Dutch education IT crisis averted as Google agrees to ‘major privacy improvements’

Tim Anderson reports:

Google has agreed to “major privacy improvements” following a threat to ban the use of Google Workspace in education by the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA).

In May the DPA warned that eight out of ten “high data protection risks” in Google’s productivity suite, Workspace, still remained despite the company’s response.

Now, after what the Privacy Group, data consultants employed by the government, called Google’s “intense negotiations with representatives of the schools and higher education institutions in the Netherlands,” the Chocolate Factory has apparently agreed to mitigate these risks, averting “possible enforcement by the Dutch Data Protection Authority.”