Earlier this year (last month in fact), I encountered advertisements in GoogleApps for Education–something that wasn’t supposed to happen, especially since ads were switched off in the Google Admin panel.

Although the ads are now gone, this remained a “perception” issue for Google. Should it be scanning information in GAFE, accessing potentially sensitive information to provide better ads to its non-GAFE users? The answer is NO.

Today’s announcement from Google confirms that and directly addresses the perception issue. Will it be enough to resolve fears people have? Probably not unless you’re a dedicated GAFE user.

We’ve permanently removed the “enable/disable” toggle for ads in the Apps for Education Administrator console. This means ads in Apps for Education services are turned off and administrators no longer have the option or ability to turn ads in these services on.We’ve permanently removed all ads scanning in Gmail for Apps for Education, which means Google cannot collect or use student data in Apps for Education services for advertising purposes.

Source: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2014/04/protecting-students-with-google-apps.html

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