Time to replace google...

[Spinal]

So google is doing the altavista thing and adding junk to their search engine...

Time to look for a new search engine... any recomendations?

M

 

[whitenemesis]

Bing???

 

[MBK]

what have they added?

 

[gazzz]

So google is doing the altavista thing and adding junk to their search engine...

Time to look for a new search engine... any recomendations?

M

Use Firefox plus an addin such as optimizegoogle to strip out anything you don't want to see?

 

[Gridlock]

If you flick to the back of the internet there's an index

 

[grober]

COPERNIC AGENT?? Copernic Agent - More Than a Simple Web Search Engine

 

[Spinal]

Bing : Feels like a hangover

Copernic: Requires software install...

Firefox agent: Doesn't solve the bandwitch issue (it still downloads the stuff, just hides it) and I'm an avid IE8 user.

My shortlist so far is:
AllTheWeb, MetaCrawler and AltaVista... all seem reasonable... but none of them seem to work with the quick search in IE8

Edit: Just in case you thought I was going insane... screenshots attached...

Edit: Seems to be only google.ie for now, which, sadly, is where my vpn terminates!

 

[npuk]

It is not just on google.ie.

I thought it was just me. I tried for ages yesterday to get rid of the sidebar. I thought I had accidentally enabled it as I have google toolbar installed but then realised it was coming up as part of the webpage! It is very annoying having it there.

 

[Rob77]

Doesn't all that muck dissapear if you clear out your temp cache?

I had a similar experience except the nonsense was down the left side of the screen not underneath and that's how I got rid.

See:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?tid=67f6459e09a827ee&hl=en

 

[Spinal]

It seems that adding google.ie to the list of my restricted sites (i.e. no cookies allowed) works 90% of the time... I.e. 1 out of 10 searches still showes the gunk, but the other 9 have a sensible UI...

 

[Rob77]

It seems that adding google.ie to the list of my restricted sites (i.e. no cookies allowed) works 90% of the time... I.e. 1 out of 10 searches still showes the gunk, but the other 9 have a sensible UI...

Clearing all the cookies, etc, worked for me. It hasn't come back yet and it's been over a week.

 

[Rob77]

I also heard that using Google Canada worked too but I can't verify that. It may be an urban myth.

 

[Druk]

Don't understand .

I'm on IE8 and use Google.co.uk and get none of that stuff down the side. Whatsoever...

 

[Rob77]

I think it's some sort of trial Google is running. Not everyone gets it.

There's an explanation in the link I inserted above.

 

[npuk]

Clearing all the cookies, etc, worked for me. It hasn't come back yet and it's been over a week.

Sorted. Just searched the cookies folder for files with the name 'google' in them, deleted the ones found and its gone.

Better than deleting all cookies as you lose the saved login data for other sites.

 

[Spinal]

I think it's some sort of trial Google is running. Not everyone gets it.

There's an explanation in the link I inserted above.

Very strange though - I saw the notice of the trial; but assumed that this was done and now they were rolling out in full force...

My colleague, who sits in the same office and connects through the same vpn got the same horrid layout; which is why I thought it was the norm!

M.

 

[npuk]

Sorted. Just searched the cookies folder for files with the name 'google' in them, deleted the ones found and its gone.

Better than deleting all cookies as you lose the saved login data for other sites.

It has just come back and this time clearing the cookies is not getting rid of it.

 

[Spinal]

Same here... and on my home machines as well...

Back to looking for another search engine!

 

[Spinal]

I found a (temporary) solution:
Blackle - Energy Saving Search

 

[Stratman]

Dogpile

About Dogpile
InfoSpace created the Dogpile search engine because your time is important to us. Powered by Metasearch technology, Dogpile returns all the best results from leading search engines including Google, Yahoo!, Bing and Ask, so you find what you’re looking for faster.

Each search engine has its own method of searching and each will return different results. Dogpile looks at all of them, decides which are most relevant to your search, eliminates duplicates and reveals them to you. In the end, you get a list of results more complete than anywhere else on the Web.

No software install required, unlike Copernic.