alt.hn

7/27/2026 at 6:15:35 PM

Judge Rejects Google's Attempt to DMCA Its Way Out of Being Scraped

 https://www.techdirt.com/2026/07/27/judge-rejects-googles-attempt-to-dmca-its-way-out-of-being-scraped/

by cdrnsf

7/27/2026 at 7:36:19 PM

I'd be more OK with this if Google had a good API for their search results. But they've deprecated it, and now there is no alternative. So I'll continue to use 3rd parties that scrape Google results, until they change their mind.

by binarymax

7/27/2026 at 9:29:30 PM

I wonder how this changes things (EU forces to share search data):

https://abcnews.com/Technology/wireStory/eu-forces-google-sh...

by nicce

7/28/2026 at 3:52:10 AM

Easy workaround for Google: charge a non token non symbolic amount for Google Search.

by anticensor

7/28/2026 at 9:36:22 AM

They would have no customers, losing them all to Bing (i.e. DuckDuckGo)

by inigyou

7/27/2026 at 8:03:08 PM

I agree, then need to bring back Nelson Minar’s old search API, or something like it.

Google does supply search grounding with Gemini API calls, and that is handy, but not general enough.

by mark_l_watson

7/27/2026 at 8:42:41 PM

Last time I looked into this (about a month ago), there's a lot of restrictions on the use of Gemini's search grounding results. There's not even an easy or approved way to de-mangle their returned URL's to get to the real URL of the search results. Has that changed recently?

by wwind123

7/27/2026 at 9:00:06 PM

I haven't used it but they were silly about their programmatic search api in the same way. Can't use the results for anything other than showing them as-is on a results page.

by binarymax

7/28/2026 at 1:57:55 AM

I stopped using Google once it started requiring JS for search. That was the day the open web truly died.

by userbinator

7/28/2026 at 3:48:14 PM

Notice how HN replies have no explanations for why Google now requires JS, after not requiring it for 27+ years and when other search engines today don't require it

I stopped using Google Web search as well after this point

NB. The autocomplete endpoint at clients1.google.com for example does not require Javascript, nor HTTPS

One could take the Google suggestions and search those strings in other search engines. Would the search results differ

Google Web search might be useful for finding "popular" results as these are the only results Google LLC management wants to show its ad targets, so-called "users", because funneling ad targets to the same sites ultimately creates larger audiences for advertising and more spend from advertisers

But if one is searching for "unpopular" results, e.g., performing "discovery", then using Google Web search is, IME, certainly not the best method of searching

IME, quitting Google leads to more creative search strategies; I have found stuff that I never would have discovered using Google Web search

NB. Google Web search requires Javascript. Scholar search, News search, etc. do not

An HN favourite:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

https://www.wheresyoured.at/in-response-to-google/

by 1vuio0pswjnm7

7/28/2026 at 4:49:07 PM

Conversely, little explanation is given as to why a JavaScript requirement negatively impacts users.

I’ve stopped using Google search as well but JavaScript is the least of their sins.

It’s completely reasonable for a website to require/leverage a technology that literally 100% of their customers have.

by Grombobulous

7/29/2026 at 4:15:56 AM

Just going to copy the dead sibling comment because it says the truth:

"Allowing javascript can create security vulnerabilities (e.g. in the case of infected ads), and it is used for browser fingerprinting, so that users can be tracked and ad targeted across sites (especially if the information is sold, as part of a database, to third parties who combine it with other databases) even when they deny cookie and local storage permissions and aren't logged in to a google account and are using a vpn or proxy. If you go to one of those "how unique is my browser" test websites, if you have javascript blocked, they have comparatively almost nothing to go off.

It also always loads slower and uses more data and ram than plain HTML, and unfortunately many people in rural areas still have shitty internet service and/or old hardware. And it's rubbish if you just want to browse the internet on something like an ereader or an old laptop.

Unless you specifically need features that aren't possible without it, it's a worse experience, and Google is choosing to make it mandatory for the whole site instead of just for the specific features that need it because it's good for their ad revenue. It's a means for Google to track and sell the data of users who are trying to opt out and preserve their privacy.

I haven't found a single other search engine that does this. I'm pretty sure even Bing doesn't (although they do their "log in for reward points" thing instead)."

by userbinator

7/28/2026 at 9:40:53 PM

[dead]

by Plont

7/28/2026 at 7:25:22 PM

Why is a "Disable Javascript" option provided in every so-called "modern" browser

Why would a user prefer in some cases not to use Javascript from an adtech company

Depends on the user. For example, here's one user who publishes a website on the subject

https://disable-javascript.org/

Consider the level of data collection and behavioral surveillance enabled by the SearchGuard Javascript at issue in Google LLC v SerpApi LLC, as described here:

https://searchengineland.com/inside-google-searchguard-46767...

