Mastodawn

Bryan Mitchell 1d ago

Vivaldi Browser

It's not a secret that Google isn't the apple of our eye (there's a reason why we don't make any money from search deals with them) but yesterday's announcement about the changes coming to Google Search are plain depressing for the web as we know it. What started as a joke (the famous "It's not AI" video with @jon), is starting to feel dystopian at this point.

Anyway. Swimming against the current is exhausting, but the fight for a better web is more important than ever. And as long as there’s people willing to take the fight, there’s hope. 🔥 So we'll keep resisting: no opt-in, no opt-out, no nonsense. ✊

ramblingsteve 1d ago

@Vivaldi @jon is there any roadmap from chromium to an alternative engine like servo in future to cut them off entirely?

@ramblingsteve @Vivaldi @jon This please!

@Vivaldi @jon let's build our own decentralized search engine that we can protect.

Marta Threadbare 1d ago

@Vivaldi @jon still, you are helping Google in making their thing the entire browser ecosystem :( we have been at a point where making a chromium based thing is actively harmful for some time.

And I'm not attacking you (I actually like Vivaldi, it's the only chromium based thing I recommend to people who can't get used to Firefox or any of its forks), just pointing out the current situation is shit.

Marta Threadbare 1d ago

@Vivaldi @jon I'm now remembering when Opera was "still Opera", at the time I used to read dev blogs sometimes. Don't remember the specifics but I remember a bunch of instances of devs complaining how gmail or google docs suddenly failed, were rendered wrongly or showed "your browser is not compatible" but if you changed the user agent to chrome everything worked fine.
Or devs wondering if they should implement this or that css tag as the standard defined it or implement webkit's dirty hack instead because that's what web devs were using anyways... google has been hurting the internet as much as they could at every moment.

Switching to chromium was the death of Opera. Starting a new browser from Opera's ashes but still using chromium makes it hard to believe you fight for the open internet. Like not even you believe it.

(And again this comes from a place of love and sadness.)

@Vivaldi IDK, opt-in is looking practically Utopian at this point.

exitcode 1d ago

@Vivaldi @jon servo engine when

Grace R. Emlin 1d ago

@Vivaldi @jon Switched to DDG and Qwant, months ago, and haven't looked back.

Frutiger 1d ago

@gre @Vivaldi @jon Ddg? Im using qwant too but never heard of ddg. Qwant is pretty neat. As far as I know they don't have problematic policies. If something, they have AI but you can disable it (i think completely)
But heck, even ecosia has ai so...

Grace R. Emlin 1d ago

@FrutigerAero00 @Vivaldi @jon I switch over to Duck Duck Go when Qwant tries to tell me that the rest of the search results aren't relevant.

Frutiger 1d ago

@gre @Vivaldi @jon Aaaaa duck duck goo... It hasnt been long since i switched to qwant because boicot america reasons. But it was a real good browser.

Grace R. Emlin 22h ago

@FrutigerAero00 @Vivaldi @jon I can certainly understand wanting to boycott anything from this benighted land.

@Vivaldi @jon Be strong, stay strong. This fight is not yours only: it’s ours, for all of us. Don’t forget it. 💪

As long as you’ll stay here, there still be hope for that better Web we all want to preserve.

Vivaldi Browser 1d ago

@TritTriton 🥹❤️

Neil Brutalist 1d ago

@Vivaldi @jon What can we do when even supposed alternatives like Duck Duck Go and Ecosia are ramming this crap down our throats regardless of what their users are telling them?

ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIES 1d ago

@frobisher @Vivaldi @jon

you can use #duckduckgo without #AI

https://noai.duckduckgo.com/

DuckDuckGo - Protection. Privacy. Peace of mind.

The Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs.

DuckDuckGo

Ben Todd 1d ago

Unless you are on McDonald's WiFi. I've found they block the no AI version 🤬

@frobisher @Vivaldi @jon

ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIES 1d ago

@monkeyben @frobisher @Vivaldi @jon

Da fuq

That's absurd

I believe you. I'm just amazed at the abusiveness

Hedgewizard 🐈1d ago

@benroyce @monkeyben @frobisher @Vivaldi @jon
So that's why I had to switch my mobile data on the other morning!

No matter - Maccas is enemy territory to me anyway

Ben Todd 3h ago

Well unfortunately they are the favourite of the Trump 🫤 and he loves evil AI.

@frobisher @Vivaldi @jon

Melvin Gundlach 1d ago

@monkeyben @benroyce @frobisher @Vivaldi @jon You can fully disable the AI features in the settings of the regular version of DuckDuckGo as well.

Al & Val's Modern Homesteading 22h ago

@monkeyben @benroyce @frobisher @Vivaldi @jon So McDonald's search comes with their "Special Slop"?

Marc 🐷🌏16h ago

@monkeyben @benroyce @frobisher @Vivaldi @jon
Despite this special URL DuckDuckGo has easy options to completely turn off all AI features.

Flipper 🐬🏳️‍🌈1d ago

@benroyce @frobisher @Vivaldi @jon this is the way.

Duchamp Pérez 1d ago

@jon @frobisher @benroyce @Vivaldi The one I have been using for about a year

lemgandi 1d ago

@benroyce @frobisher @Vivaldi @jon Haven't quite figured out how on waterfox//Firefox. Search engine choice is a drop-down list. I reckon the choices are in a JSON file somewhere.

