Vleeuwe
nixCraft 🐧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?
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.
A wizard did it 
🇨🇦@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.
F4GRX Sébastien@Mustardfacial @nixCraft thats a great question and I have no answer.
I believe the existing aosp still works, i have lineage with fdroid and there is no google in it at all.
@f4grx @nixCraft Lineage, Graphene, raw AOSP with fdroid is all well and good for the nerds like you and me. My concern is more on the general public who have no idea that you can install these OS's, let alone know how to it. What do those people do? Are we just going to expect them to buy a $2000 iPhone instead? That's not really an option for a lot of people.
@Mustardfacial @nixCraft the general public does not care. facebook and tiktok come preinstalled on most phones so they have little interest for apps except banks and shit. They have no idea what a browser is so they will only use the preinstalled chrome and thats it.
Companies will register with google to make their apps and they wont care either. They already do that for apple dev.
Only power users matters. And I think we're already fine. Play store will still be available through aurora.
@Mustardfacial @nixCraft and for the rare apps that wont work without google play, we can have cheap burner phones.
@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?
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 Android is out in the wild and will definitely not die with google!
@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.
SamuelJohnson@Mustardfacial @[email protected] @nixCraft Heard of RIM? Blackberry? Does anyone care now? Nothing lasts forever.
HarmonyOS is alive and well. Alternatives exit. The world doesn't have to follow US tech and increasingly it won't.
Really Lazy Bear 
@Mustardfacial @f4grx @nixCraft I was able to install custom ROMs and all that stuff when I was 12 - 13 years old. I just read instructions and of course expect bricking my phone and have to fix it, but yeah.
Still a headscratcher that technology has improved a ton but most people remain dumb with it. Idk.
I found over the years it's not really worth talking things like these to someone who doesn't really "get it" cos you're pretty much talking to a wall at that point, lol.
Still worth planting a thought in someone's head about how cool it is, but yeah.
ShadSterling@Mustardfacial @f4grx @nixCraft the phone manufacturers used to make their own OSs, and some still maintain their own variants of Android; if Alphabet stops updating Android, the phone makers will update their own forks and/or form an association to collaborate on continuing the base OS.
(They could do so anyway, if and when they decide Google isn’t serving their interests anymore, which might be more likely than Alphabet going under)
Anders Cornelius MadsenGoogle 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.
Zuri (he/him) ❌️👑 | 🕐 CET@madsenandersc @Mustardfacial @nixCraft On mobile, yes. But desktop and mobile are very different animals in certain aspects.
@shaedrich @Mustardfacial @nixCraft
I didn't explain that very well. My point is, that back in the day Microsoft had a stranglehold on just about everything IT, at least for desktop use. Their Windows operating system was THE way to interact with the internet, multimedia and work.
Then came the mobile platforms, and suddenly Microsoft could no longer operate as if they owned everything. Windows was still king of the desktop, but a huge amount of users did not use a computer at all - they used tablets and phones with non-Microsoft operating systems, and they were now the majority of users.
Internet Explorer is probably the best example of what that meant for Microsoft. In the old days there was IE, and it was the browser your website had to be compatible with. It was slow and not very good, so along came Chrome and started eating Microsofts browser marketshare.
IE was still the king, but now you had to test for two browsers. Microsoft could still do things their way, at least to a point.
Then came Android and Chrome for Android, and suddenly Chrome was so far ahead that Microsoft lost the ability to operate independently. The result? - the end of IE and a surrender to the Chromium engine.
I am almost certainly that Google will face a similar downfall in the AI market.
@madsenandersc @Mustardfacial @nixCraft It's worth mentioning that TCP/IP is a UNIX thing, not an MS one. MS attempted to create a competitor protocol but failed badly. MS's browser was the shittiest browser you could possibly have. People only used it to download other browsers and it was a well known joke. So, MS being good at one thing and one thing only goes way back
@madsenandersc @Mustardfacial @nixCraft It might also be worth mentioning that in between Chrome and Edge, there was Firefox, so you had to test for three browsers until IE was then neglected. I know, Firefox now has a vanishingly small market show but that hasn't always been the case
@shaedrich @Mustardfacial @nixCraft
Right! I had actually all but forgotten about Mozilla and Firefox, but yes - there was a time when they were significant players as well.
@madsenandersc @Mustardfacial @nixCraft Google != Alphabet. Alphabet still has one of the biggest collections of data in the world, which is their primary(!) business model that will keep them relevant for a while. They are essentially an intelligence agency fake shop at an accommodation address
@shaedrich @Mustardfacial @nixCraft
True - I was probably talking about Alphabet instead of Google, to be honest.
@Mustardfacial @nixCraft Are you really expecting Alphabet to die?
🏳️🌈🎃🇧🇷Luana🇧🇷🎃🏳️🌈@Mustardfacial @nixCraft hopefully it dies too
Michiel@Mustardfacial @nixCraft I assume anyone can use a fork of it. Samsung would not have to develop their own OS.
ĞÖKÜ👻👻™@Mustardfacial people will switch on custom roms. The only thing is that custom rom community not providing any source to install those custom roms easily.. They need to make a better & easy site or forum where any user can go and install any custom rom of their choice, like GrapheneOS working. They also need to provide a proper guide how to unlock bootloader and flash custom recovery & roms. Normal users avoid custom roms because of complex nature of installing custom roms.
@nixCraft
@nixCraft
isbm
Noodlemaz@Mustardfacial @nixCraft I don't think we're at risk of that any time soon.
Sablebadger@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.
Eggs now in different baskets.@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.
MartinF
Dr. Bruce Simpson@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.
Schamschula@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.
Hacker 
SyrupSplashin@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
@syrupsplashin @nixCraft There's PeerTube, for example, but no, it won't replace YouTube in the foreseeable future
Rue Mohr
Dennisqr
Zergy 
Jorijn Schrijvershof@nixCraft Im rooting for DDG, hopefully their search results will improve too.
Eoin O'Beara@nixCraft I use noai.duckduckgo.com even better.
UncleRico
W6KME
🌙 Rynn Beaumont 🌙@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:
StarkRG@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.
@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.
FinchHaven sfbaHere
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
Ariel Millennium Thornton@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
Michael Kratzenberg 📢@[email protected] I left google when it added that annoying "AI overview" at the top. Should've ditched it sooner tbh.
ferricoxide@nixCraft
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 the
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 the
weights.bin fuckery), I run it inside a sandbox.@nixCraft Speaking of "
weights.bin fuckery… 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?
hewiak
DianeSmall search engine @marginalia reported 10x more traffic after google started force feeding AI as well.
Jacen