Google LLC is an adtech company

Google LLC may claim that this Javascript is an access control to protect material copyrighted by others

But the court in Google v SerpApi has found that to be false, with the possible exception of "Knowledge Panel" material. The court found that Google LLC is not authorized to protect the returned URLs in a SERP as copyrighted material

If the purpose of this Javascript is not access control for copyright protection then what is its purpose

Can the user control this Javascript. No, it's under the control of Google LLC

Can the user control how the data collected by GoogleLLC via SearchGuard or other Javascripts is used or where it may be sent. No

Mitigation may require disabling Javascript

https://captaincompliance.com/education/tracking-technologie...

https://medium.com/@Kevin_Finnerty_Gabagool/adtech-the-silen...

https://arxiv.org/html/2508.07454v2

https://adguard.com/en/blog/weblock-location-tracking-survei...

Many of these tactics, including Real-Time Bidding (see AdGguard blog post), as implemented by adtech companies such as Google, require Javascript

It is reasonable that a user might prefer to avoid running Javascript from adtech companies, such as Google LLC

Some of us have been searching the www since before Javascript existed

Using others' Javascript is a choice the user gets to make. Adtech commpany Javascript for web search should be optional. Costs may outweigh benefits. Depends on the user

by 1vuio0pswjnm7

7/29/2026 at 5:27:01 AM

*AdGuard

*company

by 1vuio0pswjnm7

7/28/2026 at 5:52:28 PM

What? Google search works fine for me ( JS disabled in ublock origin ). Lots of other sites are broken, but google search works.

Edit: now I'm worried. Is JS actually disabled?

by dorgo

7/28/2026 at 2:38:15 AM

EMCAScript has an open standard that anyone can implement.

by charcircuit

7/28/2026 at 4:56:41 AM

But it shouldn't be necessary, nor is "can" any reasonable defense. The same goes for the BS about "open standard" web that is actually just Google-controlled and churning constantly to anticompetitively maintain their monopoly.

by userbinator

7/28/2026 at 5:01:00 AM

>But it shouldn't be necessary

It's up to sites if they want to require an open standard and risk losing clients that haven't implemented it yet.

>churning constantly to anticompetitively maintain their monopoly.

Google open sources the implementations of these. Competing browsers like Brave and Edge are able to integrate this open source code to support them without themselves having to deal with constantly implementing new features.

by charcircuit

7/28/2026 at 9:37:21 AM

Well I don't think it should be necessary to use HTML to read your comments, but here we are.

Why don't you make a de-JSing Google proxy? Like SearX-NG?

by inigyou

7/28/2026 at 11:32:12 AM

HN has an official API that returns JSON objects.

Meanwhile Google actively blocks and attempts to pursue legal action against scrapers. Not to mention prohibiting it through TOS (getting your Google account revoked can be life-ruining for many people).

by Crestwave

7/28/2026 at 12:35:54 PM

All the more reason to degoogle.

by inigyou

7/28/2026 at 4:47:44 PM

[dead]

by SerpApi

7/27/2026 at 9:03:11 PM

> The whole thing was just “we don’t like that this is happening, so we’re suing.”

Typical behavior from a big company with immense resources. They probably thought they would get a settlement or SerpAPI could not afford to fight. I assume they are pretty small, at least in comparison to Google (I've never heard of them).

Google has so much money that even a "loser pays" requirement on litigation probably would not disuade them.

by SoftTalker

7/28/2026 at 9:37:57 AM

SerpAPI is probably paid by most of the marketing industry to monitor their own position in Google results. And those guys seem to have unlimited money.

by inigyou

7/27/2026 at 8:49:24 PM

EU protects a database creator if there has been a qualitative or quantitative "substantial investment" in obtaining, verifying, or presenting the content, regardless of creative expression.

In USA copyright requires a minimum degree of original creativity in the selection, coordination, or arrangement of the data.

I think it's a rather grey line to say that Google search results are just facts, but eg maps are copyrightable. There's a rather large amount of effort involved in crawling and ranking the web - the PageRank itself should be copyrightable.

by akrymski

7/27/2026 at 9:41:11 PM

> I think it's a rather grey line to say that Google search results are just facts, but eg maps are copyrightable.

I don't think a map is a good example. A picture is probably a better one. A map, by its very definition, is not a replica of any part of the original artifact. Not merely because a map is not the territory, but also because it's not even a direct, unaltered view of the thing. There is clearly some creativity required in putting together a map, since it requires you to decide what to include, what to leave out, what to exaggerate, what to distort, etc... as evidenced by maps of the same area looking vastly different.

