Google's plans to bring AI to education make its dominance in classrooms more alarming

With schools reopening worldwide, Google has worked hard to ensure the big market gains it made in 2020 can be sustained and strengthened as students return to physical rather than virtual classrooms. With user numbers of its digital learning platform, Google Classroom, up to 150 million from 40 million just a year before, it announced a new "road map" for the platform in early 2021. "As more teachers use Classroom as their'hub' of learning during the pandemic, many schools are treating it as their learning management system (LMS)," wrote Classroom's program manager. "While we didn't set out to create an LMS, Classroom is committed to meeting the evolving needs of schools." The road map for Classroom as a school LMS was just one plan laid out at its annual Learning with Google conference, which also included the launch of 40 new Chromebook laptop models alongside feature upgrades across its educational products.