The Nefarious Reason Why Google Wants Schools to Give Your Child a Chromebook

Published: January 27, 2026

growtika-dUMEnARXgJU-unsplash — Photo from Growtika via Unsplash

By India McCarty

Newly filed internal documents show how Google worked to place their tech in schools in an effort to create a “pipeline of future users.”

“It just proves the kind of fear that we’ve all had,” Jared Cooney Horvath, a cognitive neuroscientist and education consultant, told NBC News. “These companies speak about learning, but to them, learning is just the cover they’re using for these practices of ‘How do we get customers now’ and ‘How do we keep them for life.’”

In the heavily-redacted documents, presentation slides celebrated the placement of Google Chromebook computers in schools, creating a “pipeline of future users.”

Another 2020 presentation slide declared, “You get that loyalty early, and potentially for life [when putting Google products into schools].”

One slide asked Google employees to imagine a world where “Parents ask their children ‘Why aren’t you watching more YouTube?’” or one where “School Administrators shift budgets from Textbooks to YouTube subscriptions.”

A major lawsuit reveals details of Google’s business motivations to get its products into schools. A Google spokesperson says the documents “mischaracterize our work.” https://t.co/LYZGEkSW7V

— NBC News (@NBCNews) January 23, 2026

“These documents confirm that suspicion that there are ulterior motives to companies pushing technology into classrooms,” Sarah Gardner, CEO of Heat Initiative, a parent activist group critical of social media platforms, told NBC News. “And so we need to be asking why we’re letting them do that.”

Spokesperson Jack Malon told The Verge that these documents “mischaracterize” Google’s work in education, adding, “YouTube does not market directly to schools and we have responded to meet the strong demand from educators for high-quality, curriculum-aligned content.”

He pointed out that school administrators have control over how the platform is used in schools, and that YouTube requires parental consents before giving access to users under 18.

Stacy Hawthorne, board chair of the Consortium for School Networking, an association for school technology officials, also spoke out in defense of keeping technology in schools, saying it can be used to help children learn.

“There’s a big chasm between ‘Social media is bad for kids’ and ‘We need to pull computers out of schools,’” she explained.

These documents were released as part of an ongoing series of lawsuits that claim tech companies like Meta, ByteDance, Snap and Google purposefully created and marketed addictive social media to children.

Snap, parent company of messaging app Snapchat, recently settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, with Snap telling the BBC they were “pleased to have been able to resolve this matter in an amicable manner.”

These newly uncovered documents show just how pervasive Big Tech’s spread is — and how hard they’re working to get the next generation of users hooked.

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