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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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Of all the sources of truth, why pick auto-complete?
Alright should I switch to Lyca or HotBot?
Number on reason to at least distance oneself from the big G. They shove unwanted shit down your throat despite the loud protests
Embrace, extend, extinguish, but now it’s Google doing it to the World Wide Web.
Hmm, in theory I don’t have a problem with an AI telling me the answer to my question or whatever I’m searching for - but this isn’t a web search. If I’m actually searching for a particular page or context, then I want to be able to do that.
These are two entirely different things, and if Google goes down this route they aren’t a search engine anymore - they are an LLM provider.
Couldn’t agree more. I use both tools as they have their place, but when I want a search engine, I don’t want to get an AI answer for the result. Like if I’m searching for documentation on something, what benefit would the AI provide me over just giving the link?
Yes, the problem is that the place for LLM “search results” is the garbage can.
this sounds like what Google wanted to be since its inception: ask a question, get an answer
somewhere along the journey, the reality of needing to make money drove the enshitification of search results: ask a question, get offers to sell you an answer
this seems like a step in a better direction
Right because when I search for factual information what I really want is an LLM to tell me “sorry Dave I can’t answer that question right now.” (See: any election related information. As in it doesn’t just kick you back to the web search results it just straight up refuses to give you the answer.)
It baffles me how wholly some people are just accepting the complete erosion of the internet. I have lecturers at university, so theoretically educated people, who tell us point blank to plug any questions we have about weekly topics into ChatGPT. The respect I have for these teachers and their content is less than zero at this point.
Then you have to check those answers, so you need to search for an authoritative source anyway… which means you need a regular search engine. At that point you may as well have used the search engine in the first place.
If Google does this, you’ll need to find an alternative search engine to check Google against… so you may as well just switch to a different search engine in the first place.
There are things that LLMs are good at, being a search engine isn’t one of them. Although I have asked searchy type questions and got some interesting links back which I probably wouldn’t have found on a normal web search with the terms I was using, so they can be useful as a supplementary search tool. I’d rather that than it just giving the answers, which then need to be fact checked elsewhere.
At that point you may as well have used the search engine in the first place.
I was going to respond to this but I think you did so yourself:
I have asked searchy type questions and got some interesting links back which I probably wouldn’t have found on a normal web search with the terms I was using
I think they work as supplements and not replacements. As any tool, they have their use and (for me) can enhance my searching. But I would not replace it with only LLM. (Altough I have never had any great luck with ChatGPT and links, they never work - as in ChatGPT give me an anchor element without any link. It’s better at providing me search terms and concepts to look up for what I need.)
Lmao I’d be going to their office hours with a list of questions just for that
Would this be the same AI that spits out incorrect summarys or just flat out gets data incorrect constantly? What could possibly go wrong by making that the ONLY way to look for things going forward. Fucking morons.
I recently had a dream that involved a suburb of Green Bay, Wisconsin. I have never been to Green Bay Wisconsin. I know it as a rather small city that is the home to the Green Bay Packers, an administratively anachronistic NFL team that draws a large plurality of its fan base from the greater Milwaukee area. Off the top of my head, I don’t know if Green Bay has “suburbs” in the usual American sense at all.
I googled the name of this completely nonexistent community, along with the words “Green Bay,” and the AI very confidently hallucinated it into existence, describing it as a lovely shopping and residential area just over the bridge of the same name.
Yup. No problem though. In the future AI can just add the now very real town to you AR eyeballs brought to you by Chipotle Exxon and T mobile.
No, this will be the AI that ignores your content and just spits out sponsored content. AI doesn’t really have to be involved much, but if it is, Google doesn’t have to pay up when you file a class action lawsuit for misleading content because they can say “It’s not our fault, thr AI did it.”
I hate this.
DuckDuckGo is pretty easy to switch to. You can go to settings and disable AI chat in it.
Ew, it is still on by default :( Unless you set your browser to save site data for this site, you would still see the AI :( Fortunately, the Javascriptless version has no such pest.
Does EVERY axis in life have to be fucked up at the same time?
Can we have one thing that is just doing ok?
Government - fucked.
Education - fucked.
Healthcare - fucked.
Environment - fucked.
Housing - fucked.
Societal and Social Cohesion - fucked.
Wealth Inequality - fucked.
Personal Technological Autonomy - fucked, and under continuous attack.
Technological Enshittification - Running like gangbusters. So really - fucked.
Damn, someone give me some kind of ladder to climb out of this pit of despair.
Time to turn inside. Whatever around you gets fucked, essentially no one can order you “be miserable”. If this one thing gets fixed a hundred percent your way, the rest is just a question of what you can do and how much of that you are willing to do
But does it seem a very long road to become fully in control of own interiority.
I did not come up with this on my own, just picked if up from someone else, but can’t argue with it
Does EVERY axis in life have to be fucked up at the same time?
Yes. There are many texts written on this since start of writing, some are written down from what was carried in word before that since start of speaking.
