Google has been playing the long game in classrooms, and newly surfaced court documents spell out exactly how calculated that strategy is. Internal presentations from 2020 reveal the company explicitly views getting kids into its ecosystem as a path to "brand trust and loyalty over their lifetime," according to heavily-redacted documents filed in a massive child safety lawsuit. The 60-page deck doesn't mince words - it's about onboarding future customers while they're still learning their ABCs.
Google just handed prosecutors a smoking-gun marketing deck, and it's not a good look. Internal presentations from November 2020, unsealed this week as part of a sprawling lawsuit against big tech platforms, lay bare what critics have long suspected - the company's decade-plus push into education isn't just about helping kids learn. It's about capturing them as lifelong customers.
"Onboarding kids" into Google's ecosystem "leads to brand trust and loyalty over their lifetime," reads one slide from the presentation obtained through court filings. The phrasing is clinical, almost detached, but the strategy is crystal clear. Get them young, keep them forever.
The documents emerged from a massive lawsuit filed by multiple school districts, families, and state attorneys general targeting Google, Meta, ByteDance, and Snap. The plaintiffs accuse these companies of building "addictive and dangerous" products that have damaged young users' mental health. earlier this week, but Google, Meta, and ByteDance are heading to trial.
