After the google+ fiasco I thought Google had learned their lesson about ramming new products down people's throats whether they like them or not, but with Gemini it seems like this lesson has been forgotten.
I usually am a pretty happy user of Google's products but they have really
I usually am a pretty happy user of Google's products but they have really ruined the experience for me (and on top of that they are charging extra for the privilege of ruining the experience). Is there a way to completely and permanently get rid of Gemini in such a way that my normal workflow isn't continuously interrupted by Google pushing their bug-ridden and unnecessary AI contraption? If not, I will probably have to get rid of Google entirely, which will be a massive piece of work but I'm really done with having my train of thought interrupted 30 or more times per day by popups or 'helpful' suggestions that only serve to illustrate how incredibly immature the AI field still is.
What we have done so far:
- disabled AI suggestions where ever such options were given - removed the App components to the point that normal device functionality is not impeded - searched online to see if there is still more that we can do
Ironically just typing this query into google still gives me an AI overview (despite these being disabled) which contains a whole raft of nonsense advise.
If it takes a browser (Firefox) extension to do the job I'm game. I only want to see the word 'Gemini' when it relates to Alan Parsons records or to Zodiac signs.
Any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Comments
Have you tried udm=14?
By lproven 2025-06-2316:37 Try before you buy:
By EvanAnderson 2025-06-2316:382 reply This is what I do. I worry discussing it publicly will motivate them to take it way, though.
There's a couple good searchable articles about it, maybe the cat's out of the bag.
By bravesoul2 2025-06-269:47 Hoping the Google devs would riot if their udm14 links at work stopped working.
By layer8 2025-06-2316:53 Is this why this submission is now gone from the front page? :)
By bbarnett 2025-06-248:21 I have noticed a massive uptick in the number of captcha requests from Google, in normal searches, when you use udm=14. They repeatedly categorize you as a bot.
The tech in me says, maybe lots of bots/AI/trainers are using udm=14 to make scraping easier. The cynic says, Google wants to punish udm=14, non-profitable users.
Just start using different, sometimes paid products? Kagi for search (yes, it has assistant, but you don't have to use it). Fastmail or Proton for mail. iPhone or GrapheneOS for phones, etc.
By ericrallen 2025-06-246:342 reply Switching search engines is a pretty low lift, especially if the one you are switching from is an ad-riddled mess where you can’t actually find what you’re looking for.
Switched to Kagi awhile back and 10/10 would recommend. The cost is easily worth having a good, useful web search experience again.
Swapping out mail and other service providers is definitely a bigger undertaking, though.
By al_borland 2025-06-2410:54 I've been working to move away from Google. Kagi was the easiest and best move. Though Apple's lack of native 3rd party search engine support has been annoying, and it requires various hacks from Kagi to make it work. That's my only gripe, but that's on Apple.
The hardest things for me have been email and maps.
The switching cost for email, especially one I've had since the gmail beta, is astronomically high. I don't think I will ever be able to fully delete the account (though I did delete about 5 alt email accounts I had with Gmail).
Maps has also been hard, as Google Maps is my go-to place for business information and reviews. I use Apple Maps for actual navigation, but their POI and business data is severely lacking, and the lean on Yelp doesn't cut it. Kagi maps is being developed, but has a long way to go, and to get to the point of Google Maps... I don't think they have keep enough pockets for that.
And there is YouTube of course, which is Google owned. There is really no good alternative for that.
By jacquesm 2025-06-246:46 For us docs, security and SSO are the big hurdles.
It often does[0].
By flemhans 2025-06-242:07 LLMs now make the "just" less painful
By carlosjobim 2025-06-245:23 It's not heavy lifting to use alternatives to Google. Billions of people already do.
I just use duckduckgo. Silly name but the results are no different (I switched not because of ai overview but because google said it had 'no results' for something that obviously did and I was fed up).
By whitehexagon 2025-06-2317:061 reply I use DDG too, but that has also recently started inserting AI spam as the first result. I keep switching if off, but soon reappears. I dont care if it useful or not, but on principle I wont buy or use any service with 'AI', I find it almost as offensive as all the advertising shoved down our throats.
