alt Hacker News> Google is not "cutting off Search from AI-free schools". They're refusing to supply AI-free Search. It takes less theorizing to understand if you phrase it this way.
can someone smarter than me explain in simpler words, how is that literally not the same thing?
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The main thing they don't want to disable is the AI summary at the top of the search, which eeeeh, can be seen as AI but won't let kids enter an AI mode /chat like some news stations are claiming. (Based off reporting I watched a week ago)
Imagine you have an otherwise AI positive school that wants AI-less Google. Google wouldn't give it to them, but this fact is not communicated by the less precise headline.
Google are avoiding an à la carte offering here. They are saying you either get search which now includes AI, or you can disable the entire feature. The obvious thing that people want is the original search without AI included.
They are not giving reasons why they can't unbundle these options. It could be technical but seems more likely that they want to appear to comply and shift the focus. Search being disabled creates pressure on those operating the tool. The local narrative becomes that the admin is the one that is limiting use. Eventually people lose sight of the real reasons and Google are on the sidelines watching users fight it out with admins.
This is a classic product management approach to dealing with objections. Remember that the PMs are getting measured on usage. If no one uses their feature then they are in trouble, so they make it hard to disable their features. A wonderful incentive structure, right?
Lots of companies build toggles that bundle up features as a result. You may want to disable this one thing, but toggling that off disables all these other things you want. The admin has pressure from the business or users. The vendor comes in to support the business or users, and then the IT team is overruled. Alternatively, the bundle is packed with items of real value plus mitigations are released elsewhere in the product (think: eDiscovery/logging/compliance) that cause IT to enable the whole bundle.
It would be very expensive to create a custom version of search for these schools. It's not simply a matter of flipping a switch off. They decided that the cost of accommodating the schools wasn't worth the effort.
> can someone smarter than me explain in simpler words, how is that literally not the same thing?
You can't just buy peanuts without shells. They grow in that shell! That's what a peanut is!
Search is already chock full of AI, removing it would be tons of work that Google doesn't want to do (since P0 is in fact cram even more LLMs into everything).