Google is expanding AI Overviews and testing AI-only search results
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I think people will use it no matter what. The masses don’t read ars or the news and don’t care. Google search has already trained us to only look at the top few search results and take it as fact. I almost guarantee no one will notice.
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I long for the Google of 20 years ago. I just remember being able to craft a query with a few concise keywords and it never failed to return the exact results I was looking for. I think that was the high point of the internet. Social media had just come on the scene and incentives hadn't yet eroded to reward all the worst human tendencies.
Now I need to wade through sponsored results and AI BS. I use DuckDuckGo and just ignore the AI summaries. I quit google about 2-3 years ago.
Now I need to wade through sponsored results and AI BS. I use DuckDuckGo and just ignore the AI summaries. I quit google about 2-3 years ago.
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So, Google's end game is to finally get us to stop spending any time whatsoever on web sites that aren't owned by Google, and simply make sure we stay on their pages at all times, by lying to us about what the greater internet actually has to say?
I used my custom ublock filtering to out and out remove the AI "review bot" on Amazon. I did the same with Google, but if they get to a point where they are no longer a search engine but a "summary engine", I will never use them again.
And yes, DuckDuckGo is also experimenting with AI. They pull a move like this, I'll have to consider Ask Jeeves or even frickin' Web Crawler.
I used my custom ublock filtering to out and out remove the AI "review bot" on Amazon. I did the same with Google, but if they get to a point where they are no longer a search engine but a "summary engine", I will never use them again.
And yes, DuckDuckGo is also experimenting with AI. They pull a move like this, I'll have to consider Ask Jeeves or even frickin' Web Crawler.
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Isn't it true that Scottish kids used to grow up playing with Haggis Patch Kids? I feel like this is an important fact for anyone curious about haggis to understand.
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I'll drop our IT dept a message at work tomorrow and ask them if they're going to change the default search engine since we're currently legally obliged not to use AI for anything at work...
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Considering they aggregate results from two companies that are going whole hog into AI, I don't see a bright future for DDG.
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I have been using Qwant.com exclusively for 4 years. Works just as well for me as Google did.
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One thing I'll say for Kagi (at least for now)- you can go through settings and disable AI stuff. They at least recognize that it isn't for everyone and they make it easy to not use it.
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...and a horror show for those who's VPs are pushing for developers to use AI when developing software.
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I've always used Google as my search provider for 25 years or so now. F this. Time to research alternatives.
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https://www.qwant.com/?q=is+haggis+an+animal&t=web
I'm honestly unsure if that's worse than Google or not.
The "Haggis Wildlife Foundation"? Really???
PicardFacePalm.gif
Edit: a grammur
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Frosty Grin
Ars Legatus Legionis
I understand that you're frustrated with the way the internet is working. Would you like to stop the internet?
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I do find the AI summary at the top of Google searches to be a useful starting point, but the number of times it turns out to be wrong tells me that AI is not at all ready to be someone's only source of info. There's been a lot of times where it's utility is just that I get an idea of other search terms to include.
EDIT: Oh, also... part of the utility of the AI summary is that they put it above the ads, so I can start actually researching what I'm trying to research before having to page down through ads.
EDIT: Oh, also... part of the utility of the AI summary is that they put it above the ads, so I can start actually researching what I'm trying to research before having to page down through ads.
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Don't really use Google products much anymore (except for my Samsung Android phone), but I do check back with Google.com every now and then to see if they have fixed this one. Nope, just typed in "Will water freeze at 27 degrees?". 
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Well the third result is to a Wikipedia-page that says it's a fictional creature in Scottish folklore. The first two goes to a page that at least I interpret as being a gag or humor-site.
I know it's a Scottish dish (the fourth result) but I don't quite understand what you are after?
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It's such an interesting result, though. From one perspective, it's so close to being right. From another perspective, it's so awfully far away from being right.Don't really use Google products much anymore (except for my Samsung Android phone), but I do check back with Google.com every now and then to see if they have fixed this one. Nope, just typed in "Will water freeze at 27 degrees?".
View attachment 104389
EDIT: That is, an optimist might say "it basically had the right underlying information, all we have to do is teach AI how to apply underlying information to a real-world example". But then the pessimist says "yeah, but isn't that the hard part?"
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Because what you think of as Google is actually DoubleClick shambling around wearing the rotting corpse of the old Google as a way to fool us
Of course they also seem to have hired the Under-pant Gnomes to develop their core forward looking strategy
1. Force all search queries to return extremely expensive LLM summaries that most customers will despise
2. ????
