Google Changing a Generation?

David Politis is the founder and CEO of BetterCloud, the leading provider of Google Apps extensions that create security and management. Follow David @DavePolitis.

A few weeks ago, a school administrator shared a story about how he tried to block Google’s chat feature, but his students created a workaround. They opened up a new Google Doc, shared it with friends, and used the sidebar chat to talk with each other.

Although the behavior was worrisome to the administrator, it was hard not to be impressed at how cleverly these 7th graders interacted with the software. These students literally grew up on Google’s products, and that’s largely thanks to Google.

With kids as young as five and six immersed in Google’s product suite, which provider do you think they’ll choose when creating personal email accounts later on in life?

To some degree, this is already happening. Nearly half of Gmail’s overall user base is under 25, a statistic mirrored by the student bodies of American colleges and universities. Of the nation’s top 100 universities 66 have already gone Google.