Technology

Right? Like let me choose if and when I want to use it. Don't shove it down our throats and then complain when we get upset or don't use it how you want us to use it. We'll use it however we want to use it, not you.

Google and Microsoft were crap before AI, I don't remember when google removed the "don't be evil" but at that point they have been crap for a few years already.

Google became crap about 10 years ago when they added the product banner in the top, and had the first 5-10 search results be promoted ads. Long before they ever considered adding AI.

Yeah google kinda started sucking a few years before AI went mainstream, the search results took a dive in quality and garbage had already started circulating to the top.

I don’t mind the AI overviews, but they shouldn’t show up every time you do a search.

I have a uBlock filter for those

If they take the poll to heart it can still be a sucess. They can advertise that they listened to their users and changed course.

That's the thing about really good marketing - it should not only drive users to use your service, but the reactions to that marketing can be used as market research to improve your product and future marketing in a manner that drives even more users to your product.

I am fairly sure this is the actual point of the campaign. The selection bias for a ‘poll’ like this (one that instantly on-boards you to the ai-disabled version of your product if you click answer negative, no less) is so great that I don’t believe the suits/analysts at ddg ever envisioned a different result. Polls and comment sections lure the extreme viewpoints and the ddg crowd already skews privacy-conscious so this was a highly expected outcome.

What the campaign does instead is:

1. Show that you ‘care’ and ‘listen to feedback’ (by a response to the poll somewhere between disabling the ai by default to making the no-ai button a little bit bigger)
2. show that you have the ability to turn off ai on your product in the first place to those who care
3. like I said above, directly onboard people onto their preferred search strategy so that when relatives/friends send this around people get a little taste, and realize this exists

It’s quite clever imo, and there’s no real bad outcome for what I assume is a pretty inexpensive campaign.

In your settings, first deselect Google as default so you can delete it.

Then go follow this guide

It's horrible for the environment too and wastes electricity. It's fucked up that Google makes everything you search an AI search.

whoa nice! Thanks!

For people trying to configure that in mozilla (I am trying to get away from it but for now :/)

• -> Edit -> Settings -> Search
• "Search Shortcuts" -> Add (to add a search engine)
• "Search Engine Name": DuckDuckGo Lite
• "URL with %s in place of search term": https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/?q=%25s (this has to be =%s, lemmy keeps mutilating that to =%25s everytime I save my post)
• "Keyword (optional)": @ddgl (or pick whatever you like - it appears @ddg is hardcoded and gets refused)
• -> Save Engine
• scroll up to the top, "Default Search Engine"
• from the dropdown list, select "DuckGuckGo Lite"

Done.