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Google fucked a whole generation with Chromebooks, and now they're fucking the next generation with AI
(slrpnk.net)
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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It's tough. No one is supplying hardware below cost and losing money. They're cheap because by offering only a chrome browser, you don't need much hardware. Most everything was headed online anyway because with the advent of Mac popularity, no one wanted to put out little pieces of software for both Windows and Mac.
Chromebooks weren't unpopular at the start just because, they kicked around until the market shifted enough to everything being online and until schoolboards adopted the "laptop for everyone" mentality. Then schoolboards adopted them because they were cheap cheap cheap. I recall a teacher saying they were also good because it meant everyone was on the exact same office suite (google docs). No different versions where the buttons were in different places, no 2010 version, 365 version, whatever. Everyone had the exact same version. Something broken? Factory reset was dead easy. No techs needed.
In addition, carts of MS Windows computers (before everyone went 1-to-1) were not great in the classroom - students would save documents to the C drive and then the next day, on a different computer, they shockingly couldn't find their documents. When my school had a legacy MS windows cart and a couple of Chromebook carts, the students would groan and grumble if their class ended up getting the MS Windows cart.
Also, because MS Windows had (and still has) much higher hardware requirements, the MS Win computers were much more expensive AND time consuming for the techs to maintain. Couldn't really justify throwing out and replacing a $1000 computer (back in the day). A $200 Chromebook, no big deal. And, with 1-to-1, we can try to get the parents to pay to replace a broken Chromebook. I don't think we could ask them to replace a much more expensive MS Windows computer.
I added that a factory reset was dead easy. Don't have to call in techs to troubleshoot and run fixes, reinstall things, lock everything down again. Just factory reset and you're done.