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.
Why is everything shit
Can it be worse than the sanitised results they give you now?
Yes absolutely
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.
startpage. you’re welcome.
it’s also not us owned or based.
Unfortunately it’s been sold to the US.
But start page just returns Google and Bing results. If Google stops offering it, then you’re left w/ Bing. Microsoft has its own AI thing going, so if Google kills search, so will Microsoft.
Startpage is owned by System1 who are based in LA.
Well you already said I’m welcome, but thank you anyway.
This is my choice
Wait, google does searches now too? Wow they have a service for everything.
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
Been using 4get for some time now, I don’t think a search engine can get better than this
I looked into this a while back and came to the conclusion that the dev didn’t seem trustworthy. Also, just looking on the homepage, the images it showed me were a dildo with “4get” stuck on it using a sticky note and a modified manga panel about beating women. Not sure I’d want to use something like that in public.
Honestly that type of anti-corporate imagery makes me trust them more
yeah, the dev seems kinda like a shitposter ngl (although there are some funny pictures in the front page)
However, I configured it as my default search engine, so I never go to the front page. Also, at least is free and open source (AGPL)
searxng
Been using Ecosia for months now. DuckDuckGo and Startpage before that. I’m pretty happy with Ecosia search results, can’t complain.
I’ve tried so many different search engines over the last year to try getting rid of Google and ecosia seems pretty good, also I still use yandex pretty often
Alright should I switch to Lyca or HotBot?
I don’t need to care. I stopped using Google search months ago.
Ok, but why should I go to Google for ai answers when I can get the same from openai, other models or even local installations without all the ads?
Unfortunately this isn’t about you, but the 90% of people who don’t understand what AI is at all and don’t give a shit where the responses come from as long as “scorpio dream meaning high school teacher truck” and “can you gregnant with cousin?” Give them answers they like
/s to an extent, but here we are
PREGANANANT
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
Kagi. But you free loaders would have to pay for something.
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.
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.
Sounds cool, can’t wait!
