DuckDuckGo courts schools as Google ties Search access to AI features

On Nov. 4, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg offered to help school administrators make DuckDuckGo the default search engine on managed Chrome browsers and Chromebooks, publishing deployment instructions. The move followed Google’s announcement that Gemini, Gemini Notebook and Search would be off by default for K–12 accounts, though schools that enable Google Search must also accept AI Overviews and AI Mode. DuckDuckGo said its noai.duckduckgo.com option disables AI-generated answers and images, while Google offers no AI-free version of Search. The default change affects address-bar searches, not Google Classroom, Drive or Docs.