You can no longer Google the word 'disregard' | TechCrunch
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After Google Search's AI update, the word "disregard" now effectively breaks the search interface.
  • Optional@lemmy.worldEnglish
    24·
    6 hours ago

    Kids, skooch closer and let me tell you a story about teh googlez. Don’t make me tell you again, about the skooching.

    Anyhoo - it was nigh on aught-eleven when teh googlez decided they would also be the new facebook. After all, facebook is just a simple way to get people to reveal all of their information, and google thought that could be profitable.

    So, they created their own facebook - although it truly sucked and wasn’t facebook, it was google in the days when they said “don’t be evil” and so people gave it a try, the tech press wrote many articles, and so on.

    It was called Google Plus.

    Now, the relevant part of the story we’ll get to (hey! Get back here!) we’ll get to in a second but first you need to know that since the time of caveman search, there has always been the AND operator (also, OR, but that’s for another time.)

    Y’see, if I search for Funk, I’ll find things, and if I search for Wagnall’s, I’ll find other things. Neither is likely to be what I want though. But, if I search for Funk AND Wagnalls, bam! There’s the thing I want. So AND is super handy to have for searching.

    Now, back in those days, instead of typing out three letters, AND, why, we’d use the plus sign like this, see: + Which was the style at the time.

    Now when Google rolled out Google+, it got some initial interest, but then their average user numbers began to slow soon afterwards. So much that it started to be a problem. People wrote about how Google+ sucked. Which hurt the numbers even more.

    So. What did teh googlez do? Well! They decided to use the plus sign, +, as a search operator for all the many tens of google+ sites out there. In the process they broke the AND operator. On purpose. For this.

    After breaking a key function of their core product, they ignored it for about a year. After that they snuck in a workaround called Verbatim. Then they’d claim people needed to put two terms together in quotes to get AND. It was insanity. It was pathetic.

    When DuckDuckGo started to get popular, a lot of us left google for good then. Because of that.

    Anyway, they killed Google+ in 2018 and now they’re doing it again with AI. I’d say I care but I hardly ever use them so - whatever.

  • Pamasich@kbin.earth
    1434·
    11 hours ago

    For anyone reading this but not the article, the issue is that the AI interprets the query literally as a command to disregard the query. So Google’s AI does exactly that. The actual search works as normal, and Google didn’t ban or otherwise censor the word.

    • Bluegrass_Addict@lemmy.caEnglish
      907·
      11 hours ago

      sure they did … by forcing bullshit ai that has multiple flaws and gives bullshit information.

      these companies get no logical passes anymore. everything they do, is a direct attack on the planet and humanity and shouldn’t ever be met with 'its not really their fault because…

      it’s always their fault…

      • Luis, 9, Chaoskind 🟢@lemmy.dorfrollenspiel.deEnglish
        30·
        11 hours ago

        A while ago, I saw a trick that you can force disable the AI thingy by putting -SomeSuperOffensiveWord (replace with any slur) at the end. This will exclude all results containing the word (which should be none). But the AI will hit the word, and quit because it’s not allowed to work with offensive word. This whole thing is just stupid

    • ITGuyLevi@programming.devEnglish
      9·
      10 hours ago

      Like I have to go to gemini for it to not work? I just searched it and the results are:

      1. Definition of disregard
      2. Techcrunch article about “you can no longer google the word disregard”
      3. Reddit post about how you can’t Google it now 4+ definition again, more articles about not being able to Google it.

      Has the term “Google it” changed meaning suddenly?

      Edit to add: the first definition came from the “AI overview” section

  • A_norny_mousse@piefed.zipEnglish
    8·
    9 hours ago

    The problem here is the ambiguity of the verb “google”.

    I hope it doesn’t come to a point where qyerying an AI becomes the default meaning.

      • dan@upvote.auEnglish
        2·
        48 minutes ago

        Kagi is great, but not everyone wants to pay for a search engine (even though it’s the best way to get a product where the developers care about you and your privacy).

