DuckDuckGo's AI-free search saw nearly 28% more visits in the week following Google's insistence that people love AI mode.
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I have seen this before with their forced Google+ adoption game. Users aren't adopting Google AI at the rate shareholders or C suits expect, so they now force the adoption at the cost of search engine. Just like Google+ died out, this forced AI mode in Google search is going to die and I hope it will be the end of the company as well.
@nixCraft I stopped using Google Search years ago already, it's utterly useless; Scholar and Books are still essential. Ditching OAuth2 is a PITA, AAPL require 2x FIDO2 2FA devices and they must be enrolled through AAPL devices. Security vs convenience? I choose Security eventually but I have to risk-manage. Moving GMail is even more of a PITA. Oh GMail seems to train on private email and sends hashes to Meta or something. Can't prove it, saw the tells. "Once is happenstance..." -- Ian Fleming.
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@nixCraft Too bad they don't FUCKING DO THIS BY DEFAULT. You have to opt out of all AI and choose to hide AI regurgitated garbage.
@lycanmatriarch @nixCraft
If you are able to, try changing your search engine to:Or disable Javascript and you get an html version of DuckDuckGo - caveat, I do not know if the html version of the page also tries to filter out AI slop.
I just checked with Netsurf browser and on typing in https://duckduckgo.com the browser gets redirected to:
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@f4grx @nixCraft Yes, the general public doesn't care. On that we agree, what I am suggesting is more along the lines that if Google dies, and Android dies with it, then what happens? Does Google start remote bricking phones? Does Google Play no longer work?
For a large portion of people as long as the phone works, they don't care. But TikTok, Meta, Uber, et.al. are going to want to push updates to their apps, so how are they going to do so without a working app store?@Mustardfacial @nixCraft TBH, I dont care if people loose access to uber et al.
And also they wont, because companies will definitely make sure that the apps stay available.
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@nixCraft DDG isn't inherently AI-free, but it does give you the option to disable that crap. I hope this surge makes them realise there's no growth in AI. LLMs are a dead-end technology and the sooner people see that the better.
@StarkRG @nixCraft Try noai.duckduckgo.com
While I was installing a new version of LinuxMint on my remaining elderly parent's laptops recently I changed to the noai version of DuckDuckGo in all of the browsers that I installed.
My elderly parent is very thankful as it cuts out a lot of confusing elements in the standard AI enabled DuckDuckGo search page.
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@nixCraft The thing is, I actually liked G+, it was a pretty decent platform all things considered. But oh well, I think other platforms had beaten them to punch, and you go where the people are (at that time it was FB which wasn't as awful as it is now).
But the FORCE EVERYONE TO USE IT tactic is never ever going to work because users have choices (somewhat limited) but they do have choices.
@Sablebadger @nixCraft Google disabled the search modifier "+" in advance of launching G+.
It enshittified the search syntax that used to exist in Google search.
Up to that point you could search for a specific term using +searchterm.
Also IIRC if you wanted to search for a specific phrase you could do +"specific search term as a phrase"
As well as (AFAIR) +specific +search +term +as +a +phrase.
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I have seen this before with their forced Google+ adoption game. Users aren't adopting Google AI at the rate shareholders or C suits expect, so they now force the adoption at the cost of search engine. Just like Google+ died out, this forced AI mode in Google search is going to die and I hope it will be the end of the company as well.
@nixCraft If all the original content providers put Googlebot* on the robots.txt block list, or better yet, add a Google specific noindex meta tag to all their content, it’ll speed up the demise of the Google “search” engine. I did so last week.
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@nixCraft DuckDuckGo is not AI-free. Its AI features are on by default; it's just they can still be disabled.
"Its AI features are on by default; it's just they can still be disabled."
You mean to tell me that people are incapable of thinking and learning new things?
Shocking if true
Which it's not...
Here
Always use this link as your starting point: https://noai.duckduckgo.com/
cc @nixCraft
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I have seen this before with their forced Google+ adoption game. Users aren't adopting Google AI at the rate shareholders or C suits expect, so they now force the adoption at the cost of search engine. Just like Google+ died out, this forced AI mode in Google search is going to die and I hope it will be the end of the company as well.
@nixCraft Let's hope it dies.
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@nixCraft DDG isn't inherently AI-free, but it does give you the option to disable that crap. I hope this surge makes them realise there's no growth in AI. LLMs are a dead-end technology and the sooner people see that the better.
Here
Try this
Leads to this: https://noai.duckduckgo.com/
I mean, goddamnit people, I just went to fucking --> Google <-- and searched for "NOAI DuckDuck" and got exactly that
Maybe y'all oughta try thinking and doing something new for a change
cc @nixCraft
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I have seen this before with their forced Google+ adoption game. Users aren't adopting Google AI at the rate shareholders or C suits expect, so they now force the adoption at the cost of search engine. Just like Google+ died out, this forced AI mode in Google search is going to die and I hope it will be the end of the company as well.
