Google begins requiring JavaScript for Google Search
(techcrunch.com)
Nemeski
Technology🥱
I fucking hate how these companies get so bloated and then start doing whatever the fuck they want.
You can use these instead of Google:
Kagi too.
I like the results, especially for research. Definitely worth it for me.
You can also use Startpage, which copies google's results.
DuckDuckGo
Yacy Run your own alternative. With the possibility p2p that others find your crawled pages the other way around. Screwed in p2p that you only get results from others but don't share any yourself. Complete island mode - no p2p takes place and can also be operated offline locally. You control the crawler, the results well just anything.
May I suggest https://mojeek.com/ as a privacy respecting alternative that actually has its own web crawlers and indexers.
While I love the idea of Mojeek, the execution leaves a lot to be desired.
Doing this to combat bots like they aren't also using bots to scrape data from the internet is interesting.
I wonder how this affects modified/custom search engines (like udm14).
Udm14 is just a query parameter to open google with the "web" results tab. Still works.
I know, but I have it set as a custom search engine and what I'm saying is, if someone were to use it in chrome would it still require them to enable java. I think that answer is that it would. I don't use chrome so I'm not gonna test it.
I remember interviewing at Google years ago (if you're keeping score, it was 2012/2013 just before their stock hiccupped and my onboarding was killed as I was only a 97% fit), and the guy was religious about page load times. "We cut 200 lines of code if it'll give us a millisecond of page load speed", that kind of thing.
How they've fallen.
well they don't need to fight for new users anymore. Everyone uses it already, and children are basically indoctrinated to it: all schools have that as search engine, often they even use google classroom and drive and whatnot on the classes. if they have chromebooks, the chrome browser automatically starts after login even if you don't want to use it, and you can't unpin it from the taskbar either
We really are ruled by corporations.
I guess this is why it was so important to neuter the government and public institutions. Can't have regular people with control over their own lives.
Google sucks so bad that I switched to Bing. BING!
Google sucks so bad you switched to... microsoft? 🤔
You'd be better off selfhosting something like searxNG
fuckya life BING BONG
DuckDuckGo for day-to-day stuff, Bing for naughty content.
Duckduckgo is bing. They route their searches there afaik. It's just a privacy layer, like startpage is a privacy layer on Google.
I don't think that's true. They are using the index of bing, but the search results are not. At least that's what I heard, no idea if it's factual or not.
Duckduckgo also has bangs, which I consider an essential feature.
Although I use SearXNG instead, since their equivalent is a lot more customisable (although less bangs out of the box).
Are there any that have a top knot or fauxhawk though? Asking for a friend.
Careful saying that round these parts, you'll summon the ducks.
quack
You’re a decade late on that, Bing isn’t good anymore
Honestly nothing is good anymore. Every search engine brings up the same SEO optimized dogshit articles. I sometimes use Arc browser but that’s not really that different than asking ChatGPT.
Recently I don't feel that way after using Kagi. Sure, there's still some junk, but somehow I'm finding what I'm looking for a lot easier. That search in forums toggle is magical.
Yeah. Really sucks how you need to know what you're looking for in order to get any use out of a search engine these days.
For example, if you want to find a "free online video chatroom", you're not going to find it by typing those words into google. You need to know, specifically, that there is a free chatroom called https://stumblechat.com/ and type that into google in order to see it.
The world is fucked.
It’s so obnoxious. I hate researching a topic only to be fed results leading to useless AI spam. The entire thing is clogged up like this. Searching on the internet absolutely sucks, now.
I've read good things about kagi but haven't tried it yet.
the widely used programming language to make web pages interactive
I hope we aren't talking forms and input fields, right?
great!
now I can just disable JavaScript to end my dependence on their services.
It breaks gpt when you do that too.
No reason that it should, other than businesses collectively lowering everyone's standards.
This keeps getting better! Tell me more!
All I know is that when I disabled java in Firefox:config
It loaded the gpt.com page or whatever it is and you can type but never submit anything.
Java isn't JavaScript in the same way that Ham isn't a Hamster.
Java isn't Javascript, but that ham analogy is dumb as fuck and I feel bad for anyone who internalizes it after hearing it from someone else.
How is it dumb? Ham and hamsters are two totally different things but sound similar. Java and JavaScript are two totally different things but sound similar. It's a way to immediately explain to a non technical person in a way they can grok.
It's dumb because it can't be reliably extrapolated to other instances.
It's perfectly reasonable for someone to think Java and JavaScript are related. It's not reasonable for people to think ham and hamsters are related.
This is a result of badly naming something because the ECMAscript creator wanted to ride the coattails of the 'hot new thing' at the time, which was Java.
For example, people shouldn't immediately doubt whether Godot and GodotScipt are related because Java and Javascript are not. Your hamster analogy falls apart here because it only describes an exception, not a rule.
never submit
At this point I’ve been using DDG for 7 years as my main search engine. It’s gotten better while Google has become a joke.
They need to fix the minus syntax/feature. That's my singular complaint.
Can confirm. I didn't think it'd be like that but it do be like that. DDG gang, where you at.
