How long until that modifier doesn’t work? The “parameter” and -exclude are absolutely worthless, Google will show you exactly what they want you to see, not what you told it you want (or don’t want) to see.
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2025
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Fuck AI
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Whats lpt
Life pro tip
Ty
LPT: Don’t use Google.
Use 4get! I self host my own but you can find endless public instances online, like 4get.ca
Don’t use Google. It’s an advertising company. Why would anyone expect to get actual results from a company whose entire existence depends on you clicking ads.
You don't use Google. Google uses you.
(Just to clarify, I am saying this in agreement with your comment)
I agree. However, I still feel like it delivers the best search results.
As long as you really like pinterest and nothing else.
Use 4get! I self host my own but you can find endless public instances online, like 4get.ca
4get is a proxy search engine that strips out all the tracking and garbage, so on the search instance you can pick whether you want it to use Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, and a bunch of other ones.
"IQ Test" with every fucking search?? Hard pass.
Try Duck Duck Go for a week.
It doesn't anymore. It's SEO is bonked.
And even then, there's alternatives anyway. Sightly better search isn't worth supporting Google.
You can't say you're anti-AI and then literally help fund AI.
Gave you tried a Kagi demo? I’ve been using it for months and it’s been markedly better results for most searches.
You're rationalising supporting a toxic company.
Welcome to capitalism.
that's not been the case for years at this point
I've been using noai.duckduckgo.com and it's pretty okay. Fuck Google
You can turn off ai in settings
Yes, but this url works if you're on a different device, incognito window, or what have you.
Fair enough
Great advice, thanks.
Fuck Google just as much as AI.
But the fact that this works on Ecosia too is useful. Thanks.
Kagi allows you to toggle AI result summaries in your settings, alongside a million other things, like down ranking sites that tend to come with slop and removing the vast majority of AI images from image search results (unless you want that of course, because Kagi is designed around user preference, not advertisers)
I love the idea of Kagi, but those prices are objectively insane. $100/year is downright exploitative when you consider the actual cost to them of performing a search.
Ahh perfect, I smell a business opportunity for you! Since search is cheap, make your own search engine and only charge $90/year!
If you use less than 100 searches per month, you can use the starter plan. That's $54 a year.
Starter plan is 300 searches/month. 100 is for free plan.
Thanks.
So it's minimal $5/month ($54 annually) for 300 searches/month, after the first month of trial, which grants you 100 searches.
Take Bing API for example. They say it's about $10/1k search.
As a person who searches 3k+/month + Few hundread Mtoks woth their LLM access, I'm practically stealing from them.
It is not cheap, especially for a service that is readily available for free, but I just don't see myself going back to Google or Bing or even DDG. Search is miles ahead of others imo.
LPT: self-host searxng with the traffic going over a VPN using gluetun
For those who who do not have the infrastructure, Kagi has been pretty useful to me. Not that I don't have the infra, but Kagi has been very good, and it is more hassle-free. Can be paid via BTC.
When image searching, Duck Duck Go also has a no AI option on the drop down menus above the search results.
Per Gemini:
To disable Gemini on an Android device, navigate to your Google Account settings, find Gemini Apps activity, and turn it off. You can also choose to delete your Gemini activity. For Google Workspace users, there may be additional administrative controls to manage Gemini access.
That only deletes and disables your Gemini search history. It doesn't disable Gemini. For that, you need to go to the Google app, tap your profile photo in the top right, go to Settings, Gemini Settings, scroll down to Digital Assistants from Google, then select Google Assistant.
I just use Firefox, install the udm14 plug-in, and never think about it again...
I just added rules to ublock that hides the AI overview everywhere, not just Google (because I don't use Google anyway)
In my experience you can also just put "fuck" at the beginning of your search and not get any AI overview
All fun and games until you're trying to remember the name of "the kid who played Short Round in Temple of Doom" and next thing you know Chris Hansen is knocking on your door.
I hope this becomes standard search syntax for all engines.