Google sparked nationwide outrage Tuesday – and then quickly backtracked – when it announced it would prevent schools from using its search platform if they opted out of its artificial intelligence products.
"Google is using its search monopoly to coerce schools into adopting AI," former Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan alleged in a social media post.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani piled on, saying on social media that "No corporation should have the power to dictate how we teach our children." Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, in a social media post, called Google's move "extortion."
Former Google director Tracy Frey of Portola Valley, who worked on responsible AI use at the company, responded by launching an online petition Tuesday to "get Google AI out of our schools."
The Mountain View company, whose suite of educational software and Chromebook laptops have become ubiquitous in US elementary, middle and high schools, has embarked on a major push to bring generative AI into students' work. It markets its Gemini AI chatbot as "your AI study buddy from Google."
In its announcement Tuesday, Google said, "We believe schools should have control over AI in their classrooms and in providing administrators with controls to help them manage their approach."
That means, the company's blog post said, that access to Gemini and search will be "entirely off for K-12 student accounts until school administrators explicitly turn them on."
Google's vice president for education, Chris Phillips, told the New York Times that Search and AI are "deeply integrated," so students whose schools reject the company's AI "will not have access to search, and they'll see a message from their school that indicates it's not available."
Facing the high-profile blowback, Google on Tuesday afternoon retreated from the change, saying in a social media post that while its Gemini AI products and search will be off by default, schools can turn on one individually or all of them.
Google spokesman Davis Thompson in an email Tuesday afternoon confirmed that schools could choose not to use Gemini AI products and still use search.
"They are separate controls," Thompson said.
Ann Skeet, interim executive director at Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, said Google's apparent change of heart signals "that they are appreciating the importance of allowing educators to be in the driver's seat when it comes to children's education."
The initial announcement smacked of hubris, Skeet said, with Google appearing to believe it may "understand better than life-long educators what's best for students."
Skeet attributes much of the current backlash against Big Tech to similar moves by companies to force AI products onto users, such as Google's automatic inclusion of AI Overviews above many search results.
Generative AI – which can produce words, images or audio in response to user prompts – spread quickly into schools after San Francisco's OpenAI launched its pioneering ChatGPT bot into the public realm in late 2022. A survey of US teachers by the non-partisan Center for Democracy & Technology found 85% used AI in the classroom in the 2024-25 school year. Pew Research, in a February report, said it found in a 2025 survey that more than half of US teens used AI for help with studying.
The Organization for International Cooperation and Development in a report last year concluded that the relationship between AI use and student performance is complex, and varies "with how students use it and what for." The group's data showed students using the technology for specific tasks like writing assignments and conducting research performed 20% more poorly in science than those who didn't use AI. However, students who regularly used AI and had opportunities at school to develop AI-literacy skills tended to have slightly higher scores in science, the organization found.
Google, in its Tuesday blog post, said it believed "technology paired with great educators can unlock incredible learning potential," and the company is focused on "building technology responsibly to help students thrive."
On Tuesday afternoon, while walking back the change on social media, Google said it was responding to feedback from educators. "We know there's concern about students using AI to shortcut schoolwork, and schools have told us they want control," Google said. The company added that it was updating search for education "to make it better for learning," and its AI search products for schools "will offer step-by-step guided learning through problems, so that students don't get quick answers to schoolwork."
Teachers across the US have raised alarms about pervasive AI-enabled cheating, and research suggests "cognitive offloading" to AI may reduce critical-thinking capacity.
Common Sense Media, a watchdog group for children's online safety, has classified Google's AI search products as "unacceptable risks for kids and teens." The software validated eating disorders, celebrated cannabis use, provided inaccurate information, did students' homework for them, and gave step-by-step instructions for making "deepfake" imagery that could be used for bullying, the group said. – Silicon Valley, San Jose, Calif./Tribune News Service
