this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2025
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Privacy

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[–] krnl386@lemmy.ca 8 points 7 hours ago

Soon they’re gonna start using Widevine DRM to encrypt the Javascript required to access the search results. πŸ€¦πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ

[–] zeca@lemmy.eco.br 45 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

i would guess that people that deactivate js are fine not using google for search

[–] Wolfie@lemm.ee 3 points 6 hours ago

True. I am one of those. I just use duckduckgo or swisscows or brave search.

[–] Toribor@corndog.social 15 points 11 hours ago

This breaks things like Whoogle that used the JavaScript-less api to pull search results.

[–] andreas@lemmy.kfed.org 11 points 10 hours ago

SearXNG solves this (and many other problems)

This used to be a great feature for vintage computers. If the machine had internet, you could search with HTTP site instead of HTTPS.

The alternatives listed here might not require JS, but most if not all of them require SSL. Vintage computers struggle to support that. Anyway, Google is best avoided when possible so hopefully an alternative surfaces .

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 5 points 10 hours ago

I mean on the list of reasons not to use Google, I feel like this one is pretty low.

[–] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 21 points 14 hours ago (1 children)
[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 3 points 10 hours ago

I wish they would fix the bug where I can't click "images" with js disabled

[–] Oestradiolo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 44 points 16 hours ago (2 children)
[–] bebrusas@lemmy.ml 36 points 14 hours ago (1 children)
[–] hakase@lemm.ee 22 points 13 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Affidavit@lemm.ee 14 points 13 hours ago

Deutsche Geophysikalische Gesellschaft

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 2 points 10 hours ago

I wish they would fix the bug where I can't click "images" with js disabled

[–] Undertaker@feddit.org 4 points 10 hours ago

Startpage.com does not

[–] dan1101@lemm.ee 30 points 16 hours ago (5 children)

This coincides with Google search getting worse and now including the AI slop.

What's the best alternative to Google these days?

[–] propter_hog@hexbear.net 5 points 12 hours ago

I use SearxNG, found a good, reliable instance that is close to my location.

[–] Libb@jlai.lu 14 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

What’s the best alternative to Google these days?

I use Kagi, it's great (great results, no ads, no tracking, a lot of clever filtering tools) but it's paid. Free, I would use Brave Search but I doesn't give me as good results as Kagi.

Edit: added links.

[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 6 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)
[–] AnAmericanPotato@programming.dev 7 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Typo in your link (but not in the text). https://searx.space/

[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 1 points 11 hours ago
[–] foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml 13 points 16 hours ago

Why it is important to use alternative metadata fetcher like searxng

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org 12 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Luckily, as of today I can still set my user agent to something like a Playstation or ancient firefox/IE to get a lightweight HTML-based page. The results are in www.google.com/url?q= format but I can use a redirector extension for that.

[–] M33@lemmy.sdf.org 12 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Better abandon google search for something else at this point. Even if alternative search engine calls bing and google, at least they take this BS out of the way

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

you're right, but startpage is slower than lightweight google :p

[–] neatobuilds@lemmy.today 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)
[–] propter_hog@hexbear.net 3 points 12 hours ago

Startpage, it's an alternative search. But it's not without its own problems.

[–] Tender@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 16 hours ago

Motherf***ers