DuckDuckGo offers schools an alternative to Google Search

DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg invited school administrators on November 4 to make DuckDuckGo the default search engine on managed Chrome browsers and Chromebooks, offering help with the change as Google prepares new artificial-intelligence settings for K-12 accounts. The offer could give schools an alternative to Google Search, but no district adoption has been reported. Weinberg shared deployment instructions on X. The switch would change the search engine used for searches entered in the browser address bar; it would not replace Google Classroom, Drive or Docs. DuckDuckGo also operates noai.duckduckgo.com, a search site that its description says removes AI features and filters AI-generated images from image results by default. The pitch comes as Google’s K-12 settings allow administrators to enable services separately, including Gemini and Search. Google says schools that turn off AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode also lose access to Search because the products are deeply integrated. DuckDuckGo argues that Google could keep Search available while disabling AI summaries, which it describes as separable features. The competing technical explanations have not been...