8 ms·
Google begins requiring JavaScript for Google Search
- jazzyjackson 2y agoKagi it is, then
- Alifatisk 2y agoIs kagi that good?
- speedgoose 2y agoI tried it, it’s fine but I prefer the mix of uBlacklist and Bing with a duck branding and ChatGPT.
- sshine 2y agoYou can find the endless reviews: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=kagi&sort=byPopularity https://hn.algolia.com/?query=kagi&sort=byPopularity Possibly one of the most reviewed SaaS companies here. And yes, it's pretty great. But it's just Search (with some AI tossed in). Incidentally, Kagi works with JavaScript disabled.
- wetpaws 2y agoYes
- koakuma-chan 2y ago10$/mo is way too expensive
- andrewinardeer 2y agoFor you? For me, it's worth every cent.
- hedora 2y agoIt saves me more than that most months. This month, a single superior query result saved me four hours of driving and $100.
- niutech 2y agoBetter Brave Search
- gazchop 2y agoHow else are you going to load a hideously incorrect AI summary block without your initial page latency being through the roof?
- DanielHB 2y agoiframes?
- sideshowb 2y agothis is the only time in 15 years i've wished hn had a lol react. :D
- bythreads 2y agoIframes lazy Object content as lazy Embed lazy Image lazy Link rel=import (not support that widely though) Heck if you wanted to get REALLY cute you go use multipart-mixed-replace headers. Or SSE
- bythreads 2y agonow that i think about it you could do it quite nicely with svg's and foreignObject
- DanielHB 2y agoYou could use some simple CSS tricks (like flex-direction: column-reverse) to make the end of the HTML render above the search results and just keep appending the AI generated text to the HTML without closing the connection.
- kragen 2y agoDon't be evil.
- elbowjack65 2y agoIs JavaScript is now evil?
- kilpikaarna 2y agoYes.
- Hamuko 2y agoAlways has been.
- gunian 2y agoIf you had to estimate percentage of the web could exist without losing functionality without using JavaScript?
- croes 2y agoIf you had to estimate the percentage of the malicious web without JavaScript.
- gunian 2y agoI only know of JavaScript / Spectre combo are there tales of other evils lurking in the great wild?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jazzyjackson 2y agoJust fyi the entire browsing and checkout process of Amazon.com works fine without JavaScript, discovering that radicalized me against so called web apps. it just takes actually reading the html spec and maintaining state in the querystring or via session cookie. Latency can be lower than the monstrosities people build with react in the right circumstances.
- linker3000 2y agoWell, I read the HN headline and said to myself, I bet this requirement is pitched as "...to enhance the user experience...", and, yep, it's there. That's akin with a response to some incident where companies "Take [user security etc.] seriously", when the immediate thought is, yeah, but if you did, that [thing] probably wouldn't have happened. Dunno why I wrote all that - I don't use Google search, because I wanted to enhance (aka unenshitten) my search experience.
- croes 2y ago> quality of search results A.k.a ads
- nilslindemann 2y agoJust tested (ignoring AI search engines, non-english, non-free): Search engines which require JavaScript: Google, Bing, Ecosia, Yandex, Qwant, Gibiru, Presearch, Seekr, Swisscows, Yep, Openverse, Dogpile, Waldo Search engines which do not require JavaScript: DuckDuckGo, Yahoo Search, Brave Search, Startpage, AOL Search, giveWater, Mojeek
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- yla92 2y agoKagi.com works without JS
- nilslindemann 2y agoHave just updated my text: "ignoring non-free" :-)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- niutech 2y agoAlso not requiring JS: SearXNG, FrogFind.
- spectre3d 2y agoUseful list, thank you! I much prefer surfing without JavaScript. If I need to enable it for something temporarily, that’s fine. I just don’t want to leave it enabled all the time. With Google search’s new landing page for those without JavaScript enabled, even if you enable JavaScript and reload, it just gives you the same ‘fail’ page. No matter what you do at that point Google deletes your search string and you need to retype it. Just changed my default search to DDG and I’ll be looking into Kagi.
- marginalia_nu 2y agoTo be fair, if my search engine is anything to go on, about 0.5-1% of the requests I get are from human sources. The rest are from bots, and not like people who haven't found I have an API, but bots that are attempting to poison Google or Bing's query suggestions (even though I'm not backed by either). From what I've heard from other people running search engines, it looks the same everywhere. I don't know what Google's ratio of human to botspam is, but given how much of a payday it would be if anyone were to succeed, I can imagine they're serving their fair number of automated requests. Requiring a headless browser to automate the traffic makes the abuse significantly more expensive.
- palmfacehn 2y agoMy impression is that there's less effort for them to go directly to headless browsers. There are several foot guns in using a raw HTML parsing lib and dispatching HTTP requests. People don't care about resource usage, spammers even less and many of them lack the skills.
- marginalia_nu 2y agoMost black hat spammers use botnets, especially against bigger targets which have enough traffic to build statistics to fingerprint clients and map out bad ASNs and so on, and most botnets are low powered. You're not running chrome on a smart fridge or an enterprise router.
- gnfargbl 2y agoTrue, but the bad actor's code doesn't typically run directly on the infected device. Typically the infected router or camera is just acting as a proxy.
- mike_hearn 2y agoThere are ways to detect that and it will still require a lot of CPU and ram behind the proxies.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- EvanAnderson 2y agoI browse with JavaScript off by default on my phone. Guess I'm going to DuckDuckGo now.
