What search engine can I use as an alternative to search the internet reliably on a text based browser like Lynx anymore? I know duckduckgo somewhat works, however i’m looking for a search engine where I can view images. My preferred text terminal browser is links2 which can display images in the terminal. Which browser can I reliably navigate around search resualts, images and news on a search engine without javascript?
Librey rips from other search engines.
Interesting, I’m gonna look up what Librey is but can you tell me about it? Is it opensource? How does it compare to Searxng?
I remember interviewing at Google years ago (if you’re keeping score, it was 2012/2013 just before their stock hiccupped and my onboarding was killed as I was only a 97% fit), and the guy was religious about page load times. “We cut 200 lines of code if it’ll give us a millisecond of page load speed”, that kind of thing.
How they’ve fallen.
I didn’t know they allowed you to search without JS before. If you’re at the point of disabling JS, presumably for security or privacy reasons, why not just use DDG which works perfectly well without JS?
Old browsers.
Just makes me realize that I haven’t used Google search in like over a year now because I use Kagi. Even before that i was using searx-ng.
While not using Kagi, I been using Searxng for atleast, the last 2+ years. I even switch from Duckduckgo to Searxng. Never looked back. Everynow and then i’l change servers on Searxng just to get some kind of new fresh air. Some servers may even have their own custom logo. Not too many do though.
Feels good not to care anymore about the unrelenting enshittification of Reddit, Twitter and Google since I switched away from them.
At this point I’ve been using DDG for 7 years as my main search engine. It’s gotten better while Google has become a joke.
So, you’re saying Bing got better.
I don’t know the full story about how Microsoft is developing Bing, but I do know that Google made a conscious decision to make their search results worse, simply so that you’d search more times, which for them translates to additional ad revenue. But, my sense is Bing hasn’t gone this far yet.
Can’t wait until they enshittify, the way I see it, everything will eventually, even Lemmy. It’s up to us to not settle too hard in one place
The fact Lemmy is open source and federated makes it almost impossible to enshittify. What are you gonna do, show ads? Third party clients are first class citizens here
The core of what you’re saying has been my approach for many years. Never go “all in” on anything.
Convenience is one thing (to me, but it’s everything to so many), but it’s just one factor. And if it means I am (or my data is) the product, it costs too much.
No, I don’t think that’s sustainable, nor is it sustainable to act as if it were true. Given the lack of resources we have compared to Google the only way to make it work is to stick with something for the long run, and bake in protections in both the technology and the organisational structure. Being opensource and federated goes a long way there, there’s no real reason why something not for profit would have to enshittify. But people won’t put in the effort to keep building it if they think that’s inevitable.
Can confirm. I didn’t think it’d be like that but it do be like that. DDG gang, where you at.
I switched to DDG recently due to the manifest v3 changes and AI junk and have been really liking it. It feels like what Google used to be when it was good.
Google begins recommending DuckDuckGo.
That or Startpage
why no one quotes searx instances? https://searx.space/
or even paid search engines : kagi.
Cool. As if the over-promotion of AI garbage wasn’t enough of a reason to stop using it.
If the British civil service, even operating under previous administrations, can put together a multi-functioning government domain that runs reasonably well without JavaScript, there’s no reason Google can’t continue to do the same with a ducking web search.
The former works better with JavaScript, that’s true, but it works OK without and that’s the point.
Then again, the civil service were ordered to do it largely out of spite because the government didn’t want to give the plebs any excuse for not being able to use the site.
I’m not sure how to get Google to lose the need for scripting in the same way.
I think this isn’t a case of if Google can, but rather of why they should. Do enough people really use the modern web without JavaScript to justify spending the resources to test and maintain functionality without JS? And they probably don’t want to let the few people that don’t have JS to open support tickets or write articles about how google.com is broken. Easier to just block it on purpose than to let it decay.
It makes more sense that a government website would support it, since they can’t let even a single person fall through the cracks, and changing laws/regulations is more difficult than making a company decision.
Me, to Google right now:
This is why I am a happy Kagi user.
Somehow I doubt the bloated AI search engine works without JS.
Honestly, JS is such a core part of the web, I’m surprised it took this long.
a basic search engine does not need JavaScript. The reason they are doing this is because, besides adblocks , disabling JavaScript can block ads. This can also block the ai. and to Google, blocking their ai is the last straw. Ads on Google search, not as much likely because the ads on Google search aren’t as disruptive as the ones on Youtube.
There is no need for any JS to simply POST a query to a web server, and receive an HTML response. This is to force tracking, ad, and AI bullshit on people.
Yes.