By contrast, search engine results are stitchings of various pieces of the text on the page, verbatim. How much creativity that embidies is probably akin to that within a photo.

by dataflow

7/27/2026 at 9:56:14 PM

Where it gets tricky is that, at least in past US case law, 'maps are facts' and thus cannot be copyrighted as easily (this is part of why published maps often have intentional, hopefully subtle errors in them) [0]

[0] - I believe a specific case was Nintendo vs Prima publishing, which was even involving a map of a fictitious construct.

by whaleofatw2022

7/28/2026 at 6:26:29 AM

> this is part of why published maps often have intentional, hopefully subtle errors in them

Yes I remember reading a few years ago about the Royal Australian Navy trying to find Sand Island which I think was some tiny island marked on maps of part of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Australia - what they found was open ocean 1,100m deep, and concluded it was the map-maker's "mark".

by jamesfinlayson

7/28/2026 at 10:27:33 AM

The consensus was that Sandy Island was not a copyright “trap.” Some of the sightings may have been floating pumice from an undersea volcano, and the “confirmations” came from a chain of errors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Island,_New_Caledonia

by mattkrause

7/27/2026 at 10:36:42 PM

IIUC that particular case has details that don't fit into the general scenario I mentioned, and they affected its outcome.

by dataflow

7/27/2026 at 9:22:08 PM

They definitely started blowing through that line when they started serving up content answers as results.

by altcognito

7/27/2026 at 10:33:08 PM

It's been over 20 years since the PageRank paper was released. We're past that point and they stopped using PageRank 15 years ago.

by ipaddr

7/27/2026 at 7:32:27 PM

It's quite important that SERPs are scrapeable, because they keep advertising scams like ETA/ESTA sites: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56886957

by jonatron

7/27/2026 at 8:27:31 PM

It's interesting to imagine how the world would be different, if internet advertising giants were partially liable for scams/malware that they facilitate.

by Terr_

7/27/2026 at 8:37:41 PM

I recall a articale I read "somewhere" that reported the Facebook makes big profit (Billions) from scams. So they have no ( or no strong motive) motive to shut such scams down

An example is courtcase against Meta for using a Australians mining billionares likeness to promote a crypo investment scam.

https://www.afr.com/technology/dad-it-s-a-fraud-call-that-sp...

by asdefghyk

7/27/2026 at 8:51:33 PM

I'm surprised legitimate companies don't pressure Facebook on this though. There are enough scams on Facebook that I now refuse to believe anything there, even though some of the things look useful and probably are not scams (and also are things I didn't know existed without an ad - thus filling one of the legitimate values of advertisements: informing me of things that would make my life better but I don't know exist).

by bluGill

7/28/2026 at 1:22:32 AM

Anyone making a Kickstarter knows that within days if not hours all your images, pictures, renderings will be harvested and dozens of "copycat" sites will be "selling" your product now, regardless of whether its a real thing or not yet, and they'll be advertising it on FB and IG.

I say those words in quotes - they have no intention of shipping you anything, just skimming low-hanging fruit from someone's ideas.

by FireBeyond

7/27/2026 at 9:31:33 PM

This is actually illegal here in Sweden though. Lawsuits are ongoing.

I'm kind of surprised that there haven't been criminal cases.

by impossiblefork

7/27/2026 at 10:22:32 PM

even in the UK where we don't have "personality rights" it would almost certainly come under the common law offence of "passing off"

by RobotToaster

7/27/2026 at 10:59:57 PM

This is why Section 230 is fundamentally wrong. Because the core concept of it assumes reasonable behavior without monetary incentives. Which is great if you're legislating someone's personal forum about their hobby. But Section 230 applied to the ad industry is incredibly, incredibly broken, because advertising companies do not have any incentive to act in good faith.

As soon as a dollar of profit is involved in a content moderation decision, a business should be fully liable for the decisions around content on their platform. If I report an ad to Facebook and Facebook decides to keep it they should be accepting legal responsibility for that ad.

You want to stop scams online, you make the platforms liable and then grant them the ability to recover the losses by going after the advertisers.

by ocdtrekkie

7/28/2026 at 9:40:06 AM

Section 230 is fine but people keep misapplying it. It says Facebook didn't publish the ads, the ads publisher did. It doesn't say Facebook doesn't have to take them down. It doesn't say Facebook can't be ordered to reveal who the ad publisher is so they can go to jail.

by inigyou

7/27/2026 at 8:59:00 PM

Your first assertion is obviously untrue. And fake celebrity endorsements pre-date the existence of the Internet, let alone Meta. There were lawsuits back in the 1800s on this topic. This is hardly a new problem unique to Meta.

by pnw

7/27/2026 at 9:09:26 PM

There's nothing obvious about it. Meta makes money on ads, period. Scams work and get clicks. Therefore, meta makes money on scams running rampant on their platform.

by vitally3643

7/27/2026 at 11:23:02 PM

Ironically it's only really people who heavily ad-block/privacy-protect that get these scam/malware ads.

When Google has no profile on you, your view is virtually worthless, so it's only bottom feeders that bid on those views.

Average users get Coke and Tide ads. Its usually the most technically adept that get the worst ads, and usually they just turn their ad block back on.

by WarmWash

7/28/2026 at 3:30:52 AM

If I wasn't blocking ads this is what I would normally be seeing.

by tjpnz

7/28/2026 at 5:08:27 AM

Yeah, for a few weeks for sure.

But after that you would get dialed in and stop seeing them.

Google's core mission is to figure out what you are going to buy before you buy it so they can have you click through them to make the purchase.

