Google lets schools switch off its AI, but they'd lose Search too

Google will cut off access to Google Search for K-12 schools that turn off its AI tools, a policy that forces every school using Google's products to pick between the two 3

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The reason is bundling. Google has built Search and its AI services into a single package. Each tool, including the Gemini chatbot and Search itself, is now off by default. But because Search is tied to the AI, a school that opts out of AI entirely loses Search too 3

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. Chris Phillips, a Google vice president who oversees education, announced the change in a blog post. "We believe schools should have control over AI in their classrooms," he wrote 3

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. The move also reverses course. In August, Google had switched Gemini on by default for many K-12 students, where before it was limited to students 18 and older. That change drew an outcry at the time 3

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Google's claimed footprint is what makes the choice consequential. By Google's count, 150 million students and teachers use its Classroom platform worldwide, and it is described as by far the dominant education technology provider for US schools. Many students work on school-issued Chromebooks 3

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Coercion, critics say

Reaction was fast, and much of it called the move coercion. Lina Khan, former chair of the FTC, wrote that "Google is using its search monopoly to coerce schools into adopting AI" 3

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. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on X that monopoly power is being used to force AI into public schools. Democratic Senator Ed Markey wrote to Google's chief executive to demand a reversal 2

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. About 30 parents, educators and students demonstrated outside Google's Chicago office, with protests also reported in Cambridge, Massachusetts 1

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. Josh Golin, who runs the child-advocacy group Fairplay, said Google is trying to strong-arm schools into its AI products. He called the effort likely to backfire and urged schools to turn the tools off 3

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Districts that already said no

The pushback lands on districts that had already made their own calls. New York City imposed a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI for preschool through eighth grade. Los Angeles blocked it on student devices across all grades. Seattle agreed to a ban, and Frederick County, Maryland's school board voted 6-1 in October to restrict it 1

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. Chicago Public Schools had blocked student access to tools like Gemini 1

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. Now the district says it is exploring ways to suppress Google's AI Overviews on its own. If it cannot get Search without AI, it will look to other search solutions 1

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Safety worries feed the resistance. Common Sense Media rated Google's AI Overviews an unacceptable risk, citing unsafe content and false information 2

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. The day after the announcement, parents in North Carolina sued Google, alleging its Gemini chatbot helped their 13-year-old daughter plan her suicide on a school-issued Chromebook 2

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The motive question

Tracy Pizzo, who spent more than a decade at Google working on education and ethical AI, has a theory about why the bundle exists. In the antitrust cases Google won in Washington, publishers argued AI Overviews was a separate product from Search. The judge ruled they are one integrated product, and she thinks an off switch would undermine that win. "Now if Google were to provide an off switch for schools only... that's evidence that they can be separated," she said 2

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. Google did not answer questions from National Public Radio about any link to the cases and pointed back to its control framing 2

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. Antitrust experts were not fully convinced by the theory but did not dismiss it either 2

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. Even friendly voices are unhappy. Hank Thiele, an Illinois superintendent, has worked with Google Classroom for nearly two decades. The move, he said, "may have caused a lot of damage in the trust that Google has built in education" 2

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The first test of whether Google's leverage actually holds may come in Chicago. The district, one of the nation's biggest, is looking at dropping Google Search altogether if it cannot separate the AI 1

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