Google is recasting a fight over artificial intelligence in schools as a question of product integration—but critics see a coercive choice: accept Google’s AI tools or lose access to the company’s dominant search engine.

The company says its new controls give schools more authority. Google wrote that access to Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom and Search would be off for K–12 student accounts “until school administrators explicitly turn them on.”¹ It also promotes Guided Learning, designed to help students work through problems rather than simply receive answers.

But that discretion appears limited. Chris Phillips, Google’s vice president for education, told The New York Times that “Search and AI are deeply integrated,” meaning schools that block Google’s AI tools would also lose Search access.² The policy therefore links an essential information service to adoption of the company’s newer technology—an arrangement critics describe as leverage, not choice.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Google was using “its monopoly power to force AI into our public schools,” while former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan accused the company of using search dominance to “coerce schools into adopting AI.”² Lila Byock of Schools Beyond Screens called the move a “hostile ultimatum,” arguing that “educational value—not shareholder value—must determine which products are used by students.”²

Google’s defense is that AI-enhanced Search can support learning through step-by-step guidance, and that schools remain in control of the settings.¹ Conservative coverage, meanwhile, has focused more narrowly on the operational consequence: students using school accounts will need access to Google’s AI tools, and schools that ban them could see Search switched off.³⁴

The central dispute is thus not whether schools can regulate AI, but whether Google can make access to a longstanding public-facing tool conditional on accepting its AI ecosystem.