They generally have negative interest in serving scams/malware ads because people generally don't want to buy those things. On the same token though it's a very hard problem to 100% solve, and the people impacted are usually the lowest value users anyway.

by WarmWash

7/28/2026 at 2:16:55 AM

From where did you come to conclusion that adblock users get malware ads? This is the first time I am hearing this thing.

by cute_boi

7/28/2026 at 4:58:49 AM

They aren't, because they are blocking ads.

But when they turn off ad-block, to "see what it's like", they are not getting an accurate view. It's usually all crypto and other scammy/vices type ads.

Go look at your mom's browser. Her Google ads are going to be clothes, tissues, and cookware.

Nigerian prince scams cannot outbid Kleenex without breaking the economics of the scam. But they can get loaded when Kleenex no-bids because they don't know who the viewer is.

Trust me, ad-tech is far far beyond 2004 when ad block showed up.

(I'll add that of course there are other less legitimate ad networks, and I'm not counting "snake oil" products, which are essentially scams but customers still swear by them)

by WarmWash

7/28/2026 at 3:30:03 AM

Presumably they would only have to show they're doing some simple due diligence. At minimum KYC and a reporting process that works. Neither of which Google et el do currently.

by tjpnz

7/27/2026 at 9:44:45 PM

Imagine how world would be different if the actual scammers and malware creators would be prosecuted and not insteead demanded that internet giants play a privatized police force.

by izacus

7/29/2026 at 9:18:10 AM

We also hold the getaway driver responsible in case of a robbery. Turns out we can charge both the primary perpetrators and any accomplices.

by account42

7/27/2026 at 10:14:40 PM

Aren't the giants closer to the mob than a police force? I suppose those things are not terribly different in practice, but Google, Facebook, et al make money from leaving the scams on their ad networks.

by pluralmonad

7/27/2026 at 11:39:29 PM

Either way works - I'd still prefer the scammers to be liable and persecuted for their scamming than demanding that platforms enact censorship and policeing control.

by izacus

7/28/2026 at 3:31:15 AM

The platform:

1. Takes money from the scammer

2. Tells the scammer how to target people

3. Serves the scam to the consumer, ensuring they see it

4. Takes a cut of the action when the scam is successful

5. Tells the scammer how to optimize their campaign

6. Continues working with scammers after they're reported

The scammer has a fairly small part in the overall operation. The platform is doing almost all of the actual work perpetrating the scam. They're not remotely innocent here.

by AlotOfReading

7/28/2026 at 10:28:04 AM

This is some awfully twisted logic to defend scammers and fraudsters.

Your whole chain stops being relevant if you actually persecute criminals with the same gusto as Disney jackboots anyone voilating their IP.

Instead you demand megacorps to start scanning content and censoring people.

by izacus

7/28/2026 at 11:34:48 AM

Disney is able to jackboot anyone violating their IP because the DMCA imposes liability on big tech companies if they do not comply with a valid request. The comment you initially replied to proposes imposing such liability for fraud also, which you appear to be adamantly opposed to.

by Alpha3031

7/28/2026 at 4:00:14 PM

Care to venture some opinions on how "we" could actually prosecute criminals running scam farms in Myanmar? There's always going to be another criminal, and many of them deliberately operate outside the reach of western law.

For what it's worth, I wasn't demanding anything. I was solely pointing out that the platforms aren't neutral here. They're active participants in perpetuating these scams.

by AlotOfReading

7/28/2026 at 3:36:28 AM

Normally, if there is sufficient evidence, both the mob boss and the ground level gangster are liable and criminally responsible for their crimes. You are free to disagree, but I don't see any reason why big tech companies should be completely immune from any and all responsibility for facilitating and taking a cut of the criminal activity taken on their territory.

You are also free to call it censorship, but I am not aware of any jurisdiction where fraud is considered protected speech, so as far as I'm concerned, censor away baby.

by Alpha3031

7/28/2026 at 10:28:28 AM

With your dictions, why the heck do you want the mob boss to be the cop deciding what you're allowed to do?

by izacus

7/28/2026 at 11:29:40 AM

I want the mob boss to face legal consequences.

If they choose to get out of the business of facilitating crime because of that then so be it.

by Alpha3031

7/29/2026 at 9:13:52 AM

> Applying for an Esta travel permit to visit the US should cost no more than $14

Ah, good old times.

by account42

7/27/2026 at 9:29:33 PM

Same with land registry UK, it takes me several tries even though I know I should be looking for the .gov version. Last time I only realised I got the ad version because it asked me to pay for something that's free on the gov version.

by exe34

7/27/2026 at 8:29:42 PM

[dead]

by cwmoore

7/27/2026 at 11:04:42 PM

The irony is that Google's success was built on crawling and indexing the open web. I understand wanting to protect your product, but once you remove affordable APIs and then object to third parties filling that gap, you're creating demand for the very behavior you're trying to discourage

by 1saadcodes

7/28/2026 at 9:41:26 AM

Pulling up the ladder behind you is a tale as old as capitalism.

by inigyou

7/27/2026 at 8:29:51 PM

(IANAL) I think that the deeper thing from this lawsuit is that from my understanding, (inherently) Search engines are considered public indexes and the data (URL's,index) behind it is considered uncopyrighted and as such aren't protected by DMCA because DMCA only works for copyrighted contents and thus the dismissal of the lawsuit by the Judge.