- scotty79 2y agoYou can also ditch Chrome by switching to DuckDuckGo browser.
- can16358p 2y agoHonestly I wouldn't be surprised that if Google requires some Proof-of-work done on browser's host's CPU/GPU to validate search results and make it infeasible for bots therefore.
- dotancohen 2y agoThat brings up an interesting conundrum. If PoW were implemented, could known-valid (i.e. goodstanding for over a decade) accounts be switched over to PoS instead? Or paying accounts? PoW could be written into infrequent pages such as the registration page and reset password page. It could run while the user fills in the form. I might implement this on some sites that get attacked.
- hedora 2y agoThis gives me an idea: thanks to anti-spam mechanisms residential proxies + headless browsers provide a better experiences than regular browsing on real devices. Instead of PoW, maybe just make the clients prove they are capable of proxying browser sessions?
- dotancohen 2y agoWe're not far from having VPN robots intercept our browsing, solve the captchas, close all the popups, remove all the ads, reformat the page to be comfortable to read, and send it over the airwaves using less bandwidth. I would pay for a VPN that does this, I could imagine this being the next iteration of Opera's VPN.
- puttycat 2y agoI recently discovered how great the ChatGPT web search feature is. Returns live (!) results from the web and usually finds things that Google doesn't - mostly niche searches in natural language that G simply doesn't get. Of course, it uses JavaScript, which doesn't help with the problem discussed here. But I do think that Google is internally seeing a huge drop in usage which is why they're currently running for the money. We're going to see this all across their products soon enough (I'm thinking Gmail).
- marginalia_nu 2y agoI've been experimenting with creating single-site browsers[1] for all websites I routinely visit, effectively removing navigational queries from search engines; between that and Claude being able to answer technical questions, it's remarkable how rarely I even use browsers for day-to-day tasks anymore (as in web views with tabs and url bars). We've been using the web (as in documents interconnected with links between servers) for a great number of tasks it was never quite designed to solve, and the result has always been awkward. It's been very refreshing to move away from the web browser-search engine duo for these things. For one, and it took me a while to notice what was off, but there are like no ads anymore, anywhere. Not because I use adblockers, but because I simply don't end up directed to places where there are ads. And let me tell you, if you've been away from that stuff for a while, and then come back, holy crap what a dumpster fire. The web browser has been center stage for a long while, coasting on momentum and old habits, but it turns out it doesn't need to be, and if you work to get rid of it, you get a better and more enjoyable computing experience. Given how much better this feels, I can't help but feel we're in for a big shift in how computers are used. [1] You can just launch 'chrome --app=url' to make one. Or use Electron if you want to customize the UI yourself.
- mb7733 2y ago> I've been experimenting with creating single-site browsers[1] for all websites I routinely visit, effectively removing navigational queries from search engines Surely it would make more sense to use bookmarks?
- ronjouch 2y agoPrevious discussion: Google.com search now refusing to search for FF esr 128 without JavaScript (2025-01-16, 92 points), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42719865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42719865
- throeurir 2y agoIt does not even work with javascript enabled! Always asking for some cookies permissions, captcha, Gmail login...
- ant6n 2y ago…and all the results are ads and seo blogspam.
- KingOfCoders 2y agoLast days of Rome.
- anArbitraryOne 2y agoI've put off learning JavaScript for over 20 years, now I'm not going to be able to search for anything
- phoronixrly 2y agoWhat's next? Not working for an adtech company?
- fsflover 2y agoYou can use DuckDuckGo without Javascript.
- danielktdoranie 2y agoYet another reason to stop supporting Google with your clicks. Remember when their moto was “Don’t be evil”?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- zelphirkalt 2y agoThey are going to make Google search even more broken than it is already? Be my guest! Since they are an ads business, I guess they don't really care about their search any longer, or they have sniffed some potential to gather even more information on users using Google, if they require running JS for it to work. Who knows. But anyone valuing their privacy has long left anyway.
- at0mic22 2y agoI believe the main intent is to block SERP analysers, which track result positions by keywords. Not that it would help a lot with bot abuse, but will make regular SEO agency life harder and more expensive. Last month Google have also enstricted YouTube policies which IMHO is a sign, that they are not reaching specific milestones and that'd definitely be reflected over the alphabet stocks
- lemoncookiechip 2y agoWhat I find amusing is that this is Google. It's their bots, and now LLMs as well, that have hammered people's websites for years.
- post-it 2y agoHave they hammered people's websites? I find that the Google bot makes as few requests as it can, and it respects robots.txt.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- blindriver 2y agoAlmost everyone I know has moved a lot of their searching onto ChatGPT or WhatsApp AI querying. Everyone I know under 25 has stopped using Google search altogether. I think the only people disabling JavaScript must be GenX graybeards such as myself or security experts.
- markasoftware 2y ago> Everyone I know under 25 has stopped using Google search altogether. completely unhinged take. Everyone I know under 25, as someone under 25, uses Google search at least an order of magnitude more than they use AI querying.
- nibbles 2y ago[dead]
- elicksaur 2y agoEveryone I know under 25 hasn’t heard of chatgpt.
- blharr 2y agoHow is that possible?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoRelated discussion as linked in article: ("users on social media") Google.com search now refusing to search for FF esr 128 without JavaScript https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42719865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42719865
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y agoDupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42745453 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42745453
- niutech 2y agoTry changing the user agent string to Lynx: https://fosstodon.org/@niutech/113877781179023925 https://fosstodon.org/@niutech/113877781179023925