3. Profit!!!
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Oh aye. They weren’t cheap though. Oor Wullie had one - used to keep it in his bucket - and we were all dead jealous.
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There is a way to still bypass Google's AI bullshit, but it requires adding a string to the google search box in the browser. https://www.google.com/search?q=INSERT+FORMATTED+STRING HERE+THEN+ADD"&udm=14" at the end.
I added it to Firefox. If you don't like the direction Firefox is going, LibeWolf is a Firefox variant that's basically Firefox but locked down much more than the vanilla version. There are extensions that do this now in Firefox, I believe.
I can't speak to Chrome or other browsers, but if they have add-ons, this AI bullshit is unpopular enough for them to probably have something similar to fix your browsing experience.
Just remember, NEVER go to Google.com to do your searching. Use your browser's modified search box to start it.
Since I added that, I've not seen a single Google AI bullshit summary.
I added it to Firefox. If you don't like the direction Firefox is going, LibeWolf is a Firefox variant that's basically Firefox but locked down much more than the vanilla version. There are extensions that do this now in Firefox, I believe.
I can't speak to Chrome or other browsers, but if they have add-ons, this AI bullshit is unpopular enough for them to probably have something similar to fix your browsing experience.
Just remember, NEVER go to Google.com to do your searching. Use your browser's modified search box to start it.
Since I added that, I've not seen a single Google AI bullshit summary.
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Nora Lenderbee
Ars Tribunus Militum
Outstanding. I also tried that with jackalope, but the results were more truthful and not nearly as entertaining.
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jacob-ogre
Seniorius Lurkius
I was coming here to say the same thing. I’ve only been using Kagi for a few days at this point (had mostly been using DDG), but my goodness it is such a better experience. Unless something changes for the worse suddenly, I’ll definitely be subscribing.
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I’m iOS Safari they also don’t give UK results even when the UK toggle is selected.. I’m only sticking with them because it’s not Google or Bing :/
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I just Googled "why is google ai overview so bad". Probably the most accurate AI overview I've seen.
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I've been using DDG for years, Google always started off the results with some BS I wasn't interested in.Well looks like I'm going to expand my use of DuckDuckGo in response
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On Google, the same Wikipedia was 2nd instead of third.
On Google, the nonsense result was tagged as an AI summary. Qwant had no such marker on the nonsense result.
The Qwant results actually look worse than Google's. Which is quite a feat.
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My immediate thought is this will be disastrous for website owners.
Besides the obvious problem of depressing visitors and murdering ad revenue, you also have to worry about your content being surfaced in a way you can't control (what happens when Google's AI says your site says something it doesn't).
This seems it would be destructive to the way the web is currently operated (and potentially destructive to Google's own ad business?)
Besides the obvious problem of depressing visitors and murdering ad revenue, you also have to worry about your content being surfaced in a way you can't control (what happens when Google's AI says your site says something it doesn't).
This seems it would be destructive to the way the web is currently operated (and potentially destructive to Google's own ad business?)
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Someone mentioned that you can avoid the AI summary by just including an F-bomb in your query:
"What is the average fucking weight of a 3 toed sloth?" will just give you actual search results and no AI BS.
"What is the average fucking weight of a 3 toed sloth?" will just give you actual search results and no AI BS.
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If YouTube and Facebook are any evidence of what AI is then fuck Google.
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Kagi. It's paid, but it's worth it. Paying for search is the only way to avoid the enshittification.
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Well, that cements my move away from Google search. I still occasionally used it when I didn't find useful results on Duckduckgo. Its utility for that purpose has been declining as their results became more jammed with AI garbage, but this just means I don't have to bother even checking, "just in case." Thanks for simplifying my search process, Goog.
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Guy 1: "Hey guys our AI is wildly inaccurate at times, what should we do?"
Guy 2: "Lets start working on making search AI only!"
Guy 1: "Holy crap give this guy like 10 raises!!!"
As if anyone else needed a push to get away from Google search.
Guy 2: "Lets start working on making search AI only!"
Guy 1: "Holy crap give this guy like 10 raises!!!"
As if anyone else needed a push to get away from Google search.
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Google absolutely defeated AltaVista. AltaVista just couldn't come close to matching Google's results. Searches on AltaVista would require you to visit at least the first 5 results before you found what you wanted. Going to page 2 or 3 was pretty common. Google nearly always had it right with the #1 result. It wasn't a slow transition either. Practically the entire internet switched overnight. My engineering team did, and we paid AltaVista for a search appliance. It was part of our ASP/SaaS product.
But yeah, this time Google is defeating Google.
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