Basically, search engines are publicly scrapable, though I do wonder as from a law point of view, that it must be within the murky waters as to what a search engine means in terms of seperating its search engine code/its recomendation engine and the public data much of which are intertwined with each other.

I believe that the argument that could be made is that the recommendation engine is the way it is because of all the data and its unseperable to really copyright the whole mechanism in all its glory.

Speaking of which, it seems that AI models feel really similar. Does this judge lawsuit show that AI model weights aren't copyrightable as well? If a search engine is built on public indexes then so are the AI models. I was just writing similar comment on another thread but it seems to be the case, definitely worth a blog article or thinking more about perhaps this judgement by this judge itself in general as well, I just have a vibe that this judgement has pretty far reaching consequences in its impact.

by Imustaskforhelp

7/28/2026 at 1:29:10 AM

In that case, even if using a service violates its terms of service, distilling its AI output is not necessarily illegal under the law.

by torisima

7/27/2026 at 7:28:11 PM

I am somewhat confused - does this mean we can all now legally scrape Google search results?

by thisislife2

7/27/2026 at 7:53:57 PM

Legally and ‘they won’t do everything they can to stop you’ are not the same thing of course.

by lazide

7/27/2026 at 7:41:45 PM

Always has been

by rgrieselhuber

7/27/2026 at 8:33:15 PM

DMCA needs to be reformed one day.

by dmix

7/27/2026 at 10:03:00 PM

That's not news to me, but this article was a really good reminder of how awful that law is. How have we not gotten it fixed yet??

by krupan

7/27/2026 at 9:23:04 PM

Copyright should be abolished.

by throwaway613746

7/28/2026 at 3:34:34 PM

No, but it should only last 10 years or so. Copyright in general is good as it provides economic incentive to produce new creative works. But copyright lasting or exceeding the length of people's lifetimes has done more harm than good to society. By that time, you have long since passed over from incentivizing creators, into enabling rent-seeking corporations.

by wavemode

7/28/2026 at 11:56:16 AM

That would probably cause some kind of massive economic shock and/or collapse at this point. But we can think about how to improve it.

by inigyou

7/28/2026 at 3:13:14 PM

[dead]

by throwaway613746

7/27/2026 at 6:54:48 PM

Hypocrisy-rich.

by xbar

7/27/2026 at 7:56:11 PM

What about them taking content for their AI summaries? Have they created a system that gets content owners and creators paid in this regard yet?

by paul7986

7/27/2026 at 8:41:00 PM

These are still open: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...

https://www.epceurope.eu/post/european-publishers-council-fi...

by layer8

7/27/2026 at 9:28:11 PM

Yes, it will take legal action in Europe and or when the U.S. switches back with more democrats in power to force them to start paying their fair share.

It behooves them to create systems that gets content creators paid as without content AI can not stay relevant. It also behooves entrepreneurs and technologists to create systems that solves this issue.

by paul7986

7/27/2026 at 11:36:35 PM

But not loading ads will save the Internet! Bypassing ads is good!

by WarmWash

7/28/2026 at 10:36:56 AM

I think this case is clearly directed at OpenAI and Anthropic, how do you think those guys get google results when the model searches for things for live data....

by jeffybefffy519

7/27/2026 at 8:05:09 PM

This ruling might feel good viscerally, but it also reinforces Googles own scraping as perfectly legal. At its inception, Google probably viewed this lawsuit as win-win. Either they successfully sue a competitor into oblivion or establish a precedent that will protect themselves in the future. Google lost, but they still won.

by beloch

7/28/2026 at 12:34:39 AM

> but it also reinforces Googles own scraping as perfectly legal.

I don't like Google very much, but making it illegal to scrape public data enables way too much abuse, so this is for the best.

by like_any_other

7/27/2026 at 8:11:26 PM

Google has no moat anymore.

- Google search is on the way out. I don't know any of my peers who use it anymore.

- Coding models make doing extreme depth of work possible.

- Hoards of unemployed engineers now have access to 10x coding utilities and are looking for things to do. They will start clawing away at Google products.

- Just the other day, someone cloned Google Gsuite and it looked awesome

- Drive and Search will also be fungible products

- I'm itching at the chance to build my own phone operating system, and there must be thousands of others who want to do the same.

- Chrome can probably be replaced (Firefox gained a whole percentage point last month)

I don't think Google is safe anymore.

Two caveats that I'll give them:

- YouTube still has network effects and probably can't be dislodged

- Google cloud isn't going anywhere

by echelon

7/27/2026 at 8:38:20 PM

> Hoards of unemployed engineers now have access to 10x coding utilities and are looking for things to do. They will start clawing away at Google products.