By jacekm 2025-06-2320:03 Just kill it with uBlock. The more elegant way would be to inject a proper parameter to session storage with some kind of extension. Or switch to the light version of the service https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/
edit: I can see that in a comment below @yegg shared an even better way - switching to https://noai.duckduckgo.com/
> Silly name but the results are no different
DDG is my default, but I’ll be the first to admit that the results are not as good. I have a bookmark to quickly switch to Google when I need something specific and DDG isn’t cutting it.
DDG also seems to have adopted the YouTube search strategy where once you scroll past the first several dozen results you start getting non-specific results that aren’t entirely related to your query.
DDG supports !g to direct the search to Google, among many, many other bang shortcuts: https://duckduckgo.com/bangs
By andy12_ 2025-06-2410:46 What's up with that search bar for bangs? Every time I write a new letter it appears to reload the webpage, polluting the browser history, and it's extremely slow, frequently missing letters if I type fast enough. That is by far the worst search bar that I have ever seen in any web page.
The normal DuckDuckGo also has their own AI assistant.
You need to use plain HTML DuckDuckGo in order to get rid of it.
By Throwthrowbob 2025-06-2316:401 reply If you don't use Private Browsing (or the equivalent) or otherwise clear your browsing cache, DuckDuckGo's AI assistant can be disabled by:
- clicking the little gear to the right of the search types (near "Assist" and "Duck.ai")
- Click on "Manage" for AI Features
- Setting "Duck.ai" to Off
- Setting "Assist" to Never
To the right of the features above, I saw one can save their settings with a password, to the "cloud". This seems to be that you can enter this password when using DuckDuckGo elsewhere for your settings to be set again (or in Private sessions, though you'd have to re-enter the password on a new session).
We also offer https://noai.duckduckgo.com/ which is just regular DuckDuckGo with AI features turned off.
I have to pay you my respect. I've been watching DDG pretty much since day #1 and against all odds you've managed to both stay the course (which pretty much everybody claimed you would not) and steadily improve on it. It's one of the most impressive projects in this space, which many have tried and eventually gave up on (or compromised their ethics). Thank you.
By yegg 2025-06-2320:09 Thanks! I really appreciate your comment.
Thank you! I have no issues with occasional AI responses but nevertheless it's great to have a choice!
Are there any other subdomains worth knowing? I was only aware of the Lite version so far.
By yegg 2025-06-2321:52 There is noai, html, and lite (and even lighter variant of html).
I had no idea about this subdomain. Had you not shown up to this thread, how would a DDG user have known about this?
If you disable Assist from the inline dialogue, there is a message that comes up about it, but I agree we need to show that in more places, like in the settings screen.
By BanazirGalbasi 2025-06-2320:481 reply Maybe include it in the Assist response window? I know you can disable Assist from the settings icon there, but also including a way to avoid AI entirely where it's most relevant also seems like a reasonable approach.
Now, the first few times you interact with Assist, a dialogue automatically appears asking you how much you want it to show.
By privatelypublic 2025-06-247:47 Most people have been trained to just ignore that stuff.
By Throwthrowbob 2025-06-253:22 How does one get the combined effects of multiple subdomains? For example, no AI, safe browsing, html, lite, as proposed by others?
By alganet 2025-06-2318:15 That is very cool, thanks!
By KingMob 2025-06-2316:42 Or you could turn it off in the settings, which is much easier: https://duckduckgo.com/settings#aifeatures
By callc 2025-06-2316:20 Didn’t know about these, thanks for sharing!
By rusticpenn 2025-06-248:03 I use Ecosia and it feels much better to me.
By npteljes 2025-06-2321:03 Local search ("shops nearby" type of thing) is much better at Google. But hey, that's what bangs are for. I use ddg as my primary, and if I don't like the results (1 out of 20 searches, if that), I just append !g and be on my merry way. (Often I find that Google also doesn't find what I'm looking for.)
