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Google Search is now using AI to replace headlines
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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so many better Google alternatives out there:
Don't forget Kagi! (though it isn't technically comparable to the others since it's a paid, but without ads one)
Ecosia seems to be pushing the aI stuff hard as well, but at least you have to press the obnoxious AI buttons to get it. Still, it refuses to make those buttons optional. Duckduckgo let's you have clean experience without rubbing AI buttons or AI summaries in your face and so does qwant.
I'm sure the trees appreciate the AI sicofancy. /s
Not only that, back before I left Ecosia a few months ago, it kept forgetting that I turned off AI summaries. Every week or so it would turn back on... I'll try DuckDuckGo's
noaiprefix this time, that hopefully won't have this issue. (I really like Ecosia's mission, but come on...)I love Ecosia because I love trees and will keep using them until I can afford kagi or something.
But one thing that drives me through the wall.. If I search something in my native language, because I want results that are in my native language, google/bing (which ecosia uses) decides to translate reddit posts for me and Ecosia slaps them to the top of the results. Its rather annoying.
Mandatory reminder: Ecosia plants zero trees unless you click on ads.
Hear hear.
Its the only website in my adblocker whitelist.
https://marginalia-search.com/
Open source and has its own index
Their old version with the 'random' option is the best way to find random, small, niche sites.
https://old-search.marginalia.nu/search?query=browse:random
I still use Google Scholar, but I have recently seen that it is also being enshitified. What's the next best option?
lens.org
Startpage is google through a proxy server, and I noticed an article mislabeled the other day as such from there for a link I posted here.
... owned by an ad company.
All true, but it generally shows you search results in a reasonable order and including reliable sources. Like a fine-tuner for Google that doesn't feed them your data. At least not that we know of....
Yeah but it has really gone downhill since 2021 especially, to the point of being virtually worthless. The only quick answers offered now on the search page are by design ai, all the results are machine written seo, restating the question in every possible way to hit results, then explaining why someone would want to know the answer to that question in exhaustive detail, then a short paragraph with the answer, that you have to wade through the drivel to find, when it used to put it on the search page results.
They don't provide streaming links anymore, defective merchandise only returns links to the companies that make those products on forums they moderate (looking at you best buy everything you sell is now defective, never again,) and articles aren't provided, even with exact information, date, name of article, name of publication, subject matter. They aren't even trying and will give you completely unrelated information.
I wouldn't be mad if I didn't know it could work better. When it did initially work, I was surprised at how well it returned information. I know it can work better because it did work better.
We need free to the user search that is geared to work for us, not for advertisers and others that pay them, or the armies of often automated programs to write articles to his search engines despite being garbage information.
Lovely. Next you're going to tell me Proton mail went evil. (Thanks for the explanation though! I'll have a look at Kagi).
As a matter of fact I have just this morning talked about protonmail being corrupted by the administration. Tuta is where it's at. Protonmail eats dick. 79-year-old fat (person's) disgusting diaper dick.
Start page is baked in with waterfox.
Sadly Ecosia is not good for more niche topics or foreign languages. After a few months of use, I went back to Google with
&udm=14๐Edit: Though with Google now falsifying site titles I'll have to look for an alternative... I wonder if they do the same towards the providers that rely on them, like DuckDuckGo?
I had issues searching stuff in my native language when using duckduckgo as well. Switched to qwant and its been a lot better for me at least, so maybe try that?
Hmm thanks for the tip!
DuckDuckGo uses a basket of search indexes excluding google - so even if one of them enshittifies they can reallocate that portion to another source.
Yeah, I think I'll give noai.duckduckgo a try.