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.

For ads, tracking and spying of course.

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

Because they dont need to

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.

Because if they typed out an honest reason why, you would avoid them like the plague.

Back in the day it was the best at what it did, but there's less demand these days for that kind of old fashioned search.

Its still better than the competition at finding the URL of a corporate or government entity. Its still helpful for searching other websites for particular content - for example, the wikis for some games have an obtuse layout and unhelpful search function, and google can be the best way to find a particular page in that wiki.

Before ChatGPT existed, and before the enshitifaction of Reddit reached the critical level its at today, google searching site:reddit.com was pretty good at finding organic human conversations that provide actual answers to your questions.

Today however, ChatGPT is better at providing useful answers to whatever questions you may have. And Bing is better at image search.

I guess ublock origin is doing wonders then, for me it's still the same...

Sundar Pichai is the admin for this community, didn't you know?

i use startpage ;)

Google is a text input and a list of links. It should work without JS.

All of the people replying to this saying you shouldn't need JS are totally unaware how modern web development works.

Yes, you could do many sites without JS, but the entire workforce for web development is trained with JS frameworks. To do otherwise would slow development time down significantly, not allow for certain functionality to exist (functionality you would 100% be unhappy was missing).

Its not a question of possibility, its a question of feasibility.

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.

I agree that it's not a big deal, but there still should be an option in my opinion. It can be a lifesaver to be able to search on older devices.

As someone with technical knowledge sometimes I get locked out of things because I block ads or refuse Javascript. For instance, I had to turn off my pihole so I could sign into my Microsoft account to play Minecraft. Or the times I encounter a website that breaks on Firefox.

The more technology pervades society the more pronounced this will get. The sheer helplessness of people when faced with problems that seem trivial to some is scary. Especially when you see people losing final theses or critical work related data because they never learned about backups.

Add to that tech companies trying to hide the concept of a file system, and it seems like this is by design to sell more shit.

Sometimes, yeah. My default is DDG, and I also use Kagi, but Google is still good at some stuff. Guess I'll take the hit and just stop using it completely though. Kagi has been good enough, and also lets me search the fediverse for finding that dank meme I saw last week. Google used to be able to do that, but can't shove as many ads in those queries I assume, so they dropped that ability.

I don't think I used Google in the last 5-6 years. It's duck duck go all the way.

So like !g and I'll get googled?

searxng? Anyone?

Uses Bing results.

Kagi is also good. Better imo really

Brave search 🤙

Edit: I forgot that Lemmy hates Brave and doesn't want anyone to use it. Be warned, there are some concerns people have about the organisation.

  <form method="GET" action="https://duckduckgo.com/">
    <input name="q" type="text"/>
    <button type="submit">Go</button>
  </form>

This is a fully functional search bar. This is all it needs to be. It doesn't need Javascript, only if you want suggestions.

The last time I checked, Google still works if you simply pass your query in the URL using the q variable. Google has no need to enforce Javascript.

Smells a bit Musky

The comments I come to Lemmy for!

Here's a list of public SearXNG instances.

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:

http://youmightnotneedjs.com/

https://htmx.org/

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.

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.

What, you don't want to interact with a CIA asset?

Any reccos over duckduckgo? Been quite pleased with it.

Didn't they get bought by an ad company?

I think they switched to usually using bing results last year. Their support site mentions they use both backends. I'd guess which one you get depends on which API is cheaper for each country.

W search engine fr

Could very well be a mobile thing. I was pretty annoyed recently when logging into gcal for work on my phone, it refused to let me sign in without giving them my cell phone number. When I switched to wifi, it stopped bugging me, so clearly they pay attention to that sort of signal.

Where are you? The JavaScript block also seems to disable reader mode, so maybe they serve a different page in places with accessibility requirements

thanks a lot for mentioning us; you can send us in searches which could be better via the submit feedback button on results pages, if you'd like :D

Thanks... But no HTTPS?

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 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.

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.

True

Yeah, it's not impossible, but it's much harder and you get a lot less info. You can also counteract the JS-less tracking with Firefox's privacy.resistFingerprinting, or by using the Tor Browser, which enables a lot of anti-surveillance measures by default. Here's also another good site for discovering how trackable you are: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

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!'

as a web dev graceful degregation should be the first thing you learn