Google Will Switch Off Gemini and Search for Students and Critics Call It Strong-Arming

Google wants to hand schools the off switch for its AI. The price of flipping it, according to Google itself, is Google Search.

The company said Tuesday that Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom and Google Search will be "entirely off for K-12 student accounts until school administrators explicitly turn them on." The change is planned for next year. It reverses the setup from earlier this year, when Google switched Gemini on by default inside Classroom, which The Verge says is used by more than 150 million teachers and students.

The sting came in an interview. Chris Phillips, Google's vice president and general manager of education, told The New York Times that "Search and AI are deeply integrated." Schools that disable Google's AI altogether, he said, "will not have access to Search, and they'll see a message from their school that indicates it's not available," as The Verge reported.

Google is offering a control, and the control comes bundled with a dependency Google built. Search now has AI Overviews and AI Mode baked in.

Critics did not wait to say so. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told NBC News the company had put its own interests first.

"It is unfortunate that Google has prioritized its business interests over the education of our children." Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers

She added that Google "throws the baby out with the bathwater and bans access to the tools altogether." Josh Golin, executive director of the advocacy group Fairplay, said Google is trying "to strong-arm schools into using its AI products," and urged schools to look for more privacy-protective search alternatives.

Politicians piled in, according to The Verge. Sen. Bernie Sanders called the move "extortion." New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said "no corporation should have the power to dictate how we teach our children." California official Rohit Chopra wrote that Big Tech should not be able to "strong-arm schools."

Google says it is giving schools more choice

Late in the day Google pushed back on social media, and its statement muddies the picture. The announcements "give schools more choice, not less," the company said, and schools can turn Google Search on individually without enabling Gemini products. NBC News reported that statement was posted after its story ran.

There is a catch inside the clarification. Search would still carry AI features. Google says it has updated them "to make it better for learning," with AI Mode and AI Overviews offering step-by-step guided learning "so that students don't get quick answers to schoolwork."

So the dispute is narrower than the first headlines suggested, and sharper. Nobody says a school can never get Search. The question is whether a school can get Search with no AI in it, and Google's own account says it cannot. The company's education blog post says Guided Learning is being built into Search for student accounts, with a pilot in select US schools later this month before wider expansion. Google says it will share more specifics with schools in the coming months, so how the toggles actually work is still unclear.

The timing is no accident. In early October, 13 parent advocacy organizations, including the Digital Childhood Institute and Schools Beyond Screens, signed an open letter asking districts to turn off Gemini and YouTube, NBC News reported. The Verge says lawmakers pressed Google last month on the "potential harms" of AI in schools.

Google also holds unusual leverage. NBC cites a 2023 Schoolytics report finding nearly two-thirds of assignments use a Google product. Meanwhile the evidence for AI in class is thin, with the Stanford SCALE Initiative saying there are no high-quality causal studies of student AI use.

Google calls this choice. Whether administrators agree is the story to watch once the details land.