@lemgandi @benroyce @frobisher It's in the regular settings. You can add and manage your search engines easily.

lemgandi 22h ago

@ltning @benroyce @frobisher

Pkease read my comment. Hamburger menu->Settings->Search leads to a drop-down list of possible default search engines. I am not referring to the search engine icon on the left of the search bar.

Martha Bridegam 21h ago

@lemgandi @[email protected] @frobisher @Vivaldi @jon

In Firefox Settings under the Search tab, the "Search Shortcuts" menu near the end of the page, with the list of search engines, has an "add" choice and shows you what characters to add at the end of the URL to make it work. To add noai.duckduckgo.com, click "add" and use the "Add Search Engine" pop-up interface to enter "https://noai.duckduckgo.com/search?q=%s" (no quotation marks in the actual entry).

lemgandi 7h ago

@MBridegam @frobisher @Vivaldi @jon

!!! Thank you so much kind person. I see how it works now, I Am Enlightened. And my default search engine is now "noai.duckduckgo.com"

I was confused by this screen, but now it is clear.

Martha Bridegam 6h ago

@lemgandi @frobisher @Vivaldi @jon

So glad, happy searching. Within the limits of DDG's reach, I find NoAIddg does really well.

Linda Rose Smit 23h ago

@benroyce @frobisher @Vivaldi @jon have been, even

Medea Vanamonde 🏳️‍⚧️23h ago

@benroyce @frobisher @Vivaldi @jon

I’m collecting these as peeps post them.

Feels like 1998 all over again

teresa_athome 1d ago

@frobisher @Vivaldi @jon

Try Startpage or Mojeek.

EaterOfSnacks 1d ago

@frobisher @Vivaldi @jon Unless I've missed something awful about Startpage (entirely possible as we approach Peak Enshittification so quickly) they seem ok

Iain Hallam 12h ago

@eaterofsnacks @frobisher @Vivaldi @jon Startpage is fine, but for some queries I do still head back to Google and get better results.

Søren Ladegaard 1d ago

@Vivaldi @jon what was "yesterday's announcement"?

Turr1caN 1d ago

@sorenladegaard @Vivaldi @jon https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/google-search-as-you-know-it-is-over/

Google Search as you know it is over | TechCrunch

Google is transforming Search from a list of links into an AI-powered experience filled with conversational answers, autonomous agents, and interactive interfaces — a shift that could further reduce traffic to publishers across the web.

TechCrunch

@sorenladegaard @Vivaldi @jon

That essentially search results from Google search will be replaced by an AI "conversation".

It's as dumb as it sounds.

@sorenladegaard @Vivaldi @jon

Ok I wasn't expecting it to be this eggregious, thankfully ive moved on from google search but I still used as a last resort when kagi wouldnt return what I was looking for

@elkaki @sorenladegaard @Vivaldi @jon

Thankfully Kagi has had a 100% hit rate for me since I subbed last year, and I've not had to resort to other options. The No AI DDG is decent though.

Weird Socks 1d ago

@Vivaldi @jon
I thought Vivaldi is based on Google's Chromium. Did I miss something?

Marc 🐷🌏16h ago

@ohmu @Vivaldi @jon
Chromium is open-source, so it's not property of Google.

Google is the main contributor, but that doesn't mean it controls Chromium. The Vivaldi team strips out all contributions they don't agree with.

So there's no problem at all with using Chromium.

Joshua Byrd 1d ago

@Vivaldi @jon switch to Gecko then I'll use Vivaldi

@Vivaldi @jon If it helps y'all feel any better, after reading that article, I demoted Google in all of my browsers.

My default search engine is now #Kagi.

"...*Paying* for a search engine? Why?"

Because late last year, while working on a very silly project, Kagi delivered the results I needed, where Google utterly failed.

https://kagi.com/

Kagi - Reclaim the Web & Restore Your Privacy

Reclaim the web from clutter. Get ad-free search, private browsing, and powerful tools that respect your data.

TheZorse 23h ago

When I tried Vivaldi, I noticed (but was not notified about) multiple Google connections toggled on by default. They could be toggled off easily enough, but the user would have to know to go looking for them.

Seemed like a cool browser, otherwise.

Martha Bridegam 21h ago

@TheZorse @Vivaldi @jon

The number of automatic Google connections bothers me too. Can you explain about that?

@Vivaldi @jon seriously, couldn't somebody create a decent alternative search engine? One that doesn't scrape your data, doesn't use AI, and isn't owned by Big Tech?

Two guys did it in the first place with Google. Why can't somebody do it again?

Kate Hildenbrand (DE)17h ago

@Quasit I use Kagi. It's not free but it works. And it's not Big Tech. I pay with money instead of my data. It sucks that I have to pay for a search engine but at least I can search this AI-infested internet, block what I don't want to see, and report AI slop shit to Kagi where they check it out and rank the AI slop lower.

@Vivaldi @jon what happens when it gets built into chromium?

Mensch, Marina 19h ago

@Vivaldi @jon plus, there are other search engines - Google deserves that the numbers of customers and their businesses go down to zero.

🏳️‍🌈 Sabina Lorenz 🦄13h ago

@Vivaldi @jon
Isn't there a way to switch to a different framework? Chromium is Google.