Google bundles school search with Gemini: a school that bans AI loses Google Search for its K-12 students

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Google bundles school search with Gemini: a school that bans AI loses Google Search for its K-12 students

Summarized from the Hacker News discussion because the article couldn't be read

Google's education blog says Gemini, Gemini in Classroom and Google Search will be entirely off for K-12 student accounts until school administrators explicitly turn them on, which commenters describe as an opt-in rather than a ban.
Commenters report that NYT quotes Chris Phillips, Google's vice president for education, saying a school that banned AI leaves students with no search access and a message from their school explaining it is unavailable, with no separate control to enable Search without the Gemini features.
Several commenters call the arrangement a tying arrangement and ask whether it abuses monopoly power, though one replies that tying is hard to prove because Google does not charge separately for search and AI.
One commenter argues Google has not been able to run a web search query without AI for over 10 years, and another draws the line between results ranked by AI and an answer box that blurts out an answer.
A commenter says the original NYT submission was replaced with Google's Designing responsible AI for learning post, which they say omits the limitation, before moderators restored it.

Hacker News opinions

So the truth is less clickbaity than the headline. Google's own blog says access to Gemini, Gemini in Classroom and Google Search is entirely off for K-12 accounts until an admin explicitly turns it on.

Read it again, it's right in the article. The school flips AI off and search goes off with it. Phillips says students will see a message saying it's not available, with no separate toggle.

That's the actual problem: it's bundled. You either take Search plus all the Gemini stuff, or you get none of it. You can't just opt into plain search.

Make no mistake, this is Google's call, not the school's. Phillips phrases it so it sounds like the school's decision.

Classic Big Tech playbook: threaten to take the kids' toys away so the kids turn on the adults. Epic did the same thing with Fortnite when it didn't get its way.

They've come a long way from don't be evil.

So what? There are alternatives, and who still googles nowadays anyway.

How is this not monopolistic behavior? I read it as a tying arrangement the moment I saw the headline.

Tying is tough to prove when they aren't charging separately for search and AI. I doubt that theory survives in court.

Disabling AI summaries in search results is trivial. Refusing to do that and blocking search entirely reads as coercion.

Kids already use ChatGPT as their search engine. That's exactly why Google doesn't want to compete with one hand tied behind its back.

This probably backfires. Students get used to whatever search engine they can actually open at school, and that habit sticks for life. I still use Google because that's what I had in school.

Google hasn't been able to run a web search query without AI for over 10 years, so the framing is a bit off.

There's still a difference between results ranked by AI and a magic box that blurts out an answer. We're supposed to teach kids to parse results and do research, not trust the answer box.

Can they even enforce it? A student logs into a generic Gmail account in an incognito tab and the block is gone. Maybe manageable on Windows, less so on Chromebooks.

Mods swapped my NYT submission for Google's 'Designing responsible AI for learning' PR post, which doesn't disclose this limitation at all. That's whitewashing, and I flagged it.

What do schools even need Google for? Google Classroom and Google for Education, plus image search for slideshows, citations for essays, research for a project.