@nixCraft Is there any real infrastructure to fill the void left by Android/Play Services and Youtube? Google runs some pretty important platforms, I don't see how they'd be allowed to die
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@lycanmatriarch @nixCraft
If you are able to, try changing your search engine to:Or disable Javascript and you get an html version of DuckDuckGo - caveat, I do not know if the html version of the page also tries to filter out AI slop.
I just checked with Netsurf browser and on typing in https://duckduckgo.com the browser gets redirected to:
@the_wub @lycanmatriarch @nixCraft
I'm experimenting with Quantthere's also Startpage, Mojeek and a bunch of other alternatives
its important we have multiple options so when one Search company does something shitty we aren't tied to them
like going all in on AI when we have too much of that crap being forced into everything already
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@StarkRG @nixCraft Try noai.duckduckgo.com
While I was installing a new version of LinuxMint on my remaining elderly parent's laptops recently I changed to the noai version of DuckDuckGo in all of the browsers that I installed.
My elderly parent is very thankful as it cuts out a lot of confusing elements in the standard AI enabled DuckDuckGo search page.
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DuckDuckGo's AI-free search saw nearly 28% more visits in the week following Google's insistence that people love AI mode. Is anyone surprised by this result?
@nixCraft once you go "quack", you never go back.
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@StarkRG @nixCraft If you mean using the standard DuckDuckGo page with AI features turned off, this falls down if you then search in a private browsing session.
The AI features (in my experience) are all enabled in private browsing mode even if you turned them all off in a standard browsing session.
As I often search in private browsing mode this became quite tiresome after a while.
AI features stay turned off in a private browsing session when using the NoAI version of DDG.
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@StarkRG @nixCraft If you mean using the standard DuckDuckGo page with AI features turned off, this falls down if you then search in a private browsing session.
The AI features (in my experience) are all enabled in private browsing mode even if you turned them all off in a standard browsing session.
As I often search in private browsing mode this became quite tiresome after a while.
AI features stay turned off in a private browsing session when using the NoAI version of DDG.
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DuckDuckGo's AI-free search saw nearly 28% more visits in the week following Google's insistence that people love AI mode. Is anyone surprised by this result?
@nixCraft the comments on that thread are brutal though (for good reasons IMO).
It looks like we're going back to the days where no single *good* search engine existed. We live in interesting times.
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DuckDuckGo's AI-free search saw nearly 28% more visits in the week following Google's insistence that people love AI mode. Is anyone surprised by this result?
@nixCraft IMHO
personally I like AI mode, but there should be a option to turn it off for people who don't like AI
And since, yk, Google uses AI for even their definitions
Some guy searched "stop" and it said the meaning was
"Ok I'll stop"
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@nixCraft Serious question: If Google dies, what happens to Android? Google effectively owns it and it shuttering the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) in September.
Google will not die, at least not without a new kid on the block eating their lunch.
Being assholes will not drive users away as long as your product is better (actually or percieved as) than the competition.
So, if Google dies entirely, it will be because all of their products have been killed off by competing products.
Any product still good enough to be a contender would be bought up by someone else or (more likely) be spun off into a new company.
So, I seriously doubt that Google will die, but it may very well face the same destiny as Microsoft, who was absolutely untouchable on the desktop OS market back around the time when Windows 95 and 98 came out.
Yes, there was OS/2 and Mac OS, but they were niche players. Today, the world is completely different because of mobile devices, and none of them runs a Microsoft OS. Microsoft is now just "a" operating system provider, not "the" operating system provider.
My guess is that Google could end up in the same situation as Microsoft once the dedicated AI-companies start eating into parts of their business.
Oh, and make no mistake. LLM is here to stay.
It will not be the do-all-end-all tool that some wants it to be, but it is definitely a tool that has its uses as e.g. a dedicated knowledge management tool internally in companies.
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DuckDuckGo's AI-free search saw nearly 28% more visits in the week following Google's insistence that people love AI mode. Is anyone surprised by this result?
@nixCraft I just wish DDG had an ai reporting feature on image search- I’m glad they clear out the ai ‘emoji’ database spam, but websites using ai images remain.
Before:2023 -
@nixCraft@mastodon.social
I ditched Google as my go-to search-engine not long after I ditched Chrome as my go-to browser. Yes, I still use both, but that usage is constrained to specific scenarios:
• Google Search is much better for finding images
• Chrome is effectively required for some of the sites I have to use (mostly for work-related things). To limit the potential damage of doing so (things like theweights.binfuckery), I run it inside a sandbox.@nixCraft@mastodon.social Speaking of "
weights.binfuckery… A quick (DDG) search indicates Google may not have finalized the location of the file and that location may have shifted since the initial kerfuffle. Looks like you may need to wholly disable Chrome's AI extensions, instead (of just nulling the Chrome-installed file's original location). If they are still figuring out where to place it, I wonder if they're at least cleaning up the prior placements before trying to write further 4GiB files?