So, you're saying Bing got better.
DuckDuckGo: The coolest way to use bing and apple maps.
(I do use it though)
DDG does add their own spice on to – or so they claim, and Bing doesn't have bangs so I'd never want to use it.
I don’t know the full story about how Microsoft is developing Bing, but I do know that Google made a conscious decision to make their search results worse, simply so that you’d search more times, which for them translates to additional ad revenue. But, my sense is Bing hasn’t gone this far yet.
It's not only the results, though, but other features too
I switched to DDG recently due to the manifest v3 changes and AI junk and have been really liking it. It feels like what Google used to be when it was good.
Can't wait until they enshittify, the way I see it, everything will eventually, even Lemmy. It's up to us to not settle too hard in one place
The fact Lemmy is open source and federated makes it almost impossible to enshittify. What are you gonna do, show ads? Third party clients are first class citizens here
They get a large enough audience for disinformation campaigns
Once you see people start defending Russia it’s over
Once you see people start defending Russia it’s over
If that's what you are looking for, the .ml server has you covered already...
One scenario is that normies join en masse and influencers/marketers follow them, and the quality of conversation goes to zero like on all big platforms. You can't solve this with software.
That's called eternal September.
So that's "getting shittier" but not "enshittification". The latter is explicitly a profit-motive driven phenomenon, coined by Cory Doctorow in 2023. Here's the original post he made about it: https://doctorow.medium.com/tiktoks-enshittification-bb3f5df91979
it still can enshittify, but we can save it with the help of git and the fork button
No, I don't think that's sustainable, nor is it sustainable to act as if it were true. Given the lack of resources we have compared to Google or Meta et al., the only way to make it work is to stick with something for the long run, and bake in protections in both the technology and the organisational structure. Being opensource and federated goes a long way there, there's no real reason why something not for profit would have to enshittify. But people won't put in the effort to keep building it if they think that's inevitable.
The core of what you're saying has been my approach for many years. Never go "all in" on anything.
Convenience is one thing (to me, but it's everything to so many), but it's just one factor. And if it means I am (or my data is) the product, it costs too much.
Google begins recommending DuckDuckGo.
I just wish they wouldn't use Apple Maps.
Is there a search engine where the maps tab uses Openstreetmap?
Or SearXNG. I run an instance, you can check it out: search.gregtech.eu
That or Startpage
Feels good not to care anymore about the unrelenting enshittification of Reddit, Twitter and Google since I switched away from them.
I didn't know they allowed you to search without JS before. If you're at the point of disabling JS, presumably for security or privacy reasons, why not just use DDG which works perfectly well without JS?
Old browsers.
http://frogfind.com/
Do these old browsers not support DuckDuckGo?
DuckDuckGo forces TLS while google doesn’t, so you can use IE5 or an old Safari with Google, but not with DDG.
Do you think their owners know of duckduckgo?
How many users are using browsers that are old enough they don't even support JS? It's one thing to disable it for security/privacy (which the OP was talking about), because those users are probably more tech savy.
Lynx is my daily driver
What’s the experience like when reading threaded conversations like Lemmy? Is it possible for you to post a screenshot?
Cool. As if the over-promotion of AI garbage wasn't enough of a reason to stop using it.
Just makes me realize that I haven't used Google search in like over a year now because I use Kagi. Even before that i was using searx-ng.
why no one quotes searx instances? https://searx.space/
or even paid search engines : kagi.
Kagi is good
Isnt literally the first Q&A that is REQUIRES Js?
If the British civil service, even operating under previous administrations, can put together a multi-functioning government domain that runs reasonably well without JavaScript, there's no reason Google can't continue to do the same with a ducking web search.
The former works better with JavaScript, that's true, but it works OK without and that's the point.
Then again, the civil service were ordered to do it largely out of spite because the government didn't want to give the plebs any excuse for not being able to use the site.
I'm not sure how to get Google to lose the need for scripting in the same way.
I think this isn't a case of if Google can, but rather of why they should. Do enough people really use the modern web without JavaScript to justify spending the resources to test and maintain functionality without JS? And they probably don't want to let the few people that don't have JS to open support tickets or write articles about how google.com is broken. Easier to just block it on purpose than to let it decay.
It makes more sense that a government website would support it, since they can't let even a single person fall through the cracks, and changing laws/regulations is more difficult than making a company decision.
Me, to Google right now:
Librey rips from other search engines.
Its open source
I usually go to search.winscloud.net
Not like I was using it to search anyway
If I have to go back to using Excite, I will.
Like, I'm tired of Google Search, it's always been shit. I'm tired of it's AI Generalization, tired of it's garbage results, tired of the stupid section of questions asked by 'people' with these low-hanging fruit and softball but dumb questions there is to be asked.
Curious if this going to affect google results in Searx. Not sure how it works (scraping page, API, etc)
This is why I am a happy Kagi user.
Somehow I doubt the bloated AI search engine works without JS.
Bloated? AI? You must be talking about Google or bing. Kagi has no such issue.
Honestly, JS is such a core part of the web, I'm surprised it took this long.
