Just started getting this now. Hopefully it’s some A/B testing that they’ll stop doing, but I’m not holding my breath
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I know this may come off as a surprise: but I imagine that requiring JS in 2024 isn’t a big deal to most people.
Now of course Lemmy skews more into that small crowd.
I don’t blame any website for requiring JS for full functionality in 2024.
Google is a text input and a list of links. It should work without JS.
It’s far more than that. Even on a basic search page. Ever expanded the ‘Peaplo also ask’ section, for example? It loads more results based on your scroll position or interaction.
There’s loads of little things like this, you may just not notice or care about it - which is another discussion.
For full functionality sure. For basic functionality no. Searching on Google is basic functionality I’d say.
You should still be able to use something like Lynx to browse and search. There’s no reason to block basic functionality except that you can and don’t care.
why are you using google in 2024 grandpa
I might be out of my depth here, but isn’t like virtually the entire internet powered by Javascript? What are the negative implications for Google requiring JS?
A large majority of modern web applications are built with Javascript… Both frontend and backend. You do still have a large majority of websites using plain HTML or PHP, with some features requiring JS to function (modals, realtime stats, data input, etc).
You also have alternative languages like Java or C# (and more), but also may use bits of JS on the frontend to drive functionality.
You can bet that the majority of websites you visit nowadays will use some form of JS, unless it’s a static webpage to display basic information.
A lot of the web is powered by JS, but much less of it needs to be. Here’s a couple of sites that are part of a trend to not unnecessarily introduce it:
The negative implications for Google requiring JS is that they will use it to track everything possible about you that they can, even down to how you move your cursor, or how much battery you have left on your phone in order to jack up prices, or any other number of shitty things.
There are so many alternatives
Use LibreX or a fork called LibreY, it’s a JS-free proxy for Google search
There’s a list of instances at https://librey.org/instances.php
Something similar exists for DuckDuckGo btw, it’s called 4get
Or you can just use SearXNG, a meta search engine that aggregates results from multiple sources
The comments I come to Lemmy for!
Oof ouch my Lynx.
Oh well, there’s always DDG and friends.
Yep. I use Noscript and DDG Lite by default. Just putting into duckduckgo: !g <your search goes here> will search google without having to turn JS on…looks like Duckduckgo wins again, even when it comes to using google, lol.
So like !g <squirrels holding nuts> and I’ll get googled?
Yes, the brackets were just there to emphasize it was a search query. Apologies if that was confusing.
Use any of the following:
These are also just fun:
I also use Mojeek when I want a (serious) different set of results that I’m not getting from those pulling from google, bing, etc. It’s not the best but it’s getting better over time.
If you ever need a search engine without JavaScript or https, give http://frogfind.com/ a try. Works great on ancient browsers and operating systems.
Switch to Kagi
Doesn’t it require JavaScript?
I get a notification every month telling me that they will charge me for my monthly Kagi subscription and every single month i feel the same:
‘Totally worth it!’
I feel like their pricing would make more sense if you could just pay for your usage, rather than forcing a subscription
They do have different tiers depending on your search volume and features, so in a way they already have this. I’d hate to have to go through checkout every time i did a search.
Why do you think you have to go through a checkout?
They could just pool your owed money and then charge you that at the end of the month, or let you maintain a pool that you throw money into that they take from as you use it.
They have 100, 300, and unlimited for $0, $5, and $10
How much would you be willing to pay per search? And do you know how many searches you make every month?
For me, i pay not for the searches as such, but to not be tracked and be shown more ads than search results
I haven’t been using kagi long enough to really understand how it works yet, but it’s my understanding that they want you to pay every month, even if you had remaining searches from the previous month.
If I pay $5 for 300 searches, why does it matter if I do them within a time frame? When someone isn’t’ searching, they aren’t really costing Kagi anything.
Alternatively, let people pay 1.6 cents per search (or 1.8 cents or something).
Basically because the product they’re selling isn’t “You get to do a search whenever” but “You get to do a search this month”.
The reason for that, based on my experience with various web startups, is they want to maximize the predictability of their resource usage in terms of staff and servers.
