Tip of the moment: Google, de-bloated

Computers
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Credit to Jared Newman, in his Advisorator this week: 5/21/2024: Google, de-bloated – Advisorator

For everyone who’s fed up with all the clutter in Google Search, the company has launched a “Web” filter that you can activate from the top tab bar. It’s reminiscent of what Google used to be, without any shopping items, video thumbnails, suggested questions, or AI-generated answers. Instead, you’ll just get a list of links to other pages on the web.

Google doesn’t provide a way to set the “Web” filter as the default search view, but Ernie Smith of Tedium has discovered a workaround that uses the site-specific search feature in most web browsers.

In Chrome, for instance:

Head to Settings > Search engine > Manage search engines.

Click the “Add” button next to Site Search.

Give the shortcut a name (like “Google Debloated”) and a keyword (like “gd”).

In the URL field, enter the following: https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14

You can now either set Google Debloated as your default search engine in the same menu, or access it by typing “gd” before your search query in the address bar. Any browser with custom search engine support should allow for a similar setup.

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Interesting given that over the years Google search has changed so much.

Now more and more people are being turned off, by all the Google ads, are switching away from the search engine, meant to generate revenue for Google, so Google releases a way to limit the ads.

Ads are not so bad when you need them, but Google puts the highest paid for ads in a prominent position on its web pages, then limits the search results you want to read.

I switched away from Google some years ago, when it started limiting its search parameters, and now use others like DuckDuckgo, perplexity and dogpile.

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_Mike
cool info
thx