Privacy concerns about products of Google is nothing new, and the company regularly faces scrutiny in many countries over its data collection and advertising practices.
So after Denmark and the Dutch government decided to restrict the use of Google Chrome and ChromeOS in schools due to data privacy issues.
The Dutch Ministry of Education has placed restrictions on the use of Chrome and ChromeOS in schools until at least August 2023. This move was initiated for several reasons. One of them is that no one knows how much data is collected from them schoolchildren and shared with advertising partners. Of course for a long time there has been no transparency about where the data is actually stored.
The Ministry's investigators they signed a letter to the Dutch Parliament explaining their concerns and recommended that immediate measures be taken for privacy and data security when using the aforementioned Google products. They also reported that they held meetings with several major tech companies, including Google, Microsoft and Zoom, to protection data and the need to increase transparency about how user data is used by their respective products.
Google has agreed to release new versions of Chrome and ChromeOS by next year, promising that they will better comply with the requirements of the Dutch education sector. Researchers will review these versions at launch before they are given the green light.
Until August 2023, schools can still use existing versions of Chrome and ChromeOS, provided they implement all security and privacy measures recommended by the Dutch Ministry of Education.
