Google in Latin America: corporate expansion and digital capitalism in education

Abstract

With the expansion of digital capitalism and as an effect of school closures due to the pandemic, the technology-based multinational corporations GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft) have consolidated their offer of educational services in the field of the Global Education Industry in Ibero-America. Of the group, Google has been a key player, by substantially increasing the number of users on its platforms through corporate strategies such as public-private partnerships, agreements with schools and teacher training. This article analyzes the strategies that this technological giant has promoted in a limited set of educational centers certified and "distinguished" by Google for Education, called Google Reference Schools located in Mexico and Spain. The pedagogical and political implications are analyzed. The research methodology uses the three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis applied to the reports produced by the reference schools themselves and hosted in the Google for Education directory. The results show the way in which Google is adopted in the educational centers as an option to underpin educational improvement but which also introduces forms of governance at a distance in the educational field. In the conclusions, we discuss whether placing the infrastructure of digital communication and interaction of educational centers in Iberoamerican schools in the hands of these new actors of the Global Educational Technology Industry means not only handing over power to a private actor with specific commercial and political objectives and interests, but also closing the doors to alternative ways of doing and knowing in education. As future lines of research, we consider that the analysis should be extended to other countries beyond the Ibero-American area.