Google Begins Requiring JavaScript For Google Search (techcrunch.com) 60
Google says it has begun requiring users to turn on JavaScript, the widely-used programming language to make web pages interactive, in order to use Google Search. From a report: In an email to TechCrunch, a company spokesperson claimed that the change is intended to "better protect" Google Search against malicious activity, such as bots and spam, and to improve the overall Google Search experience for users. The spokesperson noted that, without JavaScript, many Google Search features won't work properly, and that the quality of search results tends to be degraded.
Re: Just switch from libcurl to selenium (Score:2)
If you've ever actually tried combining selenium with Google, you'd know why that doesn't work. And that same reason is almost certainly why they're requiring JavaScript.
I suspect it's nothing machine learning can't handle though.
Explain (Score:5, Insightful)
How could not having javascript affect a search? You're going to the same data.
What they really mean to say is not having javascript will affect their ability to throw more crap at you through "interaction".
Re:Explain (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I want to know what these scripts are doing that makes them worth me not using an alternative search engine.
I suspect whatever they're doing will do the exact opposite - make it worth going elsewhere. The idea that it's for my good is laughable.
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Bing has historically been reported as pretty good at porn searches. I have found they caught up to, and in some places exceeded, Google maps (excluding Street View).
But yeah, not any great options. I can't find any search engines with good results, good results formatting, and with good query syntax support.
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>"Where to though? Isn't the only other real option is Bing? Bing is garbage
https://startpage.com/ [startpage.com]
Same Google results but without Google spying on you or "steering" you, and without the logo activist nonsense.
There is also https://duckduckgo.com/ [duckduckgo.com] although those results will mostly be Bing stuff.
Re:Explain (Score:5, Informative)
[Forcing javascript] is intended to "better protect" Google Search against malicious activity, such as bots and spam
Disabling javascript is intended to "better protect" the searcher against malicious activity, such as bots and spam
Re: Explain (Score:2)
Re: Explain (Score:2)
How could not having javascript affect a search? You're going to the same data.
No, definitely not the same data. Same page appearance maybe, but that's not the same thing.
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Google search results pages without javascript has been systematically broken for a while. They removed the ability to use enter key to do a search. Then there is a state for further searches where the search button disappeared. Then a search would bring up an empty first page and you had to scroll to the bottom and go to page 2 to see the results of the search. Then you had to reload the search results page because it would return a blank page (somehow reloading would bring up more info) and then final
The web platform is too complex (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The web platform is too complex (Score:5, Interesting)
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I install Firefox with addons on any computer I touch. It works absolutely fine if you add uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Disable Autoplay, Unshort.Link, Bypass Paywalls, JShelter and a few others...
I'm already using the first three but was unaware of the rest. JShelter especially looks really promising. Thanks!
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I use DuckDuckGo on all my computers. It does a good job of blocking lots of crap without installing lots of add-ons.
I've been using it for several years now and I'm always happy with the search results.
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Google has far exceeded Internet Explorer's monopoly from the 90s
Hmmm. What could it be. What would posses nearly 70% of PC users to go out of their way to download a second browser, replacing Firefox on Linux, Safari on MacOS, or Edge on Windows?
Microsoft's legal problems weren't that their browser was preferred by most users. It was that they exploited their desktop OS monopoly to build a browser monopoly. If a user runs Chrome, it's because they went out of their way to download and install it, not because they were forced into it by bundled software.
far exceeded
Chrome's market s
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>"Hmmm. What could it be. What would posses nearly 70% of PC users to go out of their way to download a second browser"
Many years of effective "advertising" on all of Google's sites.
>"It was that they exploited their desktop OS monopoly to build a browser monopoly."
And their non-standard "standards" trying to lock everyone into the browser. Something Google has already pulled, although not as badly yet.
>"Chrome's market share as of the end of 2024 was 68%, and IE peaked at over 90%, so no. 68% is
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What you are forgetting is that all major multiplatform browsers that are not Firefox *are* Chrome underneath, because they are based on Chromium. So you can throw all those metrics into a single mostly-Google-controlled bucket. So I wouldn't say he was "fibbing".
