Google announced that its G Suite for Education, which was previously known as Google Apps for Education, now has 70 million users worldwide. That’s up from 60 million a year ago and 50 million in October 2015. That’s a pretty steady growth rate for Google’s student/teacher-centric productivity suite.
Like all of Google’s productivity apps, G Suite for Education got its new name when Google launched the “G Suite” brand last September. It features all of the core Google tools (think Gmail, Docs, Drive, Hangouts, etc.), as well as Classroom, a tool that helps teachers and students communicate, share assignments and track their progress. Classroom is, in essence, the service that ties all of Google’s other tools together for teachers.
During a press briefing leading up to today’s announcement, Google’s senior director of product management for Chrome for Business and Education, Rajen Sheth, also noted that over 20 million Chromebooks are now in active use in schools on a weekly basis.
Earlier this week, Google also announced that over half a million students in the UK have now used Google Expeditions to take virtual reality tours of places like Petra, the pyramids in Egypt, and the human heart.