They must have fixed it because it googled to just find for me.
Note, I normally use Qwant.
Nope.
Stop using Google products. Google is evil.
lets have them remove even more words!
The important thing that often gets missed in stories like this, is that this apparently tiny harmless thing is actually a big deal, because it’s the canary in the coalmine that alerts you to how shoddy the entire structure is.
Simply incorrect. I can Google the word disregard just fine and get results as normal, both in the Google app and on the web. Either false or old information.
I’m over here at Kagi if you wanna have an excellent experience searching the web without being harassed.
Seems like you can.
Kids, skooch closer and let me tell you a story about teh googlez. Don’t make me tell you again, about the skooching.
Anyhoo - it was nigh on aught-eleven when teh googlez decided they would also be the new facebook. After all, facebook is just a simple way to get people to reveal all of their information, and google thought that could be profitable.
So, they created their own facebook - although it truly sucked and wasn’t facebook, it was google in the days when they said “don’t be evil” and so people gave it a try, the tech press wrote many articles, and so on.
It was called Google Plus.
Now, the relevant part of the story we’ll get to (hey! Get back here!) we’ll get to in a second but first you need to know that since the time of caveman search, there has always been the AND operator (also, OR, but that’s for another time.)
Y’see, if I search for Funk, I’ll find things, and if I search for Wagnall’s, I’ll find other things. Neither is likely to be what I want though. But, if I search for Funk AND Wagnalls, bam! There’s the thing I want. So AND is super handy to have for searching.
Now, back in those days, instead of typing out three letters, AND, why, we’d use the plus sign like this, see: + Which was the style at the time.
Now when Google rolled out Google+, it got some initial interest, but then their average user numbers began to slow soon afterwards. So much that it started to be a problem. People wrote about how Google+ sucked. Which hurt the numbers even more.
So. What did teh googlez do? Well! They decided to use the plus sign, +, as a search operator for all the many tens of google+ sites out there. In the process they broke the AND operator. On purpose. For this.
After breaking a key function of their core product, they ignored it for about a year. After that they snuck in a workaround called Verbatim. Then they’d claim people needed to put two terms together in quotes to get AND. It was insanity. It was pathetic.
When DuckDuckGo started to get popular, a lot of us left google for good then. Because of that.
Anyway, they killed Google+ in 2018 and now they’re doing it again with AI. I’d say I care but I hardly ever use them so - whatever.
Tbf Google+ was better than Facebook in almost every way.
Only because there weren’t that many people on it.
Two words with quotes around them surely isn’t the same as using the AND operator?
Great story grandpa.
For anyone reading this but not the article, the issue is that the AI interprets the query literally as a command to disregard the query. So Google’s AI does exactly that. The actual search works as normal, and Google didn’t ban or otherwise censor the word.
sure they did … by forcing bullshit ai that has multiple flaws and gives bullshit information.
these companies get no logical passes anymore. everything they do, is a direct attack on the planet and humanity and shouldn’t ever be met with 'its not really their fault because…
it’s always their fault…
A while ago, I saw a trick that you can force disable the AI thingy by putting -SomeSuperOffensiveWord (replace with any slur) at the end. This will exclude all results containing the word (which should be none). But the AI will hit the word, and quit because it’s not allowed to work with offensive word. This whole thing is just stupid
Gemini is always telling me it won’t stand for my abusive language, but it can still help me with that
You could also just add the udm=14 parameter to your search URL, which defaults to the “Web” tab of the results like so - easy enough to configure this to always be present in Firefox, and helps you avoid googling dozens of slurs a day as a bonus
Am I still allowed to add the slur words if it helps me feel edgy?
Firefox actually has a few different extensions that will automatically add the udm=14 tag to any Google searches.
I was going to suggest this too. The “Web” tab is very useful.
Like I have to go to gemini for it to not work? I just searched it and the results are:
- Definition of disregard
- Techcrunch article about “you can no longer google the word disregard”
- Reddit post about how you can’t Google it now 4+ definition again, more articles about not being able to Google it.
