I was in graduate school when Google launched its search engine. I still remember the pleasing shock of that nearly empty page with its friendly logo, and with the clean little mailbox slot for entering search terms.  Suddenly I had access to an index of the whole World Wide Web, not just curated lists or word of mouth.

Oh, how I loved Google back then; the company’s motto was “don’t be evil,” and even when they started selling ads, the ads were little and unobtrusive. I could understand they needed to make money.

I kept loving Google Search for a long time. 

Even when SEI started polluting the results, I gamely continued on, scrolling down. Even when Google started accepting paid boosts, I sighed and shrugged. But when Google started presenting AI summaries of their search results, they lost the thing I wanted from search.

Someone had decided that people want to skip straight to simple answers, instead of searching. Maybe “people” do, but I don’t. Especially when the answers are generated by a probability machine and based on a survey of all the websites. I mean, have you looked at the Internet lately? A lot of websites are garbage. People wonder why AI sometimes generates plausible falsities, but I actually wonder how it can ever generate anything like the truth at all, given what it’s based on.

I want information and links to resources from Search. I want to be able to judge the veracity of a source. To see who put up the website, and if they have an agenda. I want to be able to compare sources.

But what to use instead of Google? I can use a detour to get out of Google AI, but who knows how long that is going to work, and besides, you still get pages of sponsored links before you get to the SEI-optimized ones. You can turn off AI on Duck Duck Go, but Bing is integrated with Copilot. and the other search engines are not really a whole lot different, honestly. Marginalia is slow and limited. .

So, because I’m impulsive, and because it was a harder problem than I expected, I got sidetracked. I put off thinking about quitting Search, and tackled quitting Google entirely.

All my systems were so entangled with the company that it was like pulling up English ivy. I was using not only Google Search, but also Gmail, Tasks, Calendar, Maps, YouTube, and Nest.  

I started with Calendar. Calendar was easy. I would just go analog. Last week, I bought a little planner, and I pencilled into it all my recurring birthdays and annual events, plus any appointments I have made.

Then, because you know I’m going to lose that little planner, I spent time yesterday setting up Apple apps for the calendar, tasks, reminders, and reminders. I can use Apple Maps. Apple is evil too, and it too keeps trying to turn on AI for all kinds of things I don’t want.

I am probably stuck with YouTube, but I’m definitely stuck with Apple.

So now I have to look at Search again. Next task (which I am going to put in my planner and also in Reminders): Google alternatives to Google Search.

It’s English ivy everywhere.

I spent weeks once in my back yard, uprooting the entrenched English ivy a little bit every day, and I ended up with about 25 trash bags of ivy and a clear back yard. My hands were dirty, I had a lot of scrapes and scratches, and my fingernails kept breaking, but it was kind of fun.

This kind of gardening is a lot easier on the hands, but it’s hard on the brain.