Apps & Consumer
DuckDuckGo courts schools as Google's AI policy draws backlash
DuckDuckGo is pitching itself to schools as an alternative to Google Search after Google said disabling its AI features would also cut off access to Search.
Google told schools on Tuesday that they could turn off its Gemini AI assistant, but that disabling the company’s other AI features would also cost them access to Google Search. DuckDuckGo, which markets itself around limiting data collection, is treating the backlash as an opening in a market Google has long dominated: it points to roughly 50 million Chromebooks already in schools and a Google Classroom platform that serves more than 150 million users worldwide.
DuckDuckGo founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg posted on X pointing schools to the company’s documentation on switching their default search engine to DuckDuckGo, offering to help schools make the change. Kamyl Bazbaz, DuckDuckGo’s chief public affairs officer, was blunter: “Forcing AI on school children: how a monopolist behaves when they think people are powerless. Prove Google wrong.”
In an email to TechCrunch, DuckDuckGo argued there’s nothing stopping Google from switching off Search’s AI layer for schools on its own, without tying that choice to whether a district also disables Gemini. The company isn’t opposed to AI outright — it runs its own Duck.ai chat interface and an AI search assistant — but it lets users switch those features off in its search and browser settings, including through a dedicated site, noai.duckduckgo.com, where AI answer summaries, AI-generated images and AI-based feature prompts are switched off across the board.
DuckDuckGo has pointed to a 30% rise in its app installs earlier this year as evidence that users are already rejecting Google’s AI-first search results by default.
Why it matters
The fight over AI in classrooms gives a privacy-focused rival a rare wedge into Google’s decade-long grip on school technology, and how many districts actually switch could be an early signal of how much goodwill Google’s AI push costs it elsewhere.