The ladder has been privatized.
You get the greased pole.
I know it isn’t much, but services like mastodon, lemmy, kbin, friendica, Peertube, etc have shown me there is connected pushback.
Tilde communities have given me something smaller scale to focus on.
The heck is tilde??
Text explaination. My ADHD brain doesnt have the patience for a video when I just want to know the answer and move on.
https://machaddr.substack.com/p/the-tildeverse-a-brief-overview
The https://tildeverse.org is an online community comprising several servers, known as tilde communities, where users can engage in a wide variety of activities that harken back to the early days of the internet. The term “tilde” refers to the Unix/Linux tradition of using
~(the tilde symbol) as shorthand for a user’s home directory. Each tilde community is typically hosted on a Unix-based system, and these servers provide access to shell accounts and a range of tools to help users communicate, collaborate, and explore computing in a text-based, terminal-driven environment.
And yet, resistance seems very weak…
That’s weird – we water our soil with nutrients like “there’s no point in voting”, “they’re all out to get us”, “politicians are shit”, “nothing changes”, “governments are bad”.
I wonder why people haven’t been motivated to fight. Whenever they express faith in our leaders, or institutions, or have any positivity, we’re quick to shut them down. But still.
Problems exist, but there’s never been a safer time to be a homosapien on Earth. A book called Abundance helped me gain a little perspective in these gloomy days.
safety because more people are alive? but also most dangerous because more people die daily than at any other time
Thanks, I’ll check it out, though it’s going to take more than motivational books to pull the US out of the current nosedive…
Also Homo Deus.
I’m from India so two more things to add to the list
Air - fucked.
Cleanliness - megafucked.
Every civilization rises and falls. We’re on the down slope ATM. Sorry. The 80s and 90s were pretty nice in America!
That feel when the Matrix actually called it
Every single one of these flows from wealth inequality.
(and reinforces it)
No.
They also flow from corruption (regulatory capture/failure to enforce anti-trust and other consumer-protection law). It’s hard to say whether that is itself a cause or result of wealth inequality, though.
Nintendo, when chasing developers of emulators and modders, uses regulatory mechanisms. IP is such a mechanism initially. Intended to protect the little guy from big bad corporations.
It’s hard to say whether that is itself a cause or result of wealth inequality, though.
It’s both of course. Only time flows in one direction and never the other.
Excellent point!
Don’t forget about housing! Can’t even have shelter from the elements without paying through the nose to some rent-raising billionaire or giant corporation…
Updated! :)
Considering how often Google’s AI hallucinates some garbage for an answer this is going to be terrible
Is DuckDuckGo still the best alternative at this point, or has Bing been toiling away in the dark to improve itself?
In terms of result quality? In my opinion, based on my particular search habits:
Kagi > SearXNG > Brave > Startpage/Google > DDG/Ecosia/Bing
Everyone is going to have their own opinions on each of those companies, but from a results lens, that’s what I find to be most/least effective.
DDG uses Bing under the hood for the main results, so it doesn’t really matter too much in terms of results.
You can also use Ecosia, if your prefer a different shade of lipstick on your
pigsearch results.
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 haven’t used Google for search in years. duck duck go ftw
The model uses “advanced reasoning, thinking, and multimodal capabilities”…
Well, LLM’s are incapable of actually doing the first two, so we’re already off to a great start.
I don’t think it’s much in the way of hyperbole to say that if they make this the default or worse, only search output option then this will be the thing that literally destroys the company.
No one except idiotic boardroom denizens actually wants this. Google failing to provide actual search results is the singular one and only thing that could actually get users to switch away from using it – and not do that thing where they just grumble and bitch and moan but keep using it anyway. And if no one is searching on Google then nobody is seeing ads on Google, which means Google will not be selling ads.
I will laugh so hard if this happens.
Sadly, I’ve seen how much the average non-tech enthusiast LOVES all this AI stuff. Like, people’s parents/grandparents who only occasionally use a computer when they have to. The types of folks who will call tech support and actually need the answer, “Is your computer powered on?” And there are far more people out there like that than many tech folks think. That’s the market that keeps powering this stuff.
Somehow, a huge amount of people hate thinking. Like it’s painful or like exertion or something. Anything that can just give them what they want is better.
It doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong. They just want an answer. They don’t want to know why, or how, they want to know now.
It’s the shortcut to knowledge all the ancient parables warned us about. Instead of physically destroying your mind, it stops it from working at all.
That being said, we are still in the early phase of the “information age”.
IMO industrialization and rise of “modernity” (in the sense of a historical, sociology-political time period) were far more disruptive than what we have seen in the information age so far.
It is likely we still have to go through some sort of highlight disruptive events (the 21st century equivalent of WW1/WW2) before we come to terms with the pros/cons inherent to the information age.
I’m so glad I switched to Kagi. The writing was on the wall once they started rolling out the AI suggestions wide.
