Chicago schools to Google – we'd rather lose Search than be forced to accept AI | Hacker News Reader

Chicago schools to Google – we'd rather lose Search than be forced to accept AI

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89 pointsthunderbong29 comments

I consider Google evil here.

Android's "Ask Gemini" context menu (PROCESS_TEXT Intent) is registered by the Google app, _not_ the Gemini app, making it hard to remove.

I am considering asking Brave browser dev to filter it, since its an unwanted ad at this point.

Google considers Google evil (for at least 8 years now), so you're in good company.

https://www.the-independent.com/tech/google-dont-be-evil-cod...

You could ask Gemini to write you a userscript to remove it, I don't know if that's ironic or not.

Did they issue a statement about their plan to only block Google's AI search engine?

Did they prove that it's (only Google's) AI causing the students to fall? What else correlates to the apparently justifying change in performance?

Why do they prevent the children from learning web development by blocking Inspect Element (Chrome DevTools) on school Chromebooks? Can the children edit an .HTML file in git locally on those devices? Can they learn web development with those restrictions?

Are the schools able to change the default search engine on all of their Chromebooks, for example?

How can schools adapt curriculum in the age of the pocket calculator?

I wonder if Kagi can come up with a good marking opportunity here!

Their response: https://blog.kagi.com/education-should-not-be-held-for-ranso...

and what a fantastic response.

I think a lot of “inevitable” things have lost their air of invincibility in the last couple weeks and Google being able to shove AI to people who don’t want it is one of them.

If Kagi would offer them a reasonable free contingent now, people would start to notice that they exist.

Go Chicago!

Very nice!! I hope other school boards find this inspiring!!

Google search is crap anyway. The schools aren’t losing much.

Didn't Google update the blog post that caused all the outrage two weeks ago saying there'd be more controls etc?

> After listening to schools, teachers, leading researchers, and policymakers, we are now updating our approach to controls for Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom, and Google Search. Access to these products will be entirely off for K-12 student accounts until school administrators explicitly turn them on.

> We’ll share more specifics with schools in the coming months ahead of the changes rolling out so they have time to prepare and enable a smooth transition. Our goal is simple: provide school leaders the control and confidence to use AI products in classrooms as they see fit.

> We’ll continue to listen to feedback and evolve our approach as we work in partnership with schools, teachers, pedagogical experts, and parents on helping the next generation learn and thrive.

https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/educatio...

You've got it backwards (those Google communications are weasely so can't blame you). This is the "nice try".

Haven't I heard that before? "We can't remove IE from Windows, it's part of the OS, there's nothing we can do about it"

And how did that go for Microsoft? It went just fine.

Ie market share is not doing so hot

During Netscape Navigator era? #1 with a bullet.

Yes exactly. The strategy didn't ultimately work out

Ultimately for whom?

suddenly not being able to use iexplore.exe as file manager kinda sucked, though I get that M$ needed to be hamstrung for the good of market diversity

There are now a few articles about the protest. I personally prefer Block Club Chicago as my source on Chicago news.

https://blockclubchicago.org/2026/11/12/after-google-warns-s...

Choose another search engine, DuckDuckGo

Classic search is falling apart though. There's so, so much AI slop polluting the web that actually useful results are harder and harder to find. Even DDG surfaces mostly slop as the top results for many searches. The legacy web is becoming a useless cacophony.

Search engines need to find a way to squash the slop pages.

DDG got to a point of being just as good as Google and there was a golden period of not having to use !g. But their results have been completely inundated with AI slop.

If the first result is not an obvious thing I already knew existed from a well known source it's usually atleast 80 percent a first page of sloppy slop. They still remain my main search engine because usually I'm trying to find things I know already exist, but it's awful for discovery lately.

Google seems to not have the problem solved either, they just boost well known/popular sources.

Good.

This is nonsense. Google Search is AI. Did they complain when google added structured results (knowledge panel)? Did they complain about summaries per result? Then, Google blocks it and it's not good enough for them? Just bing it.

I personally miss the 10 blue links you get on scholar.google.com.

Seems like you are working hard not to acknowledge the difference between non-negotiable generative AI and all those mostly-unrelated things you listed.

Do you think Google would have refused to turn off Knowledge Graph for their clients if refusing meant losing the contract?

No, it's all AI. Takes many forms, has had generated summaries for years. Featured snippets (definitions, etc.), generated snippets for links that don't have meta tags.

Google did turn it off for them. I don't think Google would build a separate version of search for a few customers, especially because they can just use another search engine.

It seems like you are working hard to not make this about the moral panic about AI and your own prejudices.

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