[johnnycab]

>Thanks for ruining the Web, Google.

I posted the solution below, which I found a few days ago. The script will work with greasemonkey and tampermonkey, it will provide you with results similar to the ones before the change. If you also use uMatrix, there will be no ads.

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/395257-better-google

[SquishyPanda23]

> I posted the solution below,

Sorry to be "that guy" but for me the solution is to use DuckDuckGo.

It's not perfect, but neither is trying to play arms race with Google's JavaScript.

[heavyset_go]

DuckDuckGo is great, but Searx[1] is even better. It's a metasearch engine that aggregates several search providers that you can self-host, or access via one of several public instances.

I run an instance on my local network, but you can run it for free on Heroku, AWS or GCP or even on a Raspberry Pi. There are several Docker images you can choose from.

[1] https://github.com/asciimoo/searx

[dvasdekis]

Ironic that I once switched from Dogpile to Google. We have come full circle.

Edit: Looks like Dogpile still works, and flags the google ads properly. I'm switching back!

[jamesbritt]

Extra irony: I went to try Dogpile, but got redirected to some anti-something site (seems to not like my VPN IP) that wants me to do a Google Recaptcha.

[gregf]

You got a laugh out of me :)

[tripzilch]

Anyone know what DDG's !bang operator is for Searx?

[shbooms]

https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=searx

[o-__-o]

Yeah, it’s pretty straightforward

[apl002]

I use DDG as much as I can but when I need to find something very specific, or find a solution to a bug Ive encountered, it takes 2x as long on DDG vs Google

[ehnto]

I find Google ignoring my attempts to be more specific more often.

Just as a contrived example a search like "R33 RB25DET Motorsport ECU" typically got me specific links relating to the exact car, engine and topic. But the past 5 years or so it seems like it is weighting the more common word and more general terms. Often excluding the target topic altogether and just giving general motorsport results. Perhaps it's a consequence of every SEO specialist and their dogbot hammering general search terms and gumming up the machine with cruft.

[a_e_k]

That's something that really drives me nuts about it lately. If I just wanted general results, I'd do the lazy thing and not put in the additional terms. Worse, I've been finding that it still ignores some of the terms even when I put them in quotes.

The results just seem really bad lately, especially for anything technical. Just now I'd been looking for "html5 canvas torture test". The top result is a video called "Torture Testing my Nut Sac!!" and then some videos about testing Glock guns. Umm, no, that's not even close to what I'd wanted. (Bing does way better here and DDG is somewhere in between.)

I'm not sure what Google engineers are using to find technical information on the web these days, but I can't imagine it's the public Google search.

[tripzilch]

I personally find it most helpful to just ask Google a question like I'm a complete idiot. I got the idea from the meme about "that guy wot painted them melty clocks", which works extremely well in my opinion. Looking in my history "how to multilingual in java please", worked fine. You get a laugh out of it, 90% of the time Google figures out what you need, and the rest of the time it's going to show whatever the hell it wants to, any way.

At least both of us are pretending the same level of intelligence, which takes away a lot of the irritation.

I also tried talking to DDG like a duck, but it doesn't give as good results as talking to Google like an idiot.

[dangerface]

animate on scroll "responsive"

Top result doesn't have the word responsive, very handy.

[SquishyPanda23]

Just to be clear, I still use !g pretty frequently.

But psychologically it's rather different. If you find the Google search page to be visually aversive then your goal is to get in and get out quickly. That's a bit harder if Google is your default search.

[Terretta]

On DDG, type:

    !s your search terms

[AlexCoventry]

In case anyone else is wondering, this sends your query to startpage, which appears to query google for you anonymously.

[apl002]

wtf...thats cool...I'll start trying that

[gordaco]

I agree. The moment I saw this was the moment I configured my browser to use DuckDuckGo instead of Google. Good riddance.

[goatinaboat]

If your browser is Chrome it’s still working for Google, not for you

[gordaco]

Firefox has been my main browser for about 15 years. Never saw the advantage in Chrome, aside from using it once in a while when a webpage didn't work correctly on Firefox. These latest years we are seeing very aggressive behaviour from Chrome (reducing effectiveness of ad blocking, for example) and that just reinforces my decision.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

I think I agree. Google still seems like my first choice mentally, but I used ddg a lot more as first search lately ( past month or so ).

