Google, digital management systems
One of the things Google has built is the same sort of corporate perimeter and digital management system that you typically find at large tech companies.
This shouldn't be surprising, but I only know about this system because Google offers their system to customers (I have no association with Google, other than being a customer).
More specifically, Google offers this product to children: as a parental control framework for Android and in the classroom.
Google, digital management systems
Chromebooks in particular are a "from the ground up" implementation of this system. They're locked into using it and rely on Google for everything.
This is probably the main reason Chromebooks are so popular in US schools, Google has already done all the work required to lock down these systems as much as possible, so that even someone with physical access will have difficulty hacking into it and taking control of the computer system.
Google, digital management systems
@urusan The difficulty with chromebooks is actually that the “parental controls” are controlled by the school not the parent. And if the school can’t be bothered to block all those stupid JavaScript games that are so attractive to adolescents, well then the Chromebook becomes an attractive nuisance and the schoolwork doesn’t get done.
Google, digital management systems
@urusan My solution to this was to substitute an old Thinkpad running ubuntu, locked down by me. But most parents aren't going to have the skills to do this.
Google, digital management systems
Google, digital management systems
@mtomczak @urusan It was very "high touch" ... The only reliable way to keep the games off was a whitelist, so I also had to have ways to immediately whitelist stuff because teachers like to randomly say "go to this URL and read this article / watch this video" .. so there was a script that would add to the whitelist but also emailed me so we could discuss later in case of "inappropriate whitelisting".