Amazon, Google and Apple – How these three big players are changing the higher education landscape

In the same week that Amazon acquired an e-learning company and announced that it intended to strengthen the value of its Kindle device by offering e-learning for schools, colleges and universities, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) became the largest company in the world by revenue. Google offers education supports from a free version of office products, through thousands of applications which run on any device to the devices themselves. And then there is Apple, which dominates the mobile device market and is extensively engaged in supporting open educational resources (OER) for learning through iTunes University.

Three questions come to mind when considering these developments:

  • What are the plans and strategic intentions of these companies?
  • How disruptive might they be?
  • Will their growth and development change the post-secondary landscape?

Let’s explore.