Why is Google cutting off Search from AI-free schools? Here are some theories

Re:Why is Google cutting off Search from AI-free schools? He... by zzzeek on Friday November 13, 2026 @11:55AM (#50486246)

I have a take on this general subject that life would be easier for those of us using LLM for code and engineering if the greater community weren't so furious with all things AI, so to that degree, I really wish Google would do whatever they have to to provide a search interface with nothing "AI-looking" on it that schools who want to say "AI free" can use. Of course "AI" is involved with how the search engine works internally, how google develops it, etc. They want kids to not be exposed to AI-generated content.

"AI free" restores some burden to teachers who can't use it to create handy things like stories that include a specific list of vocabulary words and such, but I'd shudder to think what kind of crappy slop a "pro AI" school is dumping on kids, so in that sense, "AI free" is probably better.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why is Google cutting off Search from AI-free schools? He... by bee_rider on Friday November 13, 2026 @12:59PM (#50487239)

Generative LLMs make it really obvious because they produce stylistically strong text that looks like a smart human wrote it. But maybe there’s a bigger moral here in the “Search uses AI under the hood, so…” argument and the fact that having search cut off is apparently a big crisis.

It turns out we’ve been offloading the cognitive work of organizing information to these ML based services for a long time! Is that… bad? Maybe? I mean google search had been going downhill for a long time as they lost the fight against SEO spammers, and the fact that there are not very many good alternatives has been really annoying.

My suspicion is that they basically know they’ve lost the fight against SEO spammers. This generative AI stuff is their path forward. There isn’t some static ground they can stand on to continue offering the service that people liked. We were all standing on a cliff over the sea being eroded by waves, and Google is giving up on building the scaffolding that held it together.

I dunno. It is annoying, but we don’t really have a right to ask them to pour resources into a dead-end product. And I can see why they wouldn’t want the next generation to get their impression of Google based on that dying product. But, the outcome seems to be a real PR nightmare for them.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why is Google cutting off Search from AI-free schools? He... by zzzeek on Friday November 13, 2026 @04:07PM (#50489657)

the article makes a great point that Google won a big lawsuit when a judge ruled that search and AI results were one product. the article paints "antitrust experts" as "skeptical" but it seems very clear google has to pretend these two features are inseparable if they want to avoid an eventual breakup

[ Parent | on HN ]