Google Faces Backlash Over Plan to Cut Search for Schools That Reject AI Tools

Under the change, announced on Tuesday, Gemini, Gemini Notebook and Search are switched off by default for school accounts, and administrators can turn each one on separately, Google said. But Chris Phillips, Google's vice president for education, told The New York Times that "Search and AI are deeply integrated". If a school does not opt in to AI tools such as Gemini, he said, students "will not have access to search, and they'll see a message from their school that indicates it's not available."

Google's position in classrooms raises the stakes. The company has said in past years that there are around 50 million Chromebooks in schools and that Google Classroom serves more than 150 million users worldwide. For students who must use school-issued Chromebooks and Google accounts, moving to another search engine is not simple. Search itself now carries AI Overviews and a conversational AI Mode, and educators worry these features could stop students working out answers for themselves.

The announcement came on US election day, and the response was quick. Senator Bernie Sanders accused Google of "extortion" in a post on X, writing that "Google is threatening schools: if you stop your students from using AI, we will cut off your access to Google Search." Senator Richard Blumenthal wrote on X that Google is "more concerned with forcing Gemini into schools than enabling students to succeed."

Lina Khan, the former chair of the Federal Trade Commission, called the decision anti-competitive. "Multiple courts have found Google liable for violating antitrust laws, and this latest move shows it remains unchastened," she wrote. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said: "No corporation should have the power to dictate how we teach our children."

Google defended the change in a post on X, saying it had listened to educators by turning AI products off by default. "We know there's concern about students using AI to shortcut schoolwork, and schools have told us they want control," the company said in a statement. "That's exactly why we are making these changes today to address the feedback we've heard from educators in recent months." It said it would keep working with educators on "more choice, more controls, and improved Search for learning."

The company is also building a "Guided Learning" tool for student accounts in Search. Google says it will take students through the steps of solving a problem rather than giving them the answer. For a maths question, for example, it might remind them of the rules for dividing exponents instead of returning a number.

DuckDuckGo moved quickly to court schools. Its founder and chief executive, Gabriel Weinberg, posted instructions on X for changing a school's default search engine to DuckDuckGo and offered help. The company's chief public affairs officer, Kamyl Bazbaz, wrote: "Forcing AI on school children: how a monopolist behaves when they think people are powerless. Prove Google wrong." In an email to TechCrunch, DuckDuckGo said Google could easily turn off Search's AI features for schools if it chose to.

DuckDuckGo has AI features of its own, including the Duck.ai chat interface, but it lets users switch them off and runs a separate site, noai.duckduckgo.com, with AI answers, AI-generated images and AI suggestions disabled. The company said earlier this year that its app installs had risen 30% as users turned away from AI-driven search.

Google has not said whether it will offer school accounts a version of Search without AI Overviews and AI Mode, the change its critics are asking for.