Google faces backlash for plan that would turn off Search for schools that restrict AI

Google announced Tuesday that schools using its K-12 software will lose access to Google Search unless they opt in to using AI tools. The policy arrived on Election Day, and drew immediate criticism from left-leaning politicians, former regulators, and New York City's mayor.

Chris Phillips, Google's vice president for education, told The New York Times that "Search and AI are deeply integrated." He said that if a school does not opt in to AI tools like Gemini, students "will not have access to search, and they'll see a message from their school that indicates it's not available."

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) called the move "extortion" in an X post, writing: "Google is threatening schools: if you stop your students from using AI, we will cut off your access to Google Search." Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said on X that Google is "more concerned with forcing Gemini into schools than enabling students to succeed."

Lina Khan, the former FTC chair and advocate against monopolies, condemned the decision as anti-competitive. "This highlights the danger of allowing an unregulated monopolist to control an essential service," she wrote. "Multiple courts have found Google liable for violating antitrust laws, and this latest move shows it remains unchastened." New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani also accused Google of being a monopoly, commenting, "No corporation should have the power to dictate how we teach our children."

Educators' concerns focus on Search's built-in AI overviews, which they worry could dissuade students from finding answers on their own. For the millions of students required to use Chromebooks and Google education tools, switching to a different search engine is not a simple fix.

What to watch next: whether Google modifies the policy under political and antitrust pressure, whether other states or districts respond with procurement changes or litigation, and whether the opt-in requirement becomes a test case for how tightly AI features can be bundled with services courts have already found to be monopolies.

The episode also raises an open question for districts already locked into Chromebook ecosystems: how much bargaining power do schools actually have when a single vendor controls both the device and the search layer students depend on.