Article · AI translation
IT Home reported on November 5 that Google announced on Tuesday local time that schools using its K-12 education software would be unable to use Google Search unless they chose to enable AI tools. The decision immediately drew strong opposition.
Chris Phillips, Google's vice president of education, told The New York Times that “Search and AI are deeply integrated.” As a result, if a school does not choose to enable AI tools such as Gemini, students will be unable to use Search and will see a message provided by the school telling them the feature is unavailable.
Although Google chose to announce the news on the day of the U.S. midterm elections, several Democratic-leaning political figures nonetheless spoke out specifically to express concern.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont posted on X, accusing Google of “extortion.” He wrote: “Google is threatening schools: If you stop students from using AI, we will cut off your access to Google Search. This is not love; it is extortion. Pause the development of artificial intelligence immediately.”
U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut also said on X that Google “cares more about forcing Gemini into schools than about helping students succeed.”
Lina Khan, the former chair of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and a longtime advocate of action against monopolistic practices, also condemned Google's decision, saying it appeared to be anticompetitive.
She wrote: “This underscores the dangers of letting an unregulated monopoly control essential services. Multiple courts have already found that Google violated antitrust laws, and this latest move shows that the company has not restrained itself as a result.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani accused Google of establishing a monopoly and said: “No company should have the power to decide how we educate our children.”
Search is an important tool for students to obtain information, but educators worry that the AI Overviews feature built into Google Search could lead students to stop actively looking for answers and instead rely directly on results provided by AI. For the millions of students required to use Chromebooks and Google's education tools, switching to another search engine is not a simple solution.
Google said it is developing a Search feature called “Guided Learning” for student accounts. The feature is intended to guide students step by step through solving problems or finding information rather than giving them answers directly.
For example, if a student is having trouble solving a math problem, the feature might prompt them to review the rules for dividing exponents rather than give them the result of the calculation directly.
IT Home noted that, in response to outside criticism, Google posted on X that it had listened to educators and had already turned off access to AI products by default. It stressed that schools can choose separately whether to enable Gemini, Gemini Notebook, and Google Search.
Google said in a statement: “We know schools are concerned about students using AI to take shortcuts on their homework, and we know schools want control over access to these tools. That is why we are introducing these changes today: to respond to feedback we have gathered from educators over the past few months. We will continue to engage closely with educators to ensure we provide schools with more choices, better controls, and a Search experience that better supports learning.”