- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
Google has become so integral to online navigation that its name became a verb, meaning “to find things on the Internet.” Soon, Google might just tell you what’s on the Internet instead of showing you. The company has announced an expansion of its AI search features, powered by Gemini 2.0. Everyone will soon see more AI Overviews at the top of the results page, but Google is also testing a more substantial change in the form of AI Mode. This version of Google won’t show you the 10 blue links at all—Gemini completely takes over the results in AI Mode.
This marks the debut of Gemini 2.0 in Google search. Google announced the first Gemini 2.0 models in December 2024, beginning with the streamlined Gemini 2.0 Flash. The heavier versions of Gemini 2.0 are still in testing, but Google says it has tuned AI Overviews with this model to offer help with harder questions in the areas of math, coding, and multimodal queries.
With this update, you will begin seeing AI Overviews on more results pages, and minors with Google accounts will see AI results for the first time. In fact, even logged out users will see AI Overviews soon. This is a big change, but it’s only the start of Google’s plans for AI search.
Gemini 2.0 also powers the new AI Mode for search. It’s launching as an opt-in feature via Google’s Search Labs, offering a totally new alternative to search as we know it. This custom version of the Gemini large language model (LLM) skips the standard web links that have been part of every Google search thus far.
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AI is over hyped and doesn’t need to be shoved in our faces. Ugh.
It’s another tech bubble like the dot com bubble. But at this point, the AI bubble, the crypto bubble, and the capitalism bubble will all crash at the same time as the world economy falls apart and we end up in another global war. I guess the accelerationists that survive will get their wish and see what remains and if it’s the neofuedalist white supremacy utopia they dream of
Can it be worse than the sanitised results they give you now?
Yes absolutely
Alphabet/Google needs to fire their CEO. He’s an obvious idiot, not good with employees, not good with investors, and not good at lobbying. That’s like 99% of a CEO’s job. Just get rid of him and Google’s stock price will probably jump 20%.
When I use a web search tool I want to look at the websites themselves. Not having to go through Gemini (the AI not the protocol) telling me what IT thinks I want…
Assuming AGI ever develops and bothers to sift through data. I’ve no problem with AI as a tool (that is, Dumb AI like we currently have.)
When I’m doing a web search rather than actually calling up Gemini (The AI not the Protocol) I want a WEB SEARCH… that means I am not looking to use AI. I’m wanting to use OI (Organic Intelligence.)
I mean their search results have gone to absolute shit anyway, the AI is probably better at this point.
Absolute shit results run through an AI gives you even worse absolute shit.
doubt
I don’t need to care. I stopped using Google search months ago.
Stick to SEARCH, not making shit up (euphemistically called “hallucinating”).
Thanks Google, I hate it. At least the udm=14 trick and website still works, at least until google decides to stop supporting that feature. Definitely going to be using that more and more if this becomes the default google experience.
You can also use startpage. They use Google services without AI
I don’t really get Google’s angle since it’s pretty obvious that their AI search sucks. Maybe it’s just to impress shareholders?
This makes sense to me. All other reasons presented sound like wishful thinking that google is still the same company from 2005
I mean, they’re ruining their search anyways. It’s almost unusable at this point, it’s like asking for relevant ads and two year old Reddit posts
Is it censorship? Did they decide to just straight up sell SEO? Are websites locking down and blocking their crawlers to stop AI training crawlers?
I legitimately find Bing to be better at this point, but whatever they’re doing it’s maddening. Even better AI assisted web searches kinda suck because the data fed into them is more of the same
But solid chance they’re trying to boost Gemini, which has been a shockingly bad llm for a company that basically wrote the book on AI not too long ago
There’s also the problem that there’s much more noise in the web nowadays—it has been growing exponentially and people try to manipulate the search engines. It becomes more difficult to filter out that’s good and what’s bad. Be too strict and you risk missing valuable but less polished information. Be too lenient, and you drown in low-quality, SEO-optimized content that prioritizes visibility over usefulness.
Technofascists really benefit from certain kinds of information being inaccessible…
They did that long before AI.
Google, Apple and plenty others have regular meetings with defense people to accomodate them.
