Google Tightens the Screws

For now, you can still opt out of the AI search feature offered by Google, which we first reported on 14 months ago. And that’s a good thing, because it’s all too often frustrating when the “AI thinks,” preventing you from clicking on the regular search results.

It’s unclear how much longer we’ll have the option to disable the AI search feature. Students in the U.S. no longer have that choice. After many teachers, wanting their students to think and make decisions for themselves, began avoiding the Gemini chatbot and the AI search feature in class, Google struck back.

Two days ago, the company announced that school districts would no longer have Google’s AI features automatically enabled, according to "Der Spiegel". Going forward, the AI assistant Gemini, Gemini Notebook, and Google Search will be disabled by default and can be enabled individually by the school. However, this also means that Google Search can only be enabled with AI search. 150 million students in the U.S. use the “Google Classroom” platform, and many use a Google Chromebook.

Aside from the arrogance with which Google patronizes people in the U.S., we can only congratulate those affected, because they now have the opportunity to to search the internet without Google in the future, for example, using DuckDuckGo or many other privacy-preserving search engines ...

Read more https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/google-blockiert-suchfunktion-wenn-schulen-ki-ablehnen-a-127ea560-4390-4851-ab2f-1c6caf198a73

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