Source: The New York Times (paywall)
Google is embedding generative AI into search in ways schools cannot easily opt out of. For institutions that want to exclude AI from their curricula, this creates friction—they can use the dominant search tool or maintain their policies, but not both. The traditional tech playbook offered AI as an add-on; Google is instead making it foundational. This tests which schools have genuine conviction around their AI policies versus which adopted them for optics. The move exposes a real cost of tech monoculture: without viable alternatives (Bing's Copilot integration remains limited; DuckDuckGo has its own constraints), schools lose negotiating power and face binary choices rather than incremental adoption.