▲ 3 r/Bard
Google blocks search at the system instruction level
If you expand the thought process tab in Gemini, it straight up admits it's blocked from using the internet. It literally says: "I've confirmed the Google search prohibition..." and "concluded I cannot use Google Search"
I think there's just some dumb external router that decides if your prompt "needs" a search before the actual model even processes it. If that router says no, it slaps a system-level ban on the search tool for that query
So even if the AI itself realizes it needs the internet to answer you properly, it physically can't. It just gets trapped, starts hallucinating facts, or makes up stupid excuses about why it can't look things up
u/Competitive-Fox671 — 3 days ago