Is edugeek biased?

[psydii]

It maybe a clickbait title, but, are we?  

Over the last few years, I have noticed* fewer google/workspace related threads or mentions, and many more threads or comments like "we're moving from Workspace to 365".  Is it that Google schools are happy, content, and silent; or is it that actually Google is losing ground?  Or perhaps is it that large Google-first MATs aren't well represented here?

*of course I could be wrong.

[andy_b]

Can we add Special into the mix 😀

[TechMonkey]

As there is no mention of independents or sixth forms/colleges/universities in the poll then yes, yes it is! 😋

[6Foot2]

Voted on behalf of my last place of work, which is currently: MAT (member school) - Secondary, Microsoft 365.

 

When I started working there, it was: LA - Secondary (best match since it was in a partnership with other schools, but not a trust, and it did not, at that time, have academy status)

[6Foot2]

19 minutes ago, TechMonkey said:

As there is no mention of independents or sixth forms/colleges/universities in the poll then yes, yes it is! 😋

 

A slightly fuller list:

 

Alternative Phases & Specialised Provision

• LA or Standalone Academy – All-Through / Special / Alternative Provision (Microsoft 365 / Google)
• MAT (Central IT) – Mostly All-Through / Special / Alternative Provision (Microsoft 365 / Google)
• MAT (Member School) – All-Through / Special / Alternative Provision (Microsoft 365 / Google)

Post-16 / Further Education

• Standalone Sixth Form or FE College (Microsoft 365 / Google)
• MAT (Central IT) – Post-16 / College (Microsoft 365 / Google)
• MAT (Member School) – Post-16 / College (Microsoft 365 / Google)

Independent (Private) Sector

• Independent School – Primary / Secondary / All-Through (Microsoft 365 / Google)

Devolved Nations (Centralised Platforms)

• Scotland (Local Authority via Glow) – Primary / Secondary (Microsoft 365 / Google)
• Wales (Maintained via Hwb) – Primary / Secondary (Microsoft 365 / Google)
• Northern Ireland (EA via C2k) – Primary / Secondary (Microsoft 365)

[Chris_Cook]

When you say mostly, are you basing that on number of schools/sites or number of students?

[LeMarchand]

I need three votes (1/school).

[dcwhitworth]

In our trust primaries are on Google, secondaries in 365, so nothing on that list fits.

[synaesthesia]

Google place here, and I'm far from alone in say we wish we weren't

Each has their foibles but being Google in a Windows environment can absolutely do one. It'd work quite well if we were chromebooked out across the board but nope.

FIrmly of the opinion that either is a great option *when executed properly and with forethought*

[jthompson]

I think perhaps Gemini is answering people's Google Workspace queries well enough to create a noticeable lull on here.

 

I've always found MS admin pages give me a sense of a tangled, incoherent, inconsistent mess, whereas Google Admin is far less so, with better written documentation.

 

Add in the nightmarish dimension that is MS licensing, with all of the vague conditionality that that introduces, and I really struggle to get on with it at all.

[TheHyperTechie]

I think it's because Google Workspace is just much easier to setup, configure and maintain compared to O365 (I have used and configured both for schools). Therefore, we see less threads and topics asking for guidance and troubleshooting. I think Google Workspace is less popular here, but in America it leads compared to Windows/O365. Like @jthompson mentioned, no licensing issues either, (O365 licensing is a very popular topic on here).

[psydii]

 

special schools - just match against phase/governance.

Independent schools - chains use MAT, otherwise LA/Stand Alone.

16-19 is  secondary for the purpose of this fantastically well designed sector survey.

Not-England - We're all familiar with understanding that 11-18 is   "K12" when it comes to licences. Just match as close as you can. Maybe put clarification in the comments.

Mostly primary/vs secondary dominated trusts. Yeah, very subjective sorry. You know in your gut which phase the MAT leadership put the greatest weight upon. Choose that one.

On Gemini solving admins problems - I think equally true of copilot - I get the feeling everything here is quieter than it was.... ...but I first had this thought about bias vs decline in Google Workspace usage before ChatGPT breached the public awareness.   But yes, it occurred to me (or might even have been suggest to here previously) that Google Admins need to ask fewer questions because things just work better. (counterpoint - things work just fine over in 365 - there are just a good deal more gui-exposed settings that can be twiddled... but this survey wont expose that, just whether there is a bias between the number of schools being managed,  and Primary vs Secondary when it comes to platforms in use by edugeek members.

