DuckDuckGo's AI-free search saw nearly 28% more visits in the week following Google's insistence that people love AI mode.

[jorijn@toot.community]

@nixCraft Im rooting for DDG, hopefully their search results will improve too.

[eobeara@mastodon.ie]

@nixCraft I use noai.duckduckgo.com even better.

[shsbxheb@mstdn.social]

@nixCraft only in the way that people haven’t moved away from Google a long time ago.

[w6kme@mastodon.radio]

@nixCraft DuckDuckGo has that AI search option also unfortunately. Are they committing to NEVER making that the default, and keeping it 100% separate from the standard search?

[lycanmatriarch@furry.engineer]

@nixCraft Too bad they don't FUCKING DO THIS BY DEFAULT. You have to opt out of all AI and choose to hide AI regurgitated garbage.

[starkrg@myside-yourside.net]

@nixCraft DDG isn't inherently AI-free, but it does give you the option to disable that crap. I hope this surge makes them realise there's no growth in AI. LLMs are a dead-end technology and the sooner people see that the better.

[mustardfacial@infosec.exchange]

@nixCraft Serious question: If Google dies, what happens to Android? Google effectively owns it and it shuttering the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) in September.

[arielmt@computerfairi.es]

@nixCraft DuckDuckGo is not AI-free. Its AI features are on by default; it's just they can still be disabled.

[kratzen@berg.mobilecourant.org]

@nixCraft@mastodon.social I left google when it added that annoying "AI overview" at the top. Should've ditched it sooner tbh.

[f4grx@chaos.social]

@Mustardfacial @nixCraft thats a great questikn and I have no answer.

I believe the existing aosp still works, i have lineage with fdroid and there is no google in it at all.

[ferricoxide@blahaj.zone]

@nixCraft@mastodon.social

I ditched Google as my go-to search-engine not long after I ditched Chrome as my go-to browser. Yes, I still use both, but that usage is constrained to specific scenarios:

• Google Search is much better for finding images

• Chrome is effectively required for some of the sites I have to use (mostly for work-related things). To limit the potential damage of doing so (things like the weights.bin fuckery), I run it inside a sandbox.

[mustardfacial@infosec.exchange]

@f4grx @nixCraft Lineage, Graphene, raw AOSP with fdroid is all well and good for the nerds like you and me. My concern is more on the general public who have no idea that you can install these OS's, let alone know how to it. What do those people do? Are we just going to expect them to buy a $2000 iPhone instead? That's not really an option for a lot of people.

[sablebadger@dice.camp]

@nixCraft The thing is, I actually liked G+, it was a pretty decent platform all things considered. But oh well, I think other platforms had beaten them to punch, and you go where the people are (at that time it was FB which wasn't as awful as it is now).

But the FORCE EVERYONE TO USE IT tactic is never ever going to work because users have choices (somewhat limited) but they do have choices.

[f4grx@chaos.social]

@Mustardfacial @nixCraft the general public does not care. facebook and tiktok come preinstalled on most phones so they have little interest for apps except banks and shit. They have no idea what a browser is so they will only use the preinstalled chrome and thats it.
Companies will register with google to make their apps and they wont care either. They already do that for apple dev.

Only power users matters. And I think we're already fine. Play store will still be available through aurora.

[reallylazybear@mastodon.social]

@Mustardfacial @f4grx @nixCraft I was able to install custom ROMs and all that stuff when I was 12 - 13 years old. I just read instructions and of course expect bricking my phone and have to fix it, but yeah.

Still a headscratcher that technology has improved a ton but most people remain dumb with it. Idk.

I found over the years it's not really worth talking things like these to someone who doesn't really "get it" cos you're pretty much talking to a wall at that point, lol.

[f4grx@chaos.social]

@Mustardfacial @nixCraft and for the rare apps that wont work without google play, we can have cheap burner phones.

[f4grx@chaos.social]

@reallylazybear @Mustardfacial @nixCraft Sure thing.

[reallylazybear@mastodon.social]

Still worth planting a thought in someone's head about how cool it is, but yeah.

[hewiak@fosstodon.org]

@nixCraft

[mustardfacial@infosec.exchange]

@f4grx @nixCraft Yes, the general public doesn't care. On that we agree, what I am suggesting is more along the lines that if Google dies, and Android dies with it, then what happens? Does Google start remote bricking phones? Does Google Play no longer work?
For a large portion of people as long as the phone works, they don't care. But TikTok, Meta, Uber, et.al. are going to want to push updates to their apps, so how are they going to do so without a working app store?