It uses Gemini on web or else it gets the hose again.
this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2025
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Fuck AI
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AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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You don't "turn this shit off". They're not asking. They're telling you you're using it now. Learn to love your new lord and savior Gemini.
Don't sign in? Use private tabs. Also would highly suggest other search engines like DDG
DDG is just a custom wrapper for bing and explicitly gives some microsoft trackers a pass.
Sadly enough there is no practical independent search engine that doesn’t try to track you. The best option i know is a self hosted searxng, which still relies on google/bing/others for results but is designed to block all trackers equally without special exemptions.
That article is about duckduckgo browser, just use duckduckgo in firefox?
p.s. just stop using google products, nothing is perfect, just move over to the best service for you that is privacy respecting. In this case duckduckgo as a search engine alone is a good choice.
See? We should have kept Ask Jeeves around!
Oh Jeeves! I miss that bastard!
Lycos! Go get Jeeves back boy! C'mon Buddy!!
Also I have noticed DDG is massively censoring their results and I have completely moved to Ecosia and Startpage after years of DDG.
Super easy!
Ready?
Leave google, stop doing google searches. Abandon your Gmail account. (Note: By this I mean literally delete the mailbox: you CAN have a GMail-LESS google account. I do!) Google services are now for syncing your YouTube subscriptions and absolutely nothing else! YAY!
I'm in the middle of setting up a docker mailserver for this purpose. There's a ton of levers to pull on that thing, but I'm getting thru it. The main thing is to get an account elsewhere that I can do SMTP or IMAP or pop3. Like many others point out, you don't want to create a mail server. What I do want is fetchmail accessible from all my devices that takes emails from any source and keeps them under my control...because it's my mail.
Neat. Let us know how it goes?
Stop using Google.
Have you tried this?
I love the suggestion of "Picture a sunset" at the bottom.
"Gemini, I want you to picture a beautiful sunset... and then fuck right off into it."
The only real answer is breaking away from Google as much as possible, and that's a hard ask, especially without getting into selfhosting.
Search: DDG is okay but offers its own AI shit and gives a pass to Microsoft trackers. Kagi seems great but it's a paid service and an expensive one at that. The best option IMO is SearXNG, but unless you host it yourself, and while there are a good handful of big public instances, you're putting your trust in whoever's hosting the service at the other end, plus it's just an aggregator of other search engine results. I do feel a selfhosted SearXNG instance is the best option though for sure.
Drive: ProtonDrive seems fine but I don't trust Proton as a company after their CEO expressed support for a fascist. Once again selfhosting wins out, with Opencloud or Nextcloud or really any service along those lines.
Gmail: Proton again is a good option, but also again I don't really have faith in them. I've been using Tuta which works fine, the inbox is very slow admittedly but otherwise no complaints.
Youtube: Incredibly difficult one to move away from, so something like Invidious or NewPipe is the way to go to cut out their bullshit. Alternatives are slowly cropping up but not remotely anywhere close to the size and scale of youtube.
Photos: I honestly can't think of a non-selfhosted alternative here. Immich and Ente are the closest things by a mile.
Maps: Personally I like CoMaps for general use and MagicEarth for navigation. The latter isn't FOSS but they seem solid enough and have earned plenty of recommendations from those trying to leave google behind entirely.
Translate: ~~DeepL is alright I guess? It's worked fine for me but I admittedly don't know much about the company or product, just seems to be a common recommendation. It's not nearly as accurate unfortunately.~~
DeepL is also an LLM, isn't it?
I don't believe so but I could be wrong. Last I checked it's been around for years, long before the whole genAI shitshow took off. Might be thinking of Deepseek, which despite the similar name I don't think are related. Though again I haven't really done much research on this one, just seems to be a common recommendation when trying to move away from google products as a whole.
I found ente to be a bit of a pain self-hosted. Setting the storage amount to pretend to be paid was weird, and the iOS app crashed a ton. Switched to Immich and found that to be a lot more stable; though syncing from iCloud from iOS was again a pain, I was able to use icloudpd to import photos directly to the storage location on my server. It’s not encrypted like ente is, so that’s something I need to solve locally.
Got immich and navidrome. Working on an docker mailserver hybrid thing. Next jellyfin and something for network drive.
Stop using shitty googol products.
I continue to be confused by the rationale behind misspelling Google. And yes I know where the company name came from.
Hating the company so much you refuse to properl name it I guess?
Right but to what end? People who write that seem to be saying "I am smart enough to know where their name came from but the company itself doesn't even know!"
Which they obviously did know. It was a branding decision and frankly a good one, entirely unrelated to the horrible things Google actually does. And it's just confusing to write it that way for people who don't know.
Right but to what end? People who write that seem to be saying "I am smart enough to know where their name came from but the company itself doesn't even know!"
I dont think that is exactly what they are doing though. Maybe it's something like the guy that juat uses þ in all their text.
Right, I am sincerely curious why. That was just a guess since I can't make sense of it otherwise so far.
G👀GLE
always watching
He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness' sake
Time to make poisoned cookies for the Christmas browsing season?
Can recommend tuta
Maybe it's not actually on for you, but someone else told it to do something and it fucked up and sent that email to everyone on gmail.
I mean, it is Gemini, after all.
Could be. I can't find any way to turn it off. Hopefully this serves as evidence at the class action lawsuit that is coming their way any day now.
You will use AI and you will ~~like it~~ have no recourse.
Stop using google. Duckduckgo is a good search alternative.
also has bullshit ai. used to use searXNG but that becomes unusable every so many days, so mostly use startpage now
It’s easy to turn of, by design.
I am personally not comfortable using a product where it is an option, but you can use that if it's fine by you.
DDG has AI functionality but it can be turned off. Their image search also allows you to report any AI generated image that gets through their filters as well. Google does not really give you that option.
I know others have said it's just Bing in a different wrapper but it's still better than Google in most use cases.
It is most certainly better than google, but not necessarily the best option. That reporting function is somewhat suspicious to me, sounds like that could just as well be used to train ai to recognize ai so that new ai isn't trained on ai (ai).
I think the next generation won’t even want to use search engines and will always and only ask ai…🥲
They won’t even ask. They’ll just work and watch advertisements, completely assured that corporation-chan will organically present them with any information they need to know
“You’re now using Gemini on Web”
That’s just hilarious to me