Google is a lot more than just the one google.com page. And even if it were, JS adds some nice features like predective text / suggested searches.
Tracking, ads, and AI can be done without JS. They may be slightly less granular in the same way as the user experience will be slightly worse, but disabling JS won’t stop it.
I’d bet the biggest reason Google decided to do this is so that they don’t have to support a version of the site that virtually nobody uses.
Imo, the most compelling reason for non-JS versons of typically JS-driven sites is to support lower power devices. But it’s 2025 and even a 10 year old phone you found in a dumpster behind a decaying Radio Shack can run modern websites without issue.
Even the article is grasping at straws for why this might be bad. “It might make accessibility more difficult or add security issues”. One of the most valuable companies in the world, with some of the best engineers in the world, is going to have problems adding aria attributes and updating dependencies? Give me a break.
If you want to block tracking, ads, and “AI”, there are plenty of ways to do that without disabling literally all JS. If you want to construct your google search request without the rest of the stuff on google.com, use your browser’s search bar.
I’m as anti-google/tracking/etc as the next guy, and I’ve been using DDG almost exclusively for years, but I’m not going to pretend like asking companies to make HTML/CSS-only versions of their sites is a reasonable request in the modern web environment. It can be really fun and cool to build a site without JS, but there aren’t many scenarios where it’s actually beneficial.
The replies in this thread are just plain ignorant. Basically every website uses JS heavily and disabling all JS with something like noscript is just a plain bad time.
Even in your comment, every sentence is wrong. Google searches are done with GET requests, and there are plenty of reasons to force JS other than tracking, ads, and ai.
A lot of people turn off js to avoid tracking, or for performance, or they are calling the search in scripts, or they are doing illegal deals in their browser. There are dozens of reasons to do this.
I’m USA based and this will impact future protests : not just the search but all google services must be avoided in the future.
This will also break tens of thousands of scripts
But it’s 2025 and even a 10 year old phone you found in a dumpster behind a decaying Radio Shack can run modern websites without issue.
What about a server without a GUI where your only interface is a terminal using the Lynx browser? I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve done that.
The background world of the Internet infrastructure nobody ever sees or thinks about still very much looks like the 1980s.
You’ve seriously been in situations where you had no access to the internet except through a terminal, and you had to do a google search? No phone or other computer that you’re remoting in from?
Even so, there are terminal-based browsers that support javascript like brow.sh or links (not lynx).
I doubt the nothing-but-terminal users comprise a significant enough portion of Google’s userbase to justify the extra costs to test and maintain non-JS functionality.
Yes, I have. Searching for mirrors to get an installation package of some sort or ISOs to set up virtual machines and downloading it directly to the server, for example. Don’t need USB, don’t need another PC or phone, just do it all on the same server you’re working on.
Interesting that that is the workflow that works best for you. I’ve personally always found it a much better experience to do my searching/browsing off of the server and wget whatever I need to download. If that’s truly your situation, then you may just need to use another browser that supports JS or use a different search engine. I prefer DDG anyway, lol. Not a huge deal.
I grew up on DOS. I am equally as comfortable doing practically everything in a terminal as I am in a graphical environment. I’m sure I’m not alone among other IT folks.
I’ve been known to keep text based IRC clients or text based Tetris or some shit open on another virtual terminal for shits and giggles while I’m working an a different one, flipping back and forth between tasks. Just like a user on a multitasking graphical OS would do.
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but I’m not going to pretend like asking companies to make HTML/CSS-only versions of their sites is a reasonable request i
believe me, its over a reasonable request, it’s a duty, a respect for technology : javascript towards to enshitification, pure html/css is heaven while JS became now pure evil.
But it’s 2025 and even a 10 year old phone you found in a dumpster behind a decaying Radio Shack can run modern websites without issue.
since google is pure evil, i use dillo daily.
One logo, one input field, one button, nothing requires JS. They could have kept a simple solution for disabled people but they don’t even care about that.
Search suggestions require JS. Also, why would Google spend the resources supporting the 5 people that block JS when virtually all websites and users rely on JS. This is a nothingburger of a story.
You are vastly underestimating the popularity of uBlock Origin’s JS blocking feature.
the 5 people
i dont think there are only five guys disabling JS on google search, but just by noscript without exceptions, it’s only 200k on firefox… but who would use evil chromium today?
Not like I was using it to search anyway
If I have to go back to using Excite, I will.
Like, I’m tired of Google Search, it’s always been shit. I’m tired of it’s AI Generalization, tired of it’s garbage results, tired of the stupid section of questions asked by ‘people’ with these low-hanging fruit and softball but dumb questions there is to be asked.
