Why Google Is Cutting Off Search for Schools That Opt Out of AI

Google told schools that if they disable AI Overviews in Search for students, they lose access to Google Search entirely, a policy that has drawn backlash from parents, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Ed Markey. Former Google employee Tracy Pizzo suggests the move may be tied to recent antitrust rulings in D.C., where a judge treated Search and AI Overviews as an integrated product, so offering schools an off switch could undercut that win; antitrust experts NPR spoke with were not fully convinced. Google said its goal is to give school leaders control over AI use in classrooms and did not answer NPR's questions about a link to the antitrust cases.