Sometimes I see people frustration-post screenshots of Google searches marred by Gemini AI banners.

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@f4grx What do you think of Startpage?

[f4grx@chaos.social]

@mcc I have been using startpage as my daily driver for years now. I have nothing to complain up to now.

[ami_angelwings@urusai.social]

@mcc it's kinda eerie how much this also sounds like real life situations people face when they can see the coming change in their country, obviously it's not as easy to just "leave" (especially nowadays) but like these were and are decisions people have had to face and being told to wait and see, but then you have to flee in a rush if it does get worse

[f4grx@chaos.social]

@mcc OK I see they also have their vanish private AI lol. Never saw that before I just found it in the lateral menu I never use. at least they dont insert ai previews in normal searches. I block their ads with ublock origin.

[luxliquida@critter.cafe]

@Canageek @mcc I'm worried Startpage won't be around much longer... their parent company, System1, is not doing well, and their CEO said they're changing focus from search monetization to AI marketing

That and someone, my guess is System1, asked Waterfox to remove it from their browser altogether

[canageek@wandering.shop]

@luxliquida @mcc Dammit, that took less time then I expected.

I guess I'll go back to using Google with the no AI parameter added when it finally gives up the ghost or starts pushing AI at me. at least until that stops working.

Edit: I was literally responding to this while my work computer installed updates and restarted, and when it booted back up, it installed a waterfox update with this in the changelog for that update

[luxliquida@critter.cafe]

@Canageek @mcc I really wish Kagi would offer a no-AI option. I emailed them asking if they planned to offer an "unbundled" version without the AI nonsense, but no response yet. Maybe if we all email them about it they'll do it

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@luxliquida @Canageek i went onto their feedback forum and asked for this and wound up in a heated personal argument with the CEO, who although i was coming in as a paying customer was invested in saying i should not want the thing i want. it was a deeply weird and unpleasant experience.

[reflex@retrogaming.social]

@mcc Absolutely nobody should be pointing users at Kagi. It's not secure or private, it's sources are suspect, the technical lead harasses critics and it appears to be operating illegally in the EU.

https://www.osnews.com/story/139270/do-not-use-kagi/

[ambientspace@cloudisland.nz]

@mcc I am actively avoiding it as much as I am able.

[luxliquida@critter.cafe]

@mcc @Canageek That's so gross

[kasperd@westergaard.social]

These days I am primarily using https://www.ecosia.org/ for searches. Occasionally I still use Google when Ecosia doesn’t give me the right results.

The main problem I have with search engines these days is results getting polluted with pages that don’t match my search terms. When most of the results don’t contain the terms I searched for it gets really hard to find the page I am actually looking for.

If I quote the search terms Google will usually respect it. But even Google is getting worse in that area. Allegedly Google realized that by making it harder to find what you are looking for they get to show more ads.

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@kasperd i also have to do the quoting-single-words thing on kagi, yeah

[boydstephensmithjr@hachyderm.io]

@mcc I fear that Google and Microsoft will eventually cut access to their indexes in order to force people into their "AI", and IIRC both Kagi and DDG are not doing their own indexing. (Again, IIRC; Kagi usess Google's index and DDG uses Microsoft's.)

[waha_06x36@mastodon.social]

@mcc You know that thing where you think there is a good reason you should switch away from thing A, but the option is thing B and it is just worse in practice, and you want to switch but it just isn't as good, so you put it off and put it off, and then A keeps getting worse and worse and meanwhile B stays they same and doesn't get any better, and at some point you B is no longer worse even though it hasn't changed at all.

[brettm@swarm.coiloptic.org]

@mcc@mastodon.social qwant.com also has no ai crap on top of page

[cafechatnoir@mastodon.social]

@mcc

I've just switched my default search engines to DuckDuckGo - very easy to find and turn off the AI options.

[bigshellevent@toot.cat]

@mcc I just want somewhere that isn't pushing AI onto me, and Kagi/Ecosia/DDG all do that. Sure I can adapt, but I'm uneasy because I don't want the technique to pour our the pre mixed piss from my tea, I just don't want to come back to that tea house ever again.

And deGoogle is something I'm trying and not doing well yet. Mostly the phones I don't have a viable alternative. And using Microsoft at home because of work kills me.

[smn@l3ib.org]

@mcc literally just echoing your own sentiment back at you but boy do I wish I could ever run towards a new technology rather than away from an old one

[video_game_king@mastodon.social]

@mcc I wish I could, but I can't afford subscription-based search engines, and none of the free ones have the features Google still has (robust date search and finding images with transparent backgrounds).