    • dan@upvote.auEnglish
      6·
      9 hours ago

      use &udm=14

      Most users aren’t going to know what that means. It’s the “Web” tab at the top of the search results.

  • flameleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    11 hours ago

    If you type it in, the AI won’t do anything, but web page results look fine under that?

    • kescusay@lemmy.worldMEnglish
      232·
      11 hours ago

      True, but misses the point. The user interface is basically broken now, and the fact that you can scroll down to something useful doesn’t mean the broken bits don’t matter.

      • flameleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
        211·
        7 hours ago

        I always scroll past the AI summaries anyway because I’m not looking for misinformation

        • Ludicrous0251@piefed.zipEnglish
          8·
          11 hours ago

          … Why? Why not just use something that doesn’t spew misinformation from the get-go?

          There’s so many alternative search engines that almost all let you turn off AI - pack your bags and find a new home.

          • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            3·
            9 hours ago

            I usually start with DDG, but it just doesn’t have anywhere near as much of the WWW in its index as Google does, so I very often don’t find what I’m looking for and switch back to Google.

            If someone has a suggestion for something better than either of them, do tell.

            • Ludicrous0251@piefed.zipEnglish
              21·
              8 hours ago

              Better is always subjective based on your priorities, search style, and the info you’re after.

              For free search, I find the results on Brave (who has their own index) to be roughly on par with Google (and Startpage which primarily sources Google’s index), but extra features like page ranking, disabling AI, etc. make Brave better for the user.

              DDG, Ecosia, etc., primarily rely on Bing’s index, which tends to fail me the most frequently.

              The only downside of Brave is the cryptobro owners who seem intent on speed running enshittification in everything they do. It works fine for now but I have very little trust in it not tanking long term.

              Personally I use Kagi and recommend it if paying for search works with your lifestyle. I tend to find what I’m looking for there fastest and rarely if ever do I have to ! bang my way over to another search engine. It has the most customization and features prioritizing human content over AI slop.

              It’s all personal preference though, so what works for one person may be unacceptable for another, and honestly having options/competition is a good thing.

          • flameleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            11 hours ago

            I use DDG on my personal machine, but I work at a school and a lot of my students prefer Google despite my attempts to teach them otherwise.

        • Fredselfish@lemmy.worldEnglish
          8·
          11 hours ago

          Does Google even give results that aren’t Reddit post or AI? I have not gotten single good thing from it in awhile.

      • finalarbiter@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        71·
        11 hours ago

        In this case, Gemini actually introduced significant friction to those of us who didn’t ask for and don’t want a fucking AI prompt over our search, especially without a way to disable it.

        From my perspective, the introduction of the overview was a UX regression, and this actually restores the UI to what I want in the first place, so I don’t really care that it’s technically broken.

  • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    6 hours ago

    Yes you can, just google “define: disregard”.

    Starting a search with “define:” has always searched for the word definition and still does. Apparently “disregard” has become a reserved word. Reserved words exist in all sorts of computer languages, but a non-programmer might find them odd. There are a few things you can’t ask Alexa for the same reason, but with Alexa (or any voice input) I don’t think you can specify a colon after a word - unless there’s some documented way I don’t know about.

  • Corinthiana@lemmy.caEnglish
    14·
    11 hours ago

    Searching “Cancel” also results in a useless response but searching “Reset” just straight up resets the conversation history

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    8·
    11 hours ago

    https://www.google.com/search?q=disregard+definition

    Works for me. My top hit is this:

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disregard

    The AI response at the top of the page is:

    I have reset our conversation. Let me know what you would like to talk about or ask! I am ready to help with whatever you need.

    So it’s probably not useful for AI results, but seems fine to me for searching the Web.

    EDIT: Oh. That’s actually what the article is saying too. It’s just saying that the top result in the AI result (and, in fact, they show a screenshot of the Mirriam-Webster result), and saying that users might not scroll down to see other results. That…seems kind of clickbaity. I mean, if that’s your bar, you could equally claim that Google doesn’t return Web search results, since the top result is the AI-generated response.