WriteDragon
evacideWhen I do a web search, I do not want Google to go to the websites for me, pull the information, and interpret it for me. I want it to give me a list of websites that I can read and evaluate myself because AI is frequently wrong: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/google-search-as-you-know-it-is-over/
noplasticshower@evacide yup
⠠⠵ avuko@evacide why think when you can… “not think” I guess is the desired state?
Great thread on this whole thing, from an actual expert:
https://dair-community.social/@emilymbender/116604732852620824
Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) (@[email protected])
Wow some terrible reporting about Google's latest horrible ideas about how to distort information access in the name of "convenience" (or something): https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/google-search-as-you-know-it-is-over/ A short thread 🧵>>
Dynom@avuko @evacide that's a false dichotomy. Filtering lists of results isn't typically the goal of your search query, reading them to learn something is.
Changing the list of results with a summary of said results is merely reaching that information differently.
If the AI results become more factual over time and/or people learn to judge sources listed in the AI result (as they must now) it might become just more efficient.
Lots of ifs and buts, I'm aware, I just hope won't suck. 🤞
Elena Brescacin@evacide One more reason to degoogle (at least for what concerns searching)
Nick Kerker 
@evacide at my work if you use Edge or Chrome, an admin policy prevents changing the search engine from Google. I can't really use Firefox because 1) Threatlocker prevents me from installing extensions and 2) admin policies prevent me from copying text out of Service Now and other apps.
I've been lobbying for awhile to allow us to change search engines so hopefully this gets that moving.
Dennis Plöger@evacide that's why I first moved to Ecosia and then -because they're doing AI now, too - on to Qwant. I hope they won't integrate AI at some point. 🙄
Julie Hughes@evacide Why are you still using Google?
scrivyYou can easily remove the AI Overview...
https://hachyderm.io/@scrivy/116536252469319380
scrivy (@[email protected])
You can prepend your browser's #google search engine query with -ai+ to remove the "AI Overview": https://www.google.com/search?q=-ai+%s #noai #firefox
Niko Trimmel
Nu Modular@evacide The midwest of the US, has over 75% increases in power costs, and their aquifer existing millions of years, is now in direct threat toward extinction - and it's because of #TechBros #greed, heaping #DataCenter #AbuseOfPower upon the innocently ignorant masses.
We're now forced to accelerate desalination, without the benefit of competing energy sources other than #FossilFuels
These abusers must be replaced asap, with ethical #RootInfrastructure #scientists.
Allpoints
JulieR
roboticus lastius (not a bot)@abetterjulie @evacide Exactly. I sometimes only find my feet after wandering around a bit on a site. I do not want a targeted answered wrapped up by AI.
Duke@evacide I hate everything google. I stopped using their search, maps, and gmail in the 2000s and I haven't missed any of it. As of last year, I finally moved to a Fairphone with /e/OS, so no more google evil in my phone. No one needs google and I'm amazed that anyone still uses their anything.
Pete Prodoehl 🍕
Earthworm 🐌As google doces alternative, I love https://cryptpad.fr @CryptPad
Others use some nextcloud suite (but I couldn't resolve technical issues).
https://switching.software/ is your friend.
@earthworm @DukeDuke @CryptPad Cheers! I’ve used CryptPad, and I am glad it exists, but it’s definitely got some rough edges.
I don’t know that people I know would be willing to switch because of those rough edges. 😞
Nadia/Надя/नाडिया/娜迪亚/ نادية@DukeDuke @evacide If by some miracle I survive the summer as anything but an imminently dead homeless person, which looks about as likely as getting struck by lightning, hit by a falling meteor, bitten by a great white shark, and winning the lottery (I hope they're illegal here) all at the same time, I'll have to completely boycott all USA internet services. Not doing so is just begging for the dictatorship over there to do away with me or have me done away with by the local govt. like Operación Cóndor.
Sablebadger@evacide hard agree.
search engines these days, even when not using AI, aren't returning useful links. It's all "what can I sell you related to your search" instead of "here is the information you requested" and its driving me nuts.
🇨🇦 CowMan 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 🇲🇽@Sablebadger @evacide the other side of the equation is not much better. An increasingly large percentage of results are AI generated trash.
loric@evacide This is why I self-host a SearXNG instance. Too many search engines deciding what I need to see, so I ask them all to get a more complete answer.
Carlos SolísSame here! The only complaint I have is the constant rate-limiting, but otherwise, knowing I'm effectively using ALL THE ENGINES (and with none of the LLM slop) is great for my usage case
retrimental
Hot Dog Water, roilingResearching for papers always made me happy. Later, I used to Google so deep for so many things. It was my goal to find shit people gave-up looking for. Hell, I used to get a hit on Page 10.
I collected so many gigs of football uniform reference through Goog and the many small websites hidden in corners that it would find with the right guiding.
I quit using it entirely maybe 5 years ago.
Don't get around much. Anymore.
Lilune
Ray—Golden Retriever Whisperer—🔝Insights@evacide I just changed the default search engine on my phone and will do the same everywhere else once I get back home.
Joan's Addiction 😷@evacide Ask Jeeves should've hung on a little longer..
@evacide When I was using Safari with duckduck on it, I always turned off AI and search assist. I wouldn't install duck (those settings would've stayed) because last time I did that on my last laptop, I couldn't uninstall it.
When I see anything AI, I quickly check what I missed doing. I type out 90% of my typing because I don't want to lose my typing skills or abillity to spell.
It's a long way of saying that I totally agree with you.