No way this is threat to google. For the same reason why the same hordes of engineers did not managed to compete with large companies up to now. And for the same reason they were not producing all that many novel small apps last 10 years.

This is winner takes all economy. Tokens or no tokes, this is not the econony of small competing companies. This is the world of big ones.

by watwut

7/27/2026 at 8:41:41 PM

If only there were laws about antitrust. Oh well.

by amanaplanacanal

7/27/2026 at 8:18:33 PM

> Google search is on the way out. I don't know any of my peers who use it anymore.

What do they use?

Of all my tech friends, colleagues, I'm the only one who uses Kagi. Another person uses searx. Everyone else uses Google.

Of my non-tech friends and colleagues, everyone uses Google.

by BeetleB

7/27/2026 at 8:21:52 PM

> Of my non-tech friends and colleagues, everyone uses Google.

Me, almost, too.

I have some friends using duckduckgo - not many and only until Google is the default again...

by worik

7/27/2026 at 9:00:14 PM

I've been using DDG for at least 3 years. Very rarely use Google anymore, and when I do it is when DDG doesn't find much and in those cases Google usually isn't any better.

by SoftTalker

7/27/2026 at 8:23:11 PM

Let me tell you about this new little-known technology that's been gaining traction in the last few years...

by aqfamnzc

7/27/2026 at 8:32:59 PM

Sure, go ahead and ask the LLM who won the 2026 World Cup. Or nearby BBQ places open now.

Even assuming no hallucinations, an LLM can replace some use cases for search but not all.

by janalsncm

7/27/2026 at 8:57:47 PM

I tried both and it’s not even close which interface is better when it comes to answering a question. Google gives you stuff to sift through and interpret. AI just gives the answer.

Imagine you’re in the car or hands free or disabled and you just want the question answered.

https://ibb.co/whYmZWxs

https://ibb.co/JFkQbmJf

by Waterluvian

7/27/2026 at 9:25:44 PM

AI just gives the answer... which you then need to sift through and interpret as it's often wrong.

Google's UX is terrible - but a search engine (a tool that can put you right into contact with the FAQ or forum where actual experts are discussing your problem) is always going to be powerful.

by munk-a

7/27/2026 at 9:30:23 PM

For sure. But a search engine the way we both probably agree is powerful is not Google's business. Google wants to own the interface level where everyday users come with questions/needing things and Google owns that experience. And that part is dying very quickly.

by Waterluvian

7/27/2026 at 9:43:15 PM

Oh, I definitely agree that Google squandered their golden goose. Had they treated search as an independent business and not a piggy bank they'd be in a much better position. An independent business would still likely fall prey to gradual enshittification but the sheer lack of investment into improving the platform while also worsening the UX has opened up the door. They likely felt quite empowered after Bing crashed and burned but weren't prepared for competitors who had QoL features and weren't backed by the biggest boogieman in tech (at the time at least).

by munk-a

7/27/2026 at 9:41:39 PM

The first of the two steps is a web search. The model didn’t answer from its trained weights.

by janalsncm

7/27/2026 at 10:02:21 PM

The model just asked the crawler to get a recent copy of relevant pages and used that to give the answer. That is why AI companies experimenting with browsers or at least agentic extensions to browsers as that allows to fetch on behalf of the user directly from the device with a residential IP and ditch expensive to maintain crawling infrastructure.

by fpoling

7/27/2026 at 11:21:52 PM

> relevant pages

If you want to know what the relevant pages are, you need a search index.

by janalsncm

7/27/2026 at 11:49:33 PM

Index is just a part of the model. The nice property is that the index for LLM does not need to be updated often so LLM plus index can be static. This even works for the latest news as LLM can fetch major news sites to learn the latest stories and then fetch individual articles for the final answer.

by fpoling

7/28/2026 at 12:42:18 AM

> Index is just a part of the model

I can assure you that it is not. If you download any model off of huggingface, it does not also include an index of the internet.

That screenshot shows the model making a tool call to an external search index.

by janalsncm

7/27/2026 at 9:58:07 PM

Google search may survive as a backend service, sure.

by Waterluvian

7/28/2026 at 3:35:43 AM

Do you have a free or paid ChatGPT license?

by awad

7/28/2026 at 3:50:59 AM

Free Claude.

by Waterluvian

7/27/2026 at 9:08:44 PM

"just gives you the answer" is a problem when it is offered without context, sourcing, etc.

Such is the case for people trying to poison--ahem "influence" LLM results for "what is the best restaurant in $my_locale". You're playing a dangerous game.

by devin

7/27/2026 at 9:36:08 PM

> is a problem when it is offered without context, sourcing, etc.

Sure. But that's not what's happening here, yeah? Both examples are providing sources. Actually I'd say that the LLM is doing a better job at that. You click a button and see 9 URLs to 9 news sites.

I think for the "influence LLM results" fears, it would be ridiculous to argue about which multi-billion dollar American company can be trusted more not to manipulate you.

by Waterluvian

7/27/2026 at 10:11:29 PM

> Actually I'd say that the LLM is doing a better job at that. You click a button and see 9 URLs to 9 news sites.

