Mandatory AI summaries have come to Google, and they gleefully showcase hallucinations while confidently insisting on their truth. I feel about them the same way I felt about mandatory G+ logins when all I wanted to do was access my damn YouTube account: I hate them. Intensely.
But unlike those mandatory G+ logins—on which Google eventually relented before shutting down the G+ service—our reading of the tea leaves suggests that, this time, the search giant is extremely pleased with how things are going.
Fabricated AI dreck polluting your search? It's the new normal. Miss your little results page with its 10 little blue links? Too bad. They're gone now, and you can't get them back, no matter what ephemeral workarounds or temporarily functional flags or undocumented, could-fail-at-any-time URL tricks you use.
And the galling thing is that Google expects you to be a good consumer and just take it. The subtext of the company's (probably AI-generated) robo-MBA-speak non-responses to criticism and complaining is clear: "LOL, what are you going to do, use a different search engine? Now, shut up and have some more AI!"
But like the old sailor used to say: "That's all I can stands, and I can't stands no more." So I did start using a different search engine—one that doesn't constantly shower me with half-baked, anti-consumer AI offerings.
Out with Google, in with Kagi.
What the hell is a Kagi?
Kagi was founded in 2018, but its search product has only been publicly available since June 2022. It purports to be an independent search engine that pulls results from around the web (including from its own index) and is aimed at returning search to a user-friendly, user-focused experience. The company's stated purpose is to deliver useful search results, full stop. The goal is not to blast you with AI garbage or bury you in "Knowledge Graph" summaries hacked together from posts in a 12-year-old Reddit thread between two guys named /u/WeedBoner420 and /u/14HitlerWasRight88.