Students working on Chromebooks in a classroom. Stock photo for RFTUV.
By Ellis Ward | November 6, 2026
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani accused Google last week of using its control over school technology to push artificial intelligence into classrooms without the consent of teachers, parents, or school boards. The accusation, reported by News 12 Hudson Valley, centers on a policy Google announced that will take effect in early 2027. Under that policy, Gemini and several related AI tools will be turned off by default for K-12 student accounts. Schools will have to actively opt in to enable them. That sounds like restraint. Critics say it is not.
What the Policy Does, in Plain Terms
Starting in early 2027, according to Google's own announcements, students using school-issued Google accounts or Chromebooks will not automatically see Gemini, Gemini Notebook, or Gemini in Classroom. Those tools will be disabled by default. School administrators will have to log in to Google's admin console and switch them on.
Google Search sits in a more complicated position. Because Google says Search and its AI tools are "deeply integrated," schools that choose to block AI features entirely will also lose access to Google Search itself. Chris Phillips, Google's vice president of education, told the New York Times that schools banning AI "will not have access to search, and they'll see a message from their school that indicates it's not available."
After that statement drew criticism, Google clarified its position. Schools can enable Search without also enabling Gemini products, a Google spokesperson confirmed to multiple outlets following the backlash. But Search itself will still carry AI features. AI Overviews, AI Mode, and a feature called Guided Learning will remain part of Search even when Gemini is blocked. Those cannot be separated out through the admin console, according to reporting by CNN Business and TechCrunch.
So a school that tells Google it wants Search but not AI gets Search with some AI already built in. What it cannot get, under the current design, is a search tool stripped of AI-generated results and guidance features.
Consider the experience for a student. She opens Chrome on her school-issued Chromebook to search for information on the water cycle. If her district has disabled Gemini, the AI chatbot will not appear. But the top of her search results may still display an AI Overview, a synthesized answer generated by Google's systems. Her district did not choose that. It came with Search.
Why Google Says It Made This Choice
Google frames the new policy as giving schools more control, not less. In statements cited by CNBC, the company said the changes hand administrators "more choice" over how AI tools reach classrooms. By setting Gemini to off by default, Google argued, it places the initial decision with school districts rather than with students or the platform.
Phillips, in comments reported by CNBC and the New York Times, described the integration of Search and AI as a reflection of how the product now works technically. The two are built together. Separating them fully, he suggested, is not a matter of flipping a switch.
A Google spokesperson, according to CBS News, declined to respond directly to Mamdani's specific accusation that the policy amounts to monopoly coercion. The company did not dispute the underlying reporting on what the policy does in practice.
The Critics: Mamdani, Khan, and Labor
Mamdani made his accusation public in statements reported by News 12 and CBS News. His words were direct. "Google is trying to use its monopoly power to force AI into our public schools," he said. "No corporation should have the power to dictate how we teach our children. Our public schools exist to serve students, not to grow the profit margins of Big Tech."
Mamdani does not take office until January. His remarks signal that the policy will face political pressure in New York City once he does.
He was not the only prominent critic. Lina Khan, the former chair of the Federal Trade Commission and an influential voice on technology antitrust, also criticized the policy on similar grounds, according to multiple reports. Khan has argued that large technology platforms use their market position to extend control beyond what competition alone would justify. The Google education policy, in her framing, fits that pattern.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, raised concerns through the AFT as well, as NBC News reported. The union represents teachers in many of the districts most reliant on Google's tools. Weingarten's criticism focused on whether schools have genuine options or only the appearance of them.
Both major city school systems responded publicly. New York City's public school system issued a statement seeking clarification directly from Google about what the policy means in practice, according to reporting from multiple outlets. Los Angeles school officials also responded publicly, with questions about the degree of district control the policy actually preserves.
Research on AI tools in education added another layer of concern. NBC News and Forbes both reported on the limited evidence base for how AI tools affect student learning. Critics argued that Google was expanding access to tools whose educational effects remain poorly understood.
The Bundling Problem: What Districts Can and Cannot Switch Off
The core of the criticism, as reported by CNN Business, TechCrunch, and Tech Insider, is structural. It is about what a school district can and cannot control.
Roughly 150 million students and teachers rely on Google's K-12 tools, by Google's own account. That means Google's platform is not one option among several. For most American schools, it is the operating environment.
Districts do have administrative tools. They can log in to Google's admin console and toggle many settings on or off. They can govern which apps appear on student devices, which accounts hold which permissions, and whether specific Google products are available. This is real control.
The limits are the issue. Districts can only control what Google exposes in the admin console. If Google integrates an AI feature into Search in a way that does not give administrators a separate switch for that feature, the district cannot turn it off. It can disable Search entirely. It cannot remove the AI components from Search while keeping the rest.
A district writes a policy that says no AI tools for elementary school students. That policy governs what the district directly controls: curriculum decisions, teacher practices, the list of approved applications. But if a student at that school opens Google Search on a school Chromebook and Search now returns AI-generated answers by default, the district's policy has not reached the platform level. The student encounters AI-generated content regardless.
The district's technology staff can override this only if Google gives them a toggle. If Google does not provide one, the district's stated policy stops at the platform boundary.
This matters especially because Google's defaults apply everywhere at once. When the company changes a platform-level default, every district running on that platform is affected simultaneously. No school board holds a vote. No public comment period opens. The default shifts across millions of accounts in a single update.
Platform Defaults as Education Policy
Hudson Valley school districts run on the same Chromebooks and Google Workspace tools as New York City schools. That is not unusual. The vast majority of public school districts in New York run within the same Google environment. What Google decides about platform defaults is therefore not a decision affecting one city. It is a decision affecting classrooms across the country at once, without a legislative session or a regulatory process.
The governance problem this exposes predates Gemini. School boards write technology policies. Superintendents set guidelines. State education departments issue guidance. All of that sits on top of a platform that a private company controls. The platform's defaults function as another layer of policy. The difference is that this layer is set by an entity that answers to shareholders, not to voters.
Prior to this new Google policy, districts could and did write their own AI rules. Some banned AI tools outright. Some restricted them to upper grades. Some required teacher sign-off before any AI-assisted work was submitted. Those policies were real. But they operated on top of whatever Google's platform defaults were at the time. When defaults changed, district technology staff had to manually override them, assuming the relevant settings were available in the console at all.
The debate over this policy runs on two tracks. One is technical: whether Google's claim of Search-AI integration is accurate, and whether a plain Search without AI features is genuinely impossible to deliver separately. The other is democratic: who holds authority over what tools reach students in public schools, and what happens when that authority collides with platform design.
Google says it is giving schools more control. Critics say the control it offers is narrower than what the new design removes. Both arguments rest on the same underlying fact: when one company supplies the platform most classrooms run on and sets the defaults for all of them, its product decisions function as education policy, whether or not anyone calls them that.
The policy takes effect in early 2027. By then, Mamdani will be mayor of New York City. What, if anything, a city government can do about a private company's platform defaults remains an open question. For districts in the Hudson Valley and elsewhere, the more immediate question is what they will find in the admin console when they go looking for a switch.
Sources
- Gizmodo: Google Tries to Walk Back Controversial School AI Policy Following Political Backlash
- Neowin: Google backtracks on controversial AI decision for schools, but there's a catch
- Dataconomy: Google To Cut Search Access For Schools That Ban AI
- TBS News (AFP): Google turns off AI for schoolchildren by default
- NOS News: Google's Search-or-AI Policy Turns Classroom Technology Into a Monopoly Fight
