they brought in as many teachers and staff as they could get to do the provisioning part. Ridiculous.

I know a lot of people are upset about the changes that Apple is making to "lock down" Mac OS. However, in my opinion, the more Apple makes Mac OS locked down like Chrome OS, the better. Leave VMs as the "escape valve" for developers who need a CLI or POXIS apps. Parallels and VMware are a better, and more consistent experience than Mac OS anyway.

In an enterprise environment, Apple Business Manager volume purchasing hooked up with a device management solution like JAMF is just a no-brainer. The hardware is far more reliable, the purchasing and provisioning are dead simple, and there's no third-party resellers unless you really want to work with one.

ed. Also, ChromeOS is still lacking critical productivity tools. Someday we'll get there, but not just yet.