UC-Davis Shuns Gmail over Google Buzz Privacy Gaffe
What one week bringeth, the next taketh away. One week after Google proudly said Oregon's entire public school system jumped aboard the Google Apps train for Web-based e-mail and documents, InformationWeek reported that the University of California-Davis has "ended its evaluation of Gmail as the official e-mail program for its 30,000 faculty and staff members." Now if this were Microsoft, it wouldn't be such a big deal. But this is Google, which is in an uphill battle to take collaboration market share from incumbents like Microsoft and IBM. Moreover, Google is the original, major cloud computing collaboration player, so it is at the vanguard of the shift to the cloud. Any company, school or organization that turns up its nose at Gmail, the cornerstone of Google Apps, merits some attention. UC-Davis officials told Google in a letter:
"[Many faculty] expressed concerns that our campus's commitment to protecting the privacy of their communications is not demonstrated by Google and that the appropriate safeguards are neither in place at this time nor planned for in the near future." That is such an odd statement, particularly when 3,000-plus schools, including all of Oregon, have gone Google. Update: It's also odd because, as a Google spokesperson informed me, 30,000+ UC-Davis students are already using Google Apps, with seemingly no plans to switch. Here's the kicker, and something that may continue to kick Google Apps in the pants for a while: UC-Davis pointed to Google's recent Google Buzz privacy mishap as the reason it questions Google's ability to preserve its students' and faculty members' data. Google Buzz sits atop Gmail, leveraging users' social contacts within that app. Unfortunately, Google initially launched this service to be auto-follow, shredding user privacy before changing it to auto-suggest. UC-Davis officials cited the recent letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt from the privacy commissioners of 10 countries, who blasted Google for its mishandling of Google Buzz. That comes even though Buzz is not part of the Gmail program being mulled by UC-Davis, and after Yale University postponed its move to Google Apps. Buzz doesn't seem to be the reason there so much as school politics and confusion. Be that as it may, there are two things we need to consider. First, this is the first time a school has publicly abandoned Gmail over Buzz, which again isn't even technically part of the Gmail offering under Google Apps Education Edition. Second, we need to see if this is a hypersensitive precaution taken by a maverick school or if it's the start of a trend. Microsoft Office 2010 is coming up next week as a cloud collaboration suite, and we can't simply ignore Microsoft's enterprise cachet because Google has been pushing the cloud forever and a day. The last thing Google needs right now is organizations choosing Office 2010 because of the Buzz privacy issue. If Office 2010 supplants Google Apps in many shops, it's game over for Google's aspirations to expand its cloud computing empire. |
Comments (3)
FYI UCD didn't abandon Gmail over "Buzz". Buzz was cited as *one* example of how privacy policies and settings can change at a whim and local control is not retained. The primary reasons that Gmail for faculty and staff has been shelved (at least temporarily) is that faculty objected based on their concerns over privacy and legality, and that Gmail's policies may run afoul of UC-wide policies about business data storage.
Also, saying it's an "odd statement, particularly when 3,000-plus schools, including all of Oregon, have gone Google..." assumes that one size must fit all for Universities, and that if 3,000 other Universities jumped off a cliff that all the others should follow their example. There's no logic whatsoever in that statement.
My opinions are my own and not an official representation of UCDavis or the University of California.
Posted by UCD Staffer | May 6, 2010 5:22 PM
Please, it was over Buzz. Google's Gmail track record is pretty good.
Posted by Clint Boulton
| May 6, 2010 5:32 PM
While I don't necessarily agree with UC-Davis' decision and I am grateful to Google for offering so much to education for free, I also see this as a useful rebuke to Google to encourage greater consideration for a university's corporate needs, not just those concerning privacy but also concerning online publishing, of huge and growing interest to all institutions. It all comes back to what the UCD staffer mentioned in retaining 'local control'.
For publishing, Google Apps offers an excellent web publishing system in 'Sites' but it falls down in important areas. For example, just now there is no reasonable form of moderation for which websites can go public on a domain in Sites - a simple on/off checkbox is provided in the Control Panel for allowing users to make websites under the university's domain go public and be searchable. Without having the checkbox ticked, not even administrators can make sites public. This forces the admin to decide whether to disable public websites for the domain or potentially open the floodgates to any form of content to appear under the institution's domain (and in a seemingly official capacity).
Because our institution already has some important public sites running via Sites, we don't have the option to switch this off and must continually check to see which new sites have appeared and been made public. As more sites appear, it is simply not manageable and I imagine where users are in the tens of thousands, probably not feasible.
It would seem like common sense to have a simple workflow where a user is able to 'propose' a site become public and then an admin must authorise it. Or even better would be for the admin to grant permissions allowing select user accounts to make a site public. However, Google haven't provided this.
Another example with publishing - search across sites within a domain also does not allow any kind of fine control over which sites appear. With site templates being used by users, this usually means that the search tool simply pulls up lots of useless content.
Basically, Google have this amazing service (itself a package of excellent services) but there's often a failure to understand where the system is an ill-fit for an academic institution and its online aims, including those that touch on privacy and publishing. From my experience, Google also isn't responsive to such issues. While many new interesting features appear very frequently, basic problems for academic usage still remain.
While I have huge admiration for Google 'giving back' to the academic world through Google Apps for Education (especially in these trying economic times) it is also frustrating that they don't appear to fully think things through from a university's administrative requirements. Although Buzz hasn't officially become a part of the Education Apps and it might seem a bit unfair to rebuke the Apps team on this, I can fully understand how the problems with its roll-out have discouraged UC-Davis' take up of Google Apps and I hope this encourages Google to consider more and get greater feedback from the community on institutional requirements and risks in their further development of the system. It all comes back to retaining 'local control'.
Posted by Ben Caesar | May 9, 2010 1:33 AM