There is no need for any JS to simply POST a query to a web server, and receive an HTML response. This is to force tracking, ad, and AI bullshit on people.
Google is a lot more than just the one google.com page. And even if it were, JS adds some nice features like predective text / suggested searches.
Tracking, ads, and AI can be done without JS. They may be slightly less granular in the same way as the user experience will be slightly worse, but disabling JS won't stop it.
I'd bet the biggest reason Google decided to do this is so that they don't have to support a version of the site that virtually nobody uses.
Imo, the most compelling reason for non-JS versons of typically JS-driven sites is to support lower power devices. But it's 2025 and even a 10 year old phone you found in a dumpster behind a decaying Radio Shack can run modern websites without issue.
Even the article is grasping at straws for why this might be bad. "It might make accessibility more difficult or add security issues". One of the most valuable companies in the world, with some of the best engineers in the world, is going to have problems adding aria attributes and updating dependencies? Give me a break.
If you want to block tracking, ads, and "AI", there are plenty of ways to do that without disabling literally all JS. If you want to construct your google search request without the rest of the stuff on google.com, use your browser's search bar.
I'm as anti-google/tracking/etc as the next guy, and I've been using DDG almost exclusively for years, but I'm not going to pretend like asking companies to make HTML/CSS-only versions of their sites is a reasonable request in the modern web environment. It can be really fun and cool to build a site without JS, but there aren't many scenarios where it's actually beneficial.
The replies in this thread are just plain ignorant. Basically every website uses JS heavily and disabling all JS with something like noscript is just a plain bad time.
Even in your comment, every sentence is wrong. Google searches are done with GET requests, and there are plenty of reasons to force JS other than tracking, ads, and ai.
I remember using NoScript extension ages ago for what I believe was at least a year. Occasionally sites had problems with loading certain elements even if I allowed 1st party scripts by default. It was way too often when I had to allow domains of various 3rd party scripts when I finally realized this workflow just sucks and benefit is so miniscule that I just got rid of it. Only blocking extension I am using right now is uBlock.
I know it does not matter, but it pains to see that perfectly normal comments like yours that add to conversation get downvoted just because some people do not agree with its narrative.
These days, the "suggested searches" are ads in the shape of searches of companies or products, many of which nobody ever heard of. Gone are the days of the genuine "other people searched for this." It was only a matter of time, I guess.
But it's 2025 and even a 10 year old phone you found in a dumpster behind a decaying Radio Shack can run modern websites without issue.
What about a server without a GUI where your only interface is a terminal using the Lynx browser? I've lost count of how many times I've done that.
The background world of the Internet infrastructure nobody ever sees or thinks about still very much looks like the 1980s.
You've seriously been in situations where you had no access to the internet except through a terminal, and you had to do a google search? No phone or other computer that you're remoting in from?
Even so, there are terminal-based browsers that support javascript like brow.sh or links (not lynx).
I doubt the nothing-but-terminal users comprise a significant enough portion of Google's userbase to justify the extra costs to test and maintain non-JS functionality.
Yes, I have. Searching for mirrors to get an installation package of some sort or ISOs to set up virtual machines and downloading it directly to the server, for example. Don't need USB, don't need another PC or phone, just do it all on the same server you're working on.
Interesting that that is the workflow that works best for you. I've personally always found it a much better experience to do my searching/browsing off of the server and wget whatever I need to download. If that's truly your situation, then you may just need to use another browser that supports JS or use a different search engine. I prefer DDG anyway, lol. Not a huge deal.
I grew up on DOS. I am equally as comfortable doing practically everything in a terminal as I am in a graphical environment. I'm sure I'm not alone among other IT folks.
I've been known to keep text based IRC clients or text based Tetris or some shit open on another virtual terminal for shits and giggles while I'm working an a different one, flipping back and forth between tasks. Just like a user on a multitasking graphical OS would do.
A lot of people turn off js to avoid tracking, or for performance, or they are calling the search in scripts, or they are doing illegal deals in their browser. There are dozens of reasons to do this.
I’m USA based and this will impact future protests : not just the search but all google services must be avoided in the future.
This will also break tens of thousands of scripts
but I’m not going to pretend like asking companies to make HTML/CSS-only versions of their sites is a reasonable request i
believe me, its over a reasonable request, it's a duty, a respect for technology : javascript towards to enshitification, pure html/css is heaven while JS became now pure evil.
But it’s 2025 and even a 10 year old phone you found in a dumpster behind a decaying Radio Shack can run modern websites without issue.
since google is pure evil, i use dillo daily.
One logo, one input field, one button, nothing requires JS. They could have kept a simple solution for disabled people but they don't even care about that.
Search suggestions require JS. Also, why would Google spend the resources supporting the 5 people that block JS when virtually all websites and users rely on JS. This is a nothingburger of a story.
who the fuck needs google's suggestions? It's not a necessity
You are vastly underestimating the popularity of uBlock Origin's JS blocking feature.
the 5 people
i dont think there are only five guys disabling JS on google search, but just by noscript without exceptions, it's only 200k on firefox... but who would use evil chromium today?