No surprise Eric Schmit left Google to form a defense company since some employees there had a consciense and didn’t like working on killer drone programs.fascists really love LLM’s. like ridiculously in love with them. it’s where all their ‘art’ comes from. it’s made of the shallow aesthetics with no interiority they love so much. plus it doesn’t really require articulating your desires much, or having artists.
To borrow Alex Jones’ term - it is information warfare. Train people to accept the outputs of LLMs, attack media literacy (in conjunction with the fact that public schools in the US spent ten years not teaching children how to read), and hide actual sources.
You can have your LLM trained to weasel around the fact that the chattel slavery of black Americans was the primary cause of the Civil War, or falsely represent science surrounding gender and sexuality (they’re explicitly tuning Grok on this).
You don’t have to worry about subversive messages on war or women in your “AI” generated “Ghibhli” film. Have all the fun space faring of Star Wars, without the prequel geopolitics everyone hated until they saw it happen.
Kagi. But you free loaders would have to pay for something.
The weirdest thing about switching to kagi was learning that the first few results have a good chance of being relevant. I got so used to scrolling down after a search. It was just weird to have the useful results on top. Similarly, learning that search syntax is actually meaningful and respected by the search engine (for the majority of cases).
I love that the search results end. Like, “nah bruv, that’s it, and I’m not going to make shit up to get you to click ads”
I’m interested, but a bit reluctant. I find DuckDuckGo quite adequate for most things, except shopping online, something that I have to rely on for certain categories of items. How is Kagi on shopping?
Shopping online locally or just finding certain items? It’s not great locally because it doesn’t seem to use your location for searches (which is good IMO), but it’s usually been fine for me if I’m just looking for something I want to buy. Note that you need to tune the results for them to be good (you can adjust site rankings for yourself).
I’ve been using Kagi for a bit. If I search for things one can buy, I get results similar to Google.
What have you found lacking in DDG for online shopping?
It seems to take more keywords to home in on the kind of speciality items I look for, and does not always appear to detect connections between those keywords, for example in trying to find certain kind of veterinary support devices made to national specifications. One of the other commentors says Kagi is okay for shopping, so maybe I’ll give it a whirl because I’d love to be free of Google once and for all.
I don’t really use it.
They have a free trial, no cc needed.
I was with kagi for a year.
It was fine.
Their CEO is an asshole though. There was that thing where he went a bit nutty over some mild criticism. I don’t remember the details.
Anyhoo. Searx is nice for the moment.
I feel like Kagi, after tuning, provides the best results at the moment (even including Google sometimes). You definitely need to tune it though since the default results are not that great. Agree about their CEO. TBH, at this point, I also wish they weren’t based in the US.
It’s been a few years since I last tried Searx, but I remember the results being pretty bad. Has it gotten better?
Searx just proxies other engines, so the results are the same as the upstream results.
I’ve never really had a problem with results from any engine TBH.
The main thing I’ve learned over the last few years with Searx is that some instances are terrible while others are great. Some are slow, and often get blocked and take days for the admin to get a new IP or whatever. Right now I’m using perennialte.ch and it’s been great. They also redirect results at reddit to an alternative frontend which is a nice touch.
Microsoft doesn’t want to end up like Google. Fuck that company! One way you can tell is on outlook…which I use with a proper 10’ pole on my work computer only. Fuck no, never at home ever ever… Have you ever received an email on outlook and just saw the title or maybe you read halfway through and got interrupted?.. Where the fuck is it now? Its gone! Sure you could go email by email and try to be your own search engine. But its no use, whatever Tim was talking about with the over pressured valve at the Central boiler, blah blah you should let people know to exit the blah blah, otherwise 3rd degree bur…yeah that shit’s gone. Might as well write your own email to finish the story. See, Microsoft doesn’t want to be like Google at all. On my 14.9992G full gmail, I was always able to go find out what Amazon offer I got 8 years ago. Look 404! Yeah that’s it! 404! With Gemini spying on my every move that’s gotta stop. It’s gonna try to learn my porn habits. I’m gonna go search for all the wrong porn on purpose.
Do people still use google? I haven’t touched it for yonks now. Except GRIS, that still works well.
Not the search but I’m still stuck with the email. :/
I am no longer feeling lucky
And we still pay the vig to AdWords or does all my money go to LinkedIn now?