🏳️⚧️ShadesofRaye🩼I like Ecosia. You can turn AI off and it plants trees when people use it.
lemgandi
GhostOnTheHalfShellYeah, I first saw reporting on this kind of thing a month or two ago. Google just decided this is the way the web will work now unilaterally and companies are expected to reshape their websites to provide raw materials for Google to fashion content from.
It’s fucking bullshit
Flash Mob Of One@evacide Not to pimp out my youtube channel, but I did a video on a few Google alternatives a month and a half ago. Could be it's helpful.
Google Search in 2026: Frustrating, Broken, and Avoidable (Here’s What To Use Instead)
Dаn̈ıel Раršlow 🥧Just for fun I tried using the "AI mode" (like there's still another kind), and prefaced my search with "Please give me a classic set of google search results, with absolutely no AI summary, for the following terms:"
I got about ten results. It couldn't resist prefacing it with something like "Here are web results for your query", which technically breached the request.
Arianna Masciolini@evacide it's the end of the world(wide web) as we know it and I feel fine
(because I search the whole web less and less and if I do it's not through google)
ArtGeek (Ken Tryon)I switched to Duck Duck Go last week, apparently just in time. Google, once obsessively minimalist and functional, has descended into an ugly pile of crap. I can onlly hope the market gives them what they deserve. 😏
Bill Zaumen@ArtGeek When google started, I used it and ignored all the other search engines because Google didn't have those annoying, flashing banner ads that loaded before everything else. At that point, Google ads were short tag lines, so everything fit in a single HTTP transaction. The tag lines reminded me of the guys at a classical music station who would read one with a "why am I reduced to this crass commercialism" tone of voice.
A lot of classical stations have educational or noncommercial licenses and are only permitted by law to do sponsorship announcements. Then comes pledge week . . .
The law may have changed some, but they still can do only the bare minimum of advertising.
J. R. DePriest 
:EA DATA. SF:@evacide fuck every single bit of that bullshit.
Jeff McNeill@evacide Watching the process that DeepSeek goes through, at lightning speed, allows me to guide it and get good results, similar to my own process of selecting web links to click, skimming information, etc. Only DeepSeek does it much faster and also elucidates the steps it is taking, while taking them. One doesn't believe the first website at the top of Google (and anyways, usually advertised), nor should one mindlessly take the first AI answer. Both processes, manual and with AI, require mindfulness.
Neil E. Hodges@evacide And the real kicker is that once they do this, they can shape the generated summaries to basically control what we think. :/
Alison Wilder@evacide I agree with all the people in this thread who are saying to dump Google. I also think they maybe don't realize exactly how powerful and important Google search is to culture, the economy, politics, etc.
This has ramifications way beyond what search engine the people of Mastodon prefer.
(for the record, I use kagi.)
@alisynthesis @evacide Whenever someone tells me to “Google” something I say “I don’t use Google.”
and hope they ask a follow-up question so I can ramble on about alternatives.
and hope they ask a follow-up question so I can ramble on about alternatives.
JWarner
Kargas
James Donohoe@evacide I try to use https://www.mojeek.com/ as a first stop, close to the old GOOG but far fewer indexed pages and can be hit and miss so second stop usually https://www.ecosia.org/search
craftxbox
Gaijin Oni KD@craftxbox @evacide Same. Wondering if they see the irony.
Kim Gadsdon@evacide AGREED!!!
killionaire@evacide Not to mention their black box AI gets to interpret the info how big tech wants it to. Billionaires already manipulate algorithms on their social media to push their agendas. You know damn well they will on their AI platforms.
the unbeliever@evacide
Google Search has been bad for quite a while now.
I switched to DDG 6 years ago when I moved to Linux Mint.
Even DDG can be meh at times, so I ocassionally use qwant or mogeek or ecosia to view alternatives.
Google Search has been bad for quite a while now.
I switched to DDG 6 years ago when I moved to Linux Mint.
Even DDG can be meh at times, so I ocassionally use qwant or mogeek or ecosia to view alternatives.
GarretSidzaka
QuasitWhat REALLY pisses me off is that Google actually hijacks the links. If you copy the link from what looks like the site that you went to, it turns out to be a share.google link.
For example, I just googled the internet archive. Clicked on the link, and I appear to be on the archive. But if I click the share button, this is the link it copies:
https://🤮 share.google🤮/Ci659fezlM3egZ2mK
Obviously I added a space and some puke faces to keep from giving Google any clicks. But they are literally stealing clicks from the internet archive.
I'm not on the internet; I'm on Google. They're letting me think that I'm on the internet, but I'm in their little corral. It's obscene!
Randall Lee@evacide thanks for the heads-up. I won't be using Google search.
swope
Nicole ParsonsThe fossil fuel interests behind Google's product development decisions aren't benign.
#PrinceBonesaw has his own agenda.
Information pollution to match his climate pollution & public corruption.
https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/07/28/mbs-despot-in-the-desert
https://archive.is/qddWQ
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/07/heres-a-look-at-who.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/05/13/trump-tech-execs-riyadh/
Koch Network has powerful allies in its ongoing anti-democracy propaganda efforts.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/technology/saudi-arabia-ai-exporter.html
@evacide how do you decide what sources are trustworthy though? For youngsters learning this skill that's a thing they still have to master, and that's a long term journey.
I suspect that the newer generations prefer the AI way, because they search their question and get an answer. I've seen my own kids get frustrated with search results that didn't even come close to what they're looking for.