It is getting more and more annoying getting workarounds for everything though. It is more annoying, because I liked G layout, default colors snd so on. It was cleaner.

Now not only is their search quality getting worse ( I got what I asked for on bing of all places ), their presentation managed to degrade too.

If it is testing result, I would be curious to see the data that informed that decision.

[phatfish]

I wish google would enable infinite scroll like DDG. Internet search results are of the few times it is more user friendly than pagination.

Just being able to keep scrolling and seeing more results is very helpful. I guess it increases the value of the "first page" for Google.

[wtmt]

I usually start with DDG (it's my default search engine on all the devices I use) and then quickly move on to !s (for Startpage) since DDG still is lacking in the quality of results for many searches. It's a bit rare that I go to !g (Google search).

[catalogia]

> "the solution"

That's a solution, but not a particularly great one since it requires too much from the user to see mass adoption.

[userbinator]

That still requires somewhat less from the user than my solution: a filtering proxy. On the other hand, the latter enables a far more customised browsing experience and one that isn't restricted to a single browser on a single computer.

...which brings me to another great point this illustrates: if you want to customise your experience, if you want to be able to control how you see the Web, then you need to make an effort, and the amount you exert is essentially proportional to how much you can change.

Yet the majority of users have shown that they are willing to take whatever Google throws at them with little opposition. I find that a little sad and ironic in this era of "everyone can code" propaganda (I've seen even Google advertises something like that on its homepage); or perhaps the latter is just an attempt to increase the population of intelligent yet docile and obedient corporate drones... I know developers --- web developers --- who really hated the changes yet made no effort to fix it themselves, despite almost certainly having the skills to.

[hiram112]

What kind of filtering proxy are you using?

[userbinator]

Proxomitron.

[nextvectorsec]

Good call, I think you hit it right on the money. We have all seen these problems (basically Google attempting to MITM the entire Internet) getting worse for years along with all of the very real malvertising threats. We have partnered with the Privoxy project to do exactly what you are doing with Proxomitron but a system that will scale to enterprise environments. We have it running in corporate and educational environments already w/out SSL inspection. What we will be able to do with SSL inspection will be a game changer. Check out the virtual appliance! Any feedback or ideas are appreciated. https://www.nextvectorsecurity.com

[tripzilch]

wow does that ... still exist? is it maintained? (I thought the creator stopped 15+ years ago?) does the user interface still look weird and green? :)

[userbinator]

The creator died 16 years ago... but the (rather small) community has made a lot of patches and continues to work on filters. Given that it's basically the equivalent of running all the sites you visit through sed, with a syntax that's more suited for filtering HTML than plaintext, the strength lies in its flexibility and generality.

Yes, the UI is still skinnable, and the default skin is rather... psychedelic.

[hiram112]

Haha I just took a look, expecting a cool Github project page.

Nope - its green, and hasn't been updated since June... of 2003. I have no idea how it is able to be effective against the modern web, considering in 2003 the biggest issue was annoying pop-up Flash ads which no longer exist. Maybe there are updated plugins or something.

[bsanr2]

I'm confused. Isn't AMP mostly an issue on mobile devices? Can you use this on a phone?

[terminaljunkid]

If using Mobile Firefox (not FF Preview or FF Focus), then greasemonkey is available as add on.

[wtmt]

This is available only on Android though. On iOS, Firefox Focus (or any Firefox or other browser) is tied to Apple's restrictions. So there's no scope for browser extensions as we generally think of it.

[toastal]

And Mozilla is about to roll out Firefox Preview soo with all add-ons but uBlock Origin disabled until they can fix up and test the add-on ecosystem on the new browser. Unfortunately there's more add-ons for privacy/security/ethics than uBlock (Decentraleyes, tracking token strippers, et. al) which will include add-ons that redirect to the original source from AMP.

[cmbailey]

Thank you. Solved it for us, at least on desktop.