Has the term “Google it” changed meaning suddenly?
Edit to add: the first definition came from the “AI overview” section
Here’s my result:
That shows you’re specifically in AI mode- is that the default experience for you now?
Nope. This article was specifically about the AI response, so that’s why I went there. I typically use Brave browser / search
Oh… Thats a blatantly misleading headline then 😅
Thanks for explaining, hope you have a lovely day ☺️
i have to scroll halfway down the damn page but i do still get a dictionary response.
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So if you google “shutdown”, all of Google crashes?
Nobody google “global thermonuclear war”
Would you like to play a game???
Do NOT google “Google”. I really cannot stress this enough.
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Yes you can… It just makes the AI box not do anything.
If you type it in, the AI won’t do anything, but web page results look fine under that?
True, but misses the point. The user interface is basically broken now, and the fact that you can scroll down to something useful doesn’t mean the broken bits don’t matter.
I always scroll past the AI summaries anyway because I’m not looking for misinformation
https://udm14.org/ lets you remove the AI summary from google if you want to save on the scrolling
… Why? Why not just use something that doesn’t spew misinformation from the get-go?
There’s so many alternative search engines that almost all let you turn off AI - pack your bags and find a new home.
I usually start with DDG, but it just doesn’t have anywhere near as much of the WWW in its index as Google does, so I very often don’t find what I’m looking for and switch back to Google.
If someone has a suggestion for something better than either of them, do tell.
Better is always subjective based on your priorities, search style, and the info you’re after.
For free search, I find the results on Brave (who has their own index) to be roughly on par with Google (and Startpage which primarily sources Google’s index), but extra features like page ranking, disabling AI, etc. make Brave better for the user.
DDG, Ecosia, etc., primarily rely on Bing’s index, which tends to fail me the most frequently.
The only downside of Brave is the cryptobro owners who seem intent on speed running enshittification in everything they do. It works fine for now but I have very little trust in it not tanking long term.
Personally I use Kagi and recommend it if paying for search works with your lifestyle. I tend to find what I’m looking for there fastest and rarely if ever do I have to
!bang my way over to another search engine. It has the most customization and features prioritizing human content over AI slop.It’s all personal preference though, so what works for one person may be unacceptable for another, and honestly having options/competition is a good thing.
Startpage has been serving me pretty well for a few years now.
ETA: Pretty sure they use Google results. Not sure if they include other engines too.
https://www.startpage.com/privacy-please/startpage-articles/enhanced-search-results-on-startpage
Looks like they started mixing in results from Bing a couple of years ago. They’re a bit vague on who if anyone is in the “others” category
I use DDG on my personal machine, but I work at a school and a lot of my students prefer Google despite my attempts to teach them otherwise.
Does Google even give results that aren’t Reddit post or AI? I have not gotten single good thing from it in awhile.
Sometimes. I usually get better results from DuckDuckGo, though.
In this case, Gemini actually introduced significant friction to those of us who didn’t ask for and don’t want a fucking AI prompt over our search, especially without a way to disable it.
From my perspective, the introduction of the overview was a UX regression, and this actually restores the UI to what I want in the first place, so I don’t really care that it’s technically broken.
I have a uBlock filter for you
That’s awesome. I have an extension in firefox that does something similar, but I’ve been looking for a way to get similar functionality in Edge on my work computer (not my choice of browser lol, it’s company mandated). Thanks!
This has already been fixed. The top AI result is now this article.
Friendly reminder to use &udm=14 aka https://tenbluelinks.org/
Friendly reminder to not use Google
Kagi is great, but not everyone wants to pay for a search engine (even though it’s the best way to get a product where the developers care about you and your privacy).
use &udm=14
Most users aren’t going to know what that means. It’s the “Web” tab at the top of the search results.
The link explains everything.