Does it show relevant snippets for each of the 9 URLs? If not, then it's as bad as Google's AI summary. It's not that rare that the reference disagrees with the LLM.

The value of the non-LLM search engine is that in the search results, you see the relevant snippet, and if you want more information, you know quickly which links to click.

Not saying there's no place for the LLM for many search engine use cases, but a proper search engine replacement it is not.

by BeetleB

7/27/2026 at 11:37:33 PM

> Does it show relevant snippets for each of the 9 URLs? If not, then it's as bad as Google's AI summary.

Sounds like you're saying that the LLM isn't any better than Google's LLM-created snippets. The claim was that Google has no moat against LLMs, and your evidence against this claim is Google's LLM generated content.

by pessimizer

7/28/2026 at 12:04:32 AM

The discussion is about Google Search results vs LLM services (summary or otherwise).

So what I'm saying is:

Google Search Results > LLM results

And yes, that includes:

Google Search Results > Google Summary on search results page

by BeetleB

7/27/2026 at 9:05:38 PM

Claude Sonnet 5 Medium more or less on the timestamp of the comment:

Prompt: Who won the 2026 World Cup?

Answer: Spain won the 2026 World Cup, beating Argentina 1-0 after extra time in the final at MetLife Stadium on July 19. Ferran Torres scored the only goal in the 106th minute, coming on as a substitute in the 62nd minute. It’s Spain’s second World Cup title, having also won in 2010.

Prompt: Nearby BBQ places open now?

Answer: (a geolocation permission request prompt for the browser followed by) Right in [redacted] both [redacted] (4.6 stars, open until [redacted]) and [redacted] ([redacted]) are close and currently open.

A bit further out but highly rated: [redacted]

Seems like LLM does a good job on those questions…

by FabCH

7/27/2026 at 10:09:31 PM

Did it do a Google search to learn all that up to date information?

by krupan

7/27/2026 at 11:35:55 PM

Almost certainly. That's OK, isn't it? Folks have been Googling things poorly for as long as there has been a Google to Google with, and now they have bots that do it on their behalf.

The only issue is that the eyeballs stayed with the LLM, which allows it to hold a position that is potentially very powerful. This is particularly problematic with people who believe that computers are infallible.

by ssl-3

7/28/2026 at 12:46:45 AM

The point of this thread is that you cannot replace search engines with an LLM. If your example is an LLM using a search engine as a tool call, you have not replaced the search engine. It’s still there.

by janalsncm

7/28/2026 at 1:24:37 AM

Yes. An external search engine is still there, for now.

But the user doesn't necessarily know anything about that, and they don't necessarily care.

If/when the time is reached when external search engines are no longer present in the LLM loop, it seems likely that regular folks won't even notice this shift. As long as the answer-making machine keeps making answers, they won't have any reason to pay attention to this kind of back-end minutiae at all.

by ssl-3

7/28/2026 at 5:03:57 PM

I love where this is going. Where does the answer-machine get it's answers in this scenario? How do we double check the answer-machine's answers?

by krupan

7/28/2026 at 5:30:39 PM

> I love where this is going. Where does the answer-machine get it's answers in this scenario?

It gets its answers from an archive of whatever used to be the Internet, and the last remaining publication: The Costco Flyer.

> How do we double check the answer-machine's answers?

That's the best part: We don't!

by ssl-3

7/28/2026 at 1:35:09 AM

you have changed the monetization model for the search engine though

and maybe you really need the index and not the engine?

by 8note

7/27/2026 at 11:45:07 PM

On a personal level if I used to do 100 google searches on a daily basis, now I would be doing only 10. And it is the case with everyone in the tech ecosystem at least. So it would be fair to assume that there share has reduced.

On the LLM side as well, I have not seen much people using Gemini vs the market share of Claude / Open AI.

The assumption of the long tail still using Gemini because it is bundled might be correct, but I am not even sure if that is something that Google will be happy with.

by ashu1461

7/27/2026 at 8:58:56 PM

Whether it's a good choice or not sadly doesn't change the current reality. People now use ChatGPT as a replacement for google.

by Forgeties79

7/27/2026 at 8:36:29 PM

Fwiw, I've done those kinds of requests before and it did so successfully.

It did use Google to provide me with the answers though, sooo...

by ffsm8

7/27/2026 at 8:45:45 PM

The LLMs I've tried don't do well with very new stuff. Like Zig for example, they tell me answers that were good for Zig 0.12 but we on 0.16 now. So I've got to feed them the latest docs, then do the AI dance.

by edoceo

7/27/2026 at 8:32:13 PM

Really bad idea for a lot of search use cases.

by BeetleB

7/27/2026 at 9:52:33 PM

Someone has to crawl the web, and it's not the LLMs themselves.

by bellowsgulch

7/27/2026 at 8:25:25 PM

> Google search is on the way out. I don't know any of my peers who use it anymore.

bear in mind we're on Hacker News. Google's market share is still above 90% - in almost any other market this would be a ridiculous monopoly.

by bstsb

7/27/2026 at 8:22:42 PM

> - I'm itching at the chance to build my own phone operating system, and there must be thousands of others who want to do the same.

