Feature Request: Allow Google Workspace for Education Admins to Disable AI Overviews in Search

[smarsh]

A teacher at our K–8 school recently brought an issue to my attention that I think raises an important question about AI in education.

She is teaching students how to conduct research, evaluate sources, and find reliable information online. However, when students perform a basic Google search, they're immediately presented with an AI-generated overview that often summarizes the very information they're supposed to be researching.

This seems counterproductive to what we're trying to teach. Students need opportunities to navigate search results, examine sources, and draw their own conclusions rather than being handed an AI-generated synthesis before they've even started.

As our school's technology administrator, I was surprised to discover that Google Workspace for Education doesn't provide a way to disable AI Overviews for student accounts.

I'd really like to see Google introduce an organizational unit (OU) policy that allows administrators to control whether AI Overviews appear in Google Search, just as we can manage access to other AI features.

I'm aware of the udm=14 workaround, but it doesn't provide comprehensive administrative control.

I'm curious whether other schools have encountered this issue. Have teachers in your district raised similar concerns? Has anyone found a workable solution, or heard whether Google plans to offer this functionality?

[steve]

Yes, this is a problem. We've been mentioning it to our Google reps and put in feature requests through the West Coast Colab. Our district is on the verge of blocking www.google.com for K-8 students.

[smarsh]

Yes! The teacher who brought this to my attention actually wants to switch her students to DuckDuckGo as their default search engine. I'm seriously considering it, but I'm hesitant to give up the protections and administrative controls we have with Google SafeSearch. It's frustrating that we have to choose between those protections and giving students a more traditional search experience.

[zdanenyc]

As there is no native Google setting, we took the below actions:

Added an extension that blocked AI Overviews and pinned to current version as it is open source and want to ensure that the latest works before we switch.

We also configured this for the AI Mode and Omnibox Search Provider settings:

[Olger]

I'd prefer Google make an admin toggle available as well, but while we wait for that, you can use "udm=14" to suppress the AI Overview when searching. It doesn't remove or hide the AI Mode tab so students can still access that. You can force udm=14 by setting the Omnibox search provider to "https://www.google.com/search?q={searchTerms}&udm=14" (Admin Console->Devices->Chrome->Settings->Users & Browsers, find Omnibox Search Provider). Then set the provider name to "Google Web" or something, and the provider keyword to "Google", and the url as https://www.google.com/search?q={searchTerms}&udm=14).

Apparently, and I haven't tried this yet (and ChatGPT only just told me now), you can block AI Conversations by blocking "google.com/search@udm=50" in the URL Blocklist. I will be testing this though.

[Olger]

A bit more on the udm=50 parameter. I've tested this thouroughly, and haven't been able to get it to block. According to Google's docs, "google.com/search@udm=50" is the correct syntax and should work. I haven't been able to get it to work at all. udm=50 is added to the url when you click on the "AI Mode" tab, so its a useful thing to monitor and look for, and block.

We use GAT Shield (and GAT Teacher Assist), so I ended up blocking it with a rule, and redirecting students to a blank google page, but if anyone finds out how to make this work in Workspace URL Blocks, I'm interested.

[Olger]

I checked our setup and we use a slightly different url for the omnibox search provider:

{google:baseURL}search?q={searchTerms}&udm=14&{google:RLZ}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}ie={inputEncoding}

Which has been working for at least the past year or so quite nicely. I also tested blocking udm=50 just now, and it removes the AI Mode tab, preventing students from accessing it. I did find that AI Overview flashes briefly in the browser and then dissappears.

[smarsh]

Thank you! I’m going to try this today.