Google is making it easier to restrict its AI tools for students. But schools that reject AI entirely will lose Google Search – entirely.

As reported by The New York Times (Google Will Turn Off Search for Schools That Reject A.I., written by Dana Goldstein and Natasha Singer and available here), Google announced Tuesday that early next year it would turn off artificial intelligence tools in its popular software for K-12 students, unless school administrators explicitly choose to make such tools available.

Executives at the tech giant said they wanted to be responsive to educators and parents who have asked for more control in how children interact with AI.

But there is a catch: Schools that choose to restrict AI entirely will also lose access to Google search.

A.I. features are now a standard part of Google’s commercially available search engine. “Search and AI are deeply integrated,” said Chris Phillips, vice president for education at Google. If a school has banned AI, he added, students “will not have access to search, and they’ll see a message from their school that indicates it’s not available.”

Google is by far the dominant technology player in K-12 classrooms (and has been for years – my kids used Chromebooks and they both have graduated). Google’s suite of education apps — including Gmail, Docs and an assignment platform called Classroom — is ubiquitous. Google Chromebooks, low-cost laptops, are the most widely issued student devices in U.S. schools. And Google is synonymous with internet search, a crucial tool for students across the globe.

The company’s new strategy underscores Google’s powerful role in American education. If school leaders want continued student access to search within the company’s ecosystem, they will be forced to embrace Google’s AI – at least somewhat.

Lina Khan, a former chair of the Federal Trade Commission, said in a statement that Google was using its “search monopoly to coerce schools” into adopting its A.I. She added that multiple courts had found the tech giant liable for violating antitrust laws.

Of course, that doesn’t mean it will stop, however.

Kids should learn AI, of course. And, honestly, you can’t really use Google Search without using AI these days. Asking “can you turn off ai in google search” gets you an answer to the effect of: “You cannot permanently turn off Google’s AI Overviews with a single official setting, as Google deeply integrates AI into its search engine. However, you can bypass or hide them using several effective workarounds.”

Will this lead to a large-scale movement to DuckDuckGo? Uh no. Google is the “800 pound gorilla” that can throw its weight around. The “elephant in the room” is that they can dictate what they’ll expect to do so.

Hey, at least they aren’t chopping down 400,000 trees in Finland for a data center. Oh wait, that was them too. Sigh.

So, what do you think? Do you think it’s a big deal that Google is threatening to withhold access to Google search if schools reject AI? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using ChatGPT, using the term “robot school kid that is shocked to find that their Google search engine doesn’t work”.

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