Chrome != Chromium. Chromium is an open source browser engine. It's really awful that browsers like Brave, Opera, Edge and dozen other smaller players are able to build competitors to Chrome, on tech primarily built by Google. If you're trying to make an argument about why to hate Google, sorry, this ain't it.
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>"Chrome != Chromium."
I will guess chrome is something like 90% Chromium.
>"It's really awful that browsers like Brave, Opera, Edge and dozen other smaller players are able to build competitors to Chrome, on tech primarily built by Google. If you're trying to make an argument about why to hate Google, sorry, this ain't it."
Actually, it absolutely is.
Google controls 100% of everything in Chromium, and therefore, everything those other browsers are built on. It gives them total control over a huge amoun
Chrome syncs passwords with Chrome, for one (Score:2)
What would posses nearly 70% of PC users to go out of their way to download a second browser, replacing Firefox on Linux, Safari on MacOS, or Edge on Windows?
[...]
If we were talking mobile, you might have a point.
You may have answered your own question.
Web use is the sum of desktop web use and mobile web use. StatCounter currently lists mobile as 64% of web use and desktop as 36%. What possesses desktop users to also buy a mobile phone are 1. portable web terminal and mobile Internet hotspot, 2. running mobile applications that aren't ported to desktop operating systems, 3. running second-factor authenticators, and 4. making and receiving voice calls and sending and receiving text messages to and from phone numbers.
That's degrading (Score:5, Insightful)
Google started degrading their own search results 4-5 years ago, and that has only accelerated with the use of [phony, IP-stealing] "AI" to display monitized results on the first 1-1/2 pages.
Google Search (Score:3)
If you're still using Google Search in 2015 you;re behind the times.
What, that was 10 years ago? Jesus Christ. Now it's like riding a dinosaur. Use something else. Perplexity.ai is pretty good.
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google.com/shopping is really verging on unusable. There's so much spam it feels like they are hardly even listening to your search terms.
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Absolutely! This This This!
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I tried searching Google Shopping for a book by ISBN, zero results. They have that book on Google Books though, so they obviously know the ISBN number. Only reason I could imagine they don't want to use such a useful and unique identifier is that then they can't give you similar-sounding sponsored results.
Happy Hogie Day! (Score:2)
I tried searching Google Shopping for a book by ISBN, zero results. They have that book on Google Books though, so they obviously know the ISBN number.
I too have had zero results when searching for copies for sale of a book that is out of print and not very common, such as an obscure children's picture book from 2005. Just because a book has been published (and is therefore on Google Books) doesn't mean anyone wants to sell you a copy.
Or could you help me find a copy of Happy Hogie Day! by Megan E. Bryant? ISBN is 0448439719 or 9780448439716. Amazon also finds 0 copies for sale.
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No the copy exists, in fact their first result searching by title contains the ISBN, plus anything their fuzzy match accepts as having similar words. The search by ISBN fuzzy-matches the number...
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
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It's so annoying that they made it that clever just in order to make it useless so they can place more ads.
apparently there's a workaround (Score:2)
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We have already had a Google proxy for many years. It is called StartPage.
https://startpage.com/ [startpage.com]
All the same Google search results, but essentially anonymously, without the personalized Google "steering", without Google spying on you, without Googles AI "junk" polluting the results, and without the activist logo stuff.
https://duckduckgo.com/ [duckduckgo.com] if you want something different, although most of the results will be Bing (but without Microsoft spying on you or steering you).
Worse that it already is? (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? Now that would be an achievement.
Between the AI crud that's remarkably inaccurate and the litany of sponsored links, it's hard to get Google to return results of value anymore.
Perplexity (mentioned in systemd-anonymousd' comment) is one good alternative. Here's another (IMHO):
https://www.startpage.com/ [startpage.com]
Useful Google results without the crud.
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DDG FTW.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like moving to DuckDuckGo for search was a great idea...
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But the ddg people need to add opensearch capability to their main search page. They have it for ddg-lite but the main page doesn't for reasons that I've never understood.
So everybody switches (Score:1)
So everybody switches to a competitor (I think its called But Its Not Google )
"Degraded results" (Score:5, Funny)
The spokesperson noted that, without JavaScript, many Google Search features won't work properly, and that the quality of search results tends to be degraded.
You don't need any javascript to get degraded search results from Google.
