Parents and teachers across the US are criticizing Google’s announcement that schools choosing to block its AI tools could also lose access to Google Search. Google announced last week a range of new AI tools for schools and classrooms, along with options allowing teachers and administrators to restrict their use. The company said schools should decide whether students use AI in the classroom, but that schools choosing to block Google’s AI tools would also lose access to its search engine.

Chris Phillips, Google’s vice president for education, said Google was updating its approach to controls after listening to schools, teachers, leading researchers and policymakers. He said administrators would control Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom and Google Search, and that access to those products would be entirely off for K-12 student accounts until school administrators explicitly enabled them. Phillips, also Google’s vice president and general manager of Geo, said: “We believe schools should have control over AI in their classrooms and in providing administrators with controls to help them manage their approach.”

Eyla Whitemoon, a mother and educator based in Kernville, California, argued that companies including Google and Meta had created a false dependency by “infiltrating or ‘partnering’” with institutions. Whitemoon said what she called a “starved public education system” had merged with the companies’ “ilk.” Comparing the companies with a mob boss, drug dealer or “capitalist minion,” Whitemoon said they had hooked society on their products and were raising the cost of their “supply.” Whitemoon warned of a future in which AI would be in charge and “mega technoautocrats” would sit in bunkers and hide.

Parents and teachers across the country told The Guardian about AI’s potential to weaken students’ critical-thinking skills and big tech’s growing influence in education. Jen Atay, a 51-year-old teacher in Hawaii, said: “When the software is free, you are the product.” Atay said it was inappropriate for Google to test or develop AI with minors and that the practice should not be allowed at all. A 44-year-old father of two boys in Amissville, Virginia, also said AI would weaken people’s ability to think critically. He uses AI in his work but said it would not be effective without well over a decade of experience, adding: “Even the best models are often flat-out wrong in their responses.”

The 44-year-old father of two boys in Amissville, Virginia, separately argued that AI tools should not be introduced to children at such a young age. He said he hoped a Democratic Congress would force the adoption of legislation protecting schools from “corporate malfeasance such as this.” He also called Google’s threat “nothing but extortion” and said it should be treated as such.

Some educators responded by pointing to alternatives. A 64-year-old educator based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said Gen Z had begun appreciating what students stood to lose by surrendering their cognitive skills to AI after schools revamped teaching in response to the technology. The educator said alternative search engines would be what they turned to. The educator also said teachers and students detest the technology industry’s demand that they submit to it.

Others questioned why schools should depend on Google at all. An 84-year-old retiree and mother in Maryland said Google was great when it started but had become what they called “evil money grubbers.” The retiree urged schools to tell Google to “go pound sand” and have children use DuckDuckGo or another search engine, arguing that nothing Google offered was unavailable elsewhere.

Rachel Dominguez, a 42-year-old parent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, also proposed alternatives, arguing that Google Search had become an “AI slop-first service.” Dominguez suggested that schools have children use Academic Search Premier, JSTOR and arXiv instead. Dominguez said most school districts subscribe to those services and that students who learn them would be better prepared for college. Dominguez described a trip to the media center as no abnormal chore, while raising concern that a librarian might no longer have a job.

Not everyone favored blocking AI. A 67-year-old emerging technology teacher in Texas said: “I do not blame Google. AI is not going away.” The teacher said they had been very frustrated during the year trying to teach AI literacy while AI was blocked, and argued that schools need to teach how to use AI properly rather than block it. A California resident made a related argument, saying Google Search had existed since the 90s and criticizing the company for completely removing it instead of only removing Gemini. The resident said they wanted schools to permit Gemini so students could see that its sources were not always valid and that they could not trust everything an AI tells them.

The dispute centers on whether schools can limit AI tools without giving up Google Search and how Google should shape classroom technology. Google’s stated position is that administrators should decide which tools to allow. The objections raised to The Guardian included claims of institutional dependence on Google and other technology companies, concern about students’ critical-thinking skills and objections to testing or developing AI with minors. Other educators countered that schools should teach students how to evaluate AI information rather than block access to it.