If millions of people pay their $5 and then don’t use their searches, then in the extreme case Kagi could be maintaining servers twenty years later in anticipation that their customers might use those searches.
It’s an edge case, but it illustrates the point.
Also, on the customer side, there’s a psychological benefit to free things. Free as in “already paid for; no cost to using it”.
If you have something that can be used this month but not any other month, then using it is free. If using it now means you can’t use it next year, then there’s still a cost to it despite it already being paid for.
Who uses the internet without JavaScript? Must have so many broken websites
I run NoScript, which blocks all JavaScript. I manually allow websites as I need it. It blocks all kinds of annoying nonsense while I browse.
👑
I installed NoScript just a few days ago, because I’m forced to use a really weak computer that struggles to even browse the modern web. I feel like NoScript improved it a lot, and while quite a few websites broke (including lemmy) (but most will still display the content), I just set the ones that I need working to trusted, but the performance is still good (I should note I’m also using it in conjunction with an automatic tab discarter).
I however also don’t directly use Google. Both SearX and Yandex don’t need javascript, so I’m unaffected by these news, despite being a bit mad about it as a reflection of the direction the web is going as a whole.
Try Ublock origin instead
I started disabling JavaScript by default with uBlock Origin a few months ago. I am surprised to report that a bunch of sites work fine without JavaScript.
There are definitely some sites that actually need it, and for those, it’s just one click to permanently allow for that site. But most of the sites I need work better with just CSS and HTML because there are no stupid nags or social media sign-in buttons that pop-up anymore.
True
Who still uses Google? DDG has been way better for a long while now. Join the duck side.
The vast majority of humanity still uses Google. DDG is basically unheard of outside of tech enthusiast circles.
…and who also has JS off? That seems like a weird combination.
Its gaining ground very quickly
Kagi is also good. Better imo really
It really isn’t
Giving up your payment information is not great for privacy
Love how you’re getting downvoted for suggesting a great search engine which doesn’t require JavaScript. Stay classy, everyone.
Probably because they didn’t mention that it’s not free.
searxng? Anyone?
Hell yeah
Uses Bing results.
Configurable, though, to use many other engines and results.
Lots of overlap, but there are a couple other indexes out there.
So that’s why it’s so good at finding porn.
Brave search 🤙
It isn’t half bad
Google is no longer a Search Engine. It is a commerce/purchase search. It’s nothing more than ads and corporate results to purchase goods & services. Google Shopping has taken over Google.
I guess ublock origin is doing wonders then, for me it’s still the same…
I don’t use Google, but with UBO it still very much is a viable search engine. People just aren’t very effective at SEO and search ineffective terms. That being said, fuck google.
I hate how these kinds of messages never explain WHY. It’s just “Do it. Do what we tell you.” 💀
A lot of websites are react which doesn’t function without JavaScript. It’s a more powerful tool for web dev and can be a better experience for the user if used right.
Great. If that was their reason, they could explain that. But they didn’t and that’s my beef.
But since you seem to be tech savvy, you also already know why they don’t explain which great features of react they want to use on this page. And we all already know it’s not for the user’s benefit. It’s for money they receive from data mining every minute of our lives.
Probably because 99.999% of users already use JS and dedicating a web page to it is already more work than they needed to put into it
I think it’s just to avoid explaining why, and how they harvest your data. That said, I also hate how a lot of errors of the big corpo are just like “This site has an error” no error-code, no further feedback what to do etc.
No no it’s more interesting if it’s for evil corporate reasons! Lmao
BOW TO YOUR MASTERS, AND SUCK OUR DICK!!!
I remember 10 years ago looking at a calculator app in the android app store, and seeing the permissions. And thinking “WHY THE FUCK DOES A CALCULATOR NEED MY LOCATION, AND ACCESS TO MY PHONE CONTACTS???”
Fuck THAT.
I found out yesterday the Samsung system camera app will not function without “Nearby Devices” permissions. Utterly ridiculous.
It needs to be able to tell nearby devices to “say cheese”, so they can blink their LEDs prettily before you take a photo.
All those years, and I still have no explanation why some apps want my browsing history.
What dick? pretty sure it’s fallen off from all the STD’s.
For ads, tracking and spying of course.
Because they dont need to