I must say: (Score:4, Insightful)
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Google is doing an admirable job dismantling their own formerly untouchable market dominance.
Their browser market share went from 64.7% to 68.3% in 2024. So, seems like they are doing just fine.
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Google is doing an admirable job dismantling their own formerly untouchable market dominance.
Their browser market share went from 64.7% to 68.3% in 2024. So, seems like they are doing just fine.
He was referring to search engine market dominance, which is considerably easier to lose given that using a different search engine doesn't even require installing any software, just typing a different address, or changing a browser setting.
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He was referring to search engine market dominance
You are certainly welcome to speculate, but I'm going to assume since we're in a thread discussing browser tech, we're talking about browsers.
But anyway, they lost less than 2% of they market share, down to 90%. If you call that "dismantling market dominance", alright. You're right, it's incredibly easy to lose market share of anything when you have 90% of the market. The CEO can get the wrong hair cut and they'll lose market share. Considering all of the entry level competitors, they are doing quite well t
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You are certainly welcome to speculate, but I'm going to assume since we're in a thread discussing browser tech, we're talking about browsers.
Hmm. When I look up-thread, your post (the one I replied to) is the first one to mention browsers, and TFA is about search.
Anyway...
But anyway, they lost less than 2% of they market share, down to 90%. If you call that "dismantling market dominance", alright. You're right, it's incredibly easy to lose market share of anything when you have 90% of the market. The CEO can get the wrong hair cut and they'll lose market share. Considering all of the entry level competitors, they are doing quite well to only lose 2%.
It's also very easy to lose dominance in the search market because there's very little in the way of lock-in, which was my point. Slashdotters like to complain about how awful Google Search is, but market share doesn't seem to support that contention.
Can we throw this internet out and get a new one? (Score:5, Interesting)
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The Internet at large started dying a long time ago, with the advent of NAT. We have the ability to return the Internet to usefulness with IPv6, but I don't see it happening without a government mandate to discontinuing IPv4. It's just like had to be done to get us from analog to digital TV. The technology existed long before the switchover, but the market would not do it without government intervention.
The Web (which is what you're calling the Internet) is just a port on the Internet.
Re:Can we throw this internet out and get a new on (Score:4)
>"The Internet at large started dying a long time ago, with the advent of NAT. We have the ability to return the Internet to usefulness with IPv6"
I hate to break this to you, but switching to IPv6 will do essentially nothing when it comes to the "ens**tification" of the internet which is mostly due to things like horrible websites, horrible site designs, monopolistic search engines, draconian usage policies, tracking, spam, censorship, spying on users, selling user data, etc.
Re: Can we throw this internet out and get a new o (Score:1)
CGNAT blocks inbound SYN, breaking end-to-end (Score:3)
Carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT) broke the Internet's end-to-end principle by making it impossible for residential equipment to receive incoming TCP connections. This in turn made it impossible for residential subscribers to run a personal website on an on-premises server. Without CGNAT, people would be more inclined to buy a domain name and run a low-traffic personal website instead of having to rely on big social networking silos (SNS) like X and Facebook. With CGNAT, they must buy both a
The ad model causes bad content (Score:2)
When they get payed whenever you visit a link (or scroll or just have the page loaded), the incentives for content are very different.
It works, trust us! (Score:3)
Walker said Google's current approach to content moderation works
Narrator: it doesn't.
Maybe this is a stealth good thing (Score:2)
Maybe if you don't have JS enabled you won't get the AI stuff? Could they make it that easy to avoid?
This is a Prelude to full Ajax Serps (Score:1)
Expect more like this from entrenched players. (Score:4, Insightful)
The incoming super business friendly administration has already signaled free reign in return for an "inauguration fund donation"
Expect lots of blatant market leader abuse over the next 4 years.
Google Search downgraded at least 24 months now (Score:2)
I get several ads, followed by several paid placements, followed by a results that are the opposite of what I specified even with google foo of -terms and +terms .
I get my results from AI now and only verify with google. it hasn't been my primary search engine for over a year. It's results are corrupt and worthless.
What is a Google Search? (Score:2)
>"Google says it has begun requiring users to turn on JavaScript"
Good thing I haven't seen a Google search page in many, many years. Searches on all my machines are either duckduckgo.com or startpage.com
Bots and spam ... (Score:2)