Maybe look into contributing to existing alternatives like PostmarketOS.

https://postmarketos.org/

by hommelix

7/27/2026 at 8:33:29 PM

Please don't send vibecoders to established open source projects . Your literally sabotaging them if you succeed.

by ffsm8

7/28/2026 at 3:04:28 PM

PostmarketOS is cool.

Let me revise that super abbreviated prognostication to hint at what I was really trying to say.

I think a lot of people are going to start to look at replacing Android and iOS, and some of these will be decently funded teams. Some perhaps not even based in the US.

Attacking the phone market used to be unthinkable. Not even Facebook could pull it off.

But now? I think it's open season again.

Even if the problems to solve are truly deeper than they appear, LLMs are going to give people so much energy to look past the difficulty.

by echelon

7/27/2026 at 8:33:25 PM

Google’s moat is that websites aren’t blocking their crawler.

by layer8

7/27/2026 at 11:27:34 PM

Google's most is that people use ad-block and back-door subscriptions.

Every competitor dies in the womb because "subscriptions are bs and ads are cancer" is totally normalized.

If you want Google to fall, start giving ad-loads or money to companies trying to compete.

by WarmWash

7/28/2026 at 11:59:47 AM

Or offer good value for money. I subscribe to Kagi and a few online newspapers. If you let me pay $10 every month for access to every online newspaper I'd take that offer.

But you can't be shit and also charge a subscription. There has to be good stuff behind the subscription.

by inigyou

7/27/2026 at 8:24:18 PM

are your peers me, myself, and I? that is a wild claim. I'll start asking around but I don't think I could find one person that says they don't use google search anymore

by rebasedoctopus

7/27/2026 at 7:38:51 PM

If only GPT wouldn't refuse my requests to write a crawler for $site. :(

by super256

7/28/2026 at 12:16:16 PM

It did for me, even without an account. Is that because I don't have an account and I'm accessing some weak model with little guardrails?

by el_io

7/27/2026 at 8:41:19 PM

Gemini has been perfectly willing to write such things for me

by john01dav

7/28/2026 at 12:54:23 AM

Grok Build won't even question it. You gotta weigh that Grok use up, though.

by qingcharles

7/27/2026 at 11:49:23 PM

the company that built its empire by indexing every page on the internet without asking is now suing people for reading its pages without asking

by luciana1u

7/27/2026 at 9:09:15 PM

Having good thoughts about Google is kind of nostalgic!

by dude250711

7/27/2026 at 6:58:15 PM

“You are trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen, and I think it quite ungentlemanly."

by guardiangod

7/27/2026 at 7:45:42 PM

Google crawling respects robots.txt and doesn't break capcha. It is easy to tell Google to piss off. SerpAPI fully relies on end-user proxies distributed like malware (in LG tv apps for instance), it has no other way it could function because it exclusively ingests data from sources that tell it to stop. If you wanted to scrape a bot friendly site, you wouldn't need SerpApi

by throwaway87543

7/27/2026 at 8:26:10 PM

I'm vaguely sympathetic to this argument.

But only vaguely. Google uses its monopoly position in advertising to basically ensure that you allow them to scrape your site (or if not you personally, the majority of revenue driving sites). They have the benefit of being allowed by default.

They also then scrape again at the user level for users operating chrome.

They also conveniently ignore global blocks for their adsbots (you have to specifically name them to block them).

If you're not Google, you likely don't have this luxury.

My preference would be that governments force search indexes to be public. The exact mechanisms for this can be debated.

by horsawlarway

7/28/2026 at 1:31:48 AM

And they do specifically also scrape sites anonymously, ostensibly to ensure you don't serve different content to GoogleBot than users (though this is in my experience unreliable at best, and that's even before we get to the "do we trust that that's the only scope?").

by FireBeyond

7/28/2026 at 3:43:10 AM

The question I have that no one has really answered is...what kind of crawling have the current frontier labs done historically and what are they continuing to do now for training? Inference can follow rules easily, but the training is a big black box that mostly gets headlines for books getting slashed but that's not the only source of data is it?

by awad

7/27/2026 at 7:37:20 PM

This sums up every single bit of AI "progress" since 2022.

by Varelion

7/27/2026 at 9:28:01 PM

Where’s my nanometer-sized violin? Always losing that darn thing …

by stefan_lec

7/27/2026 at 9:41:54 PM

I may have a smaller one. I don't know exactly where it is, but at least I know exactly how fast it's moving.

by probably_wrong

7/27/2026 at 10:26:07 PM

A tardigrade stole mine.

by RobotToaster

7/27/2026 at 9:30:08 PM

Mine is worn out.

by cryo32

7/28/2026 at 1:41:41 PM

[flagged]

by nexustoken

7/27/2026 at 7:53:36 PM

[dead]

by raychis