 

Edited September 29 by psydii
their/there

[Davit2005]

+1 Include Universities which I suspect are going to be mostly O365. I'am sure there are Uni IT support people on this platform, lol.

 

First deployed Live@Edu in 2010 to replace RM easymail but deployed mostly O365 since that, never deployed Google workspace.

Edited September 29 by Davit2005

[synaesthesia]

1 hour ago, jthompson said:

I think perhaps Gemini is answering people's Google Workspace queries well enough to create a noticeable lull on here.

 

I've always found MS admin pages give me a sense of a tangled, incoherent, inconsistent mess, whereas Google Admin is far less so, with better written documentation.

 

Add in the nightmarish dimension that is MS licensing, with all of the vague conditionality that that introduces, and I really struggle to get on with it at all.

Gemini is the last place to go to for anything Google related - it's knowledge of it's own systems is so poor that I would prefer to figure it out myself or come here. It's honestly awful!

[mikes]

We use both here (secondary school LA). Staff can choose to use MS or Google, most still use our legacy on premises MS system (office and file shares), our biggest cloud platform is Google as every staff member uses it for Classroom. Not many staff use the MS cloud platform.  Though we are moving over to the Welsh govt Hwb soon, they also offer both so really it is their choice not mine. 

Both are closed source proprietary platforms so I'm really not that bothered by the choice. I'd have more enthusiasm if we were moving over to an open source solution, perhaps UK or even EU wide (but I'd also like to be an officer onboard a starship so we know how likely both will be!)  But Google I think abstracts things a bit too much e.g. it doesn't show where a file is stored.  You could be working on a big document unknowingly to you, it was created by a user who has now left, shared to you, and you are editing a file that is actually on their users' documents. It's very easy to end up with these situations on the Google platform

[psydii]

1 minute ago, mikes said:

You could be working on a big document unknowingly to you, it was created by a user who has now left, shared to you, and you are editing a file that is actually on their users' documents. It's very easy to end up with these situations on the Google platform

Microsoft have done a really surprisingly good job of bring this particular feature to 365. It's far from a perfect implementation, but it is now very easy to loose track of where a file really is.

[FN-GM]

I don't work in education anymore, no option for me...

[DalekSec]

Used to work in Private Schools, now in the Private Sector

[BKGarry]

Well how about this one, LA Foundation Secondary School, with 365, Google and MacOS devices and also part of a cooperative trust, where we are all individual LA schools but work together on things

[pete]

We support both, though email lives on 365 for consistency.

 

IME neither have particularly good documentation once you get into the weeds and need accurate info on specific niche things because how the thing works/is configured changes and the customer-facing documentation isn't updated at the same time.

 

At one point I'd have said we'd lean more towards Workspace if we went 1-2-1, but given the price of hardware at the moment that's not going to happen for a while.

[Hokalus]

No longer on the IT side of things, but International Through-school (2-18) that's part of a large chain. Centralised IT with 365 (was previously Google before acquisition, transitioned to match rest of group). 

 

Not really an option listed that fits, but matches a move from Google to 365 due to becoming part of a bigger group.

[dmj]

Not Edu; 4 sites across EU, UK and US. all Google

[LeMarchand]

3 Primary. 1 is MS, 2 are Google.

[Sephiroth]

Single LA secondary.

 

Administration and specialist subjects (ICT, DT, Photography, Music, Art) use Windows and MS Office;  everyone else is on Google Workspace. Teachers all have chromebooks and all classrooms have chrome desktops. Email is in Google and almost all document storage is Google Drive.

 

Back-end is mostly MS servers with an on-prem AD structure synced to Google for authentication.

 

There are some quirks, but for the most part this setup works well for us. the majority of the issues we have are because Google works in a very different way to traditional administration methods.

[dmj]

On 30/09/2026 at 12:32, Sephiroth said:

Administration and specialist subjects (ICT, DT, Photography, Music, Art) use Windows and MS Office;  everyone else is on Google Workspace.

It's weird how this works out. Back when we did MS-> Google transition which was around 2015 (I forget, it's been a long time). Our ICT, DT, Art and admin teams were really quick to move over all their lessons to Chromebooks. We had some issues from DT (literally two unsupported applications) but the majority objection was actually from maths ! 

I'm pretty sure it comes down to the people rather than what they are teaching, many immediately saw the benefits and adapted their teaching to suit. Many did not. It usually takes some insistence from the HT.