&udm=14 for Safari (iOS/iPadOS) | Hacker News Reader

&udm=14 for Safari (iOS/iPadOS)

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62 pointsmsephton53 comments

Am I alone in actually kinda… liking Google’s AI search results? I mean, I don’t exactly trust it, so if it’s something important I will always drill down to the actual search results to verify the answer, but as long as it’s clearly labeled as AI, I don’t really have a problem with it. More often than not, it’s really just a summary of the relevant portion of the Wikipedia article, which of course has its own trustworthiness issues.

Maybe I just haven’t been brainwashed enough yet to trust Google blindly (something I legitimately worry about and actively try to avoid) but as long as AI is obviously AI and is declared as such, I’m not sure it really bothers me.

It harms the publishers and creators that actually built those sites that Google is extracting results from by costing them traffic and discouraging additional clicks. Over time, that discourages the quality of search results by depressing the market for new search-based information generated by humans.

To me, that’s a pretty good reason to stop using it, no matter if you “like” it.

But that was already true prior to the ai generated words at the top of the search results, and was a thing Google was fighting with publishers about.

That just means it’s doubly true. The &udm=14 workaround also removes the featured snippets that discouraged Google’s role as a partner to publishers.

Okay, so how does it do that exactly? As I said, I’m still clicking through, just as I was when all Google gave me was a text extract of each link. What’s the difference now?

If anything, I’m more likely to click through, because I trust the AI summary less than the text extract. So it seems like AI is actually driving traffic in this case, rather than diverting it.

You are just one person with one set of habits. Google serves hundreds of millions of people daily, and the benefits publishers traditionally received from Google are in aggregate.

Okay… so? Why should I use or not use something on the basis of how you think other people might use it?

Because publishers are telling you that it harms their business and you, as an individual who looks at the bigger picture, want to do the right thing.

Or you can just go for personal convenience. You do you.

Publishers also told me that Napster was destroying their business. And before that, VCRs. Public libraries too, for that matter. Do you always believe what publishers tell you?

I’m a publisher. I am telling you this, personally.

I feel not sure about the harmful nature of AI generated content, yes, it can be harmful for content farms, but I've always chosen to go deeper in arguments I was interested in, bringing traffic, because in the end, those responses are just overviews, so let's hope that AI will kill content farms once and for all

On the whole I prefer the search results without it on iPhone, most of the time I know what I am looking for. If I want the AI results, I can simply reload the page with this extension disabled and see them. Basically, this extension returns control of the experience to the user.

If you don't trust it, why would you like it?

I never trusted the Google search results enough not to click through and verify their accuracy when it mattered, but I still like using Google? Not sure what your point is here.

The nice thing about making something Creative Commons Zero, as I did with &udm=14, is that they can just use everything, logo included, for their own purposes.

Great to see. I hope more apps like this appear.

I want to add: I got into a debate with someone last night about whether workarounds do more harm than good. I’m sure product teams hate them, but I am explicitly in the “good” category. They put attention on the wrongs that companies do, and the ways they could be doing things better but aren’t.

Yes, it would be nice if the company just stopped doing the bad thing, or regulators stepped in. But fact of matter, in a vacuum of indifference, workarounds play an important role.

As users, we don’t have the megaphone of the massive platform, but we do have the benefits of organic reach. We can tell people about them, and the idea spreads. And by giving something like this awareness by promoting the concept through a website or an app, it gives users a choice in the matter that they did not have previously.

Sure, you could go through the extra couple of clicks to go to the Web interface every single time, as Google’s design clearly discourages, but it’s easier to just know this URL code. So tell other people about it (or push them to an alternative search engine, if you prefer). And use tools like this Safari add-on.

While I see how this app definitely improves a direct pain point people have, I think in the long run it isn't useful, as this way Google will just keep at it with its user hostile practices. I would much rather see users switch to a different search engine altogether, whether it's Kagi, DDG or something else, and reduce the grip Google has on the internet.

I doubt the existence of this app will affect whether or when that happens. In the meantime, it's nice to have.

Thanks for doing that, Ernie!

Original site, mentioned by the app, with explanation: https://udm14.com/

How long will it be until Google, instead of understanding people are looking for a different search by using udm=14, will close the option with some mambo-jumbo excuse?

It's an undocumented and reverse-engineered implementation detail. They don't need an excuse to change or remove it.

I sense you have either missed the point, or are using sarcasm, but I cannot tell which through the medium of text.

Why not just use options that actually respect you as a human being (like DDG and FireFox) you product! ;)

Safari does respect you, it's a pretty well-behaved browser. Pre-chromium Edge was similar in many ways (and had zero bloat), I'm still sad it got killed. Much like UWP OneNote, it had great design, proper scroll integration with touch input and used native UI components. Not anymore.

> Safari does respect you

It does not respect my desire to change the search engine to something other than the very few on this list. I have to use an extension which redirect all calls to this engine to my engine of choice.

Agreed that sucks.

But man, looking at the competition… I tried using Edge on windows for a while, and every. Single. Time I install any windows update whatsoever, it resets my search engine to Bing. It says something like “your search engine may have been inadvertently changed, so we changed it to Bing for your protection” or something horrible. (I use Kagi, installed from an extension.)

It’s very obvious to me that the only reason Edge exists at all is so MS can steer everyone towards Bing. It solves a Microsoft problem, not a user problem (it’s not even their code base, they just de-googled chrome, added a different theme to it and use it to force Bing on you.)

Safari may require an extension but at least it doesn’t repeatedly change the search engine back the moment you turn around.

Why settle for “at least it’s not Edge” though, when there are even better alternatives?

Not being able to pick my own search engine is just such a shameless money grab by Apple.

Pleas re-read the discussion, you’ll notice that there is a search engine choice, and the problem is that the list is pre-defined and is fixed by an extension - something that Google is continuously working on restricting. It has DuckDuckGo so it’s good enough. Most importantly, it works better than Firefox and is not Chromium-based.

> you’ll notice that there is a search engine choice, and the problem is that the list is pre-defined and is fixed by an extension

I'm aware of that. The extension "fix" is a brittle hack, and it's a shame that it's necessary.

> It has DuckDuckGo so it’s good enough.

Good enough for you, not for everybody. There are more search engines than Google, Bing, and DDG.

Great! I'm welcoming this new member in my growing list of default Google search parameters:

https://google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&nfpr=1&verbatim=1&pws=...

Update: looks like my Google url doesn't fit anymore in full on HN :(

if you put it in code format I think it doesn't truncate (testing it now...):

    https://google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&nfpr=1&verbatim=1&pws=0&filter=0&tbs=li:1&udm=14&q=%s

e: huzzah!

Thanks! I can't edit my comment anymore but I'll keep it in mind for next time.

Do you mind to add short explination for each param here ( I know only few). Thanks!

Sure!

– hl=en → force language of results to be in English, otherwise Google regularly prioritizes other languages.

– gl=us → force location to the US.

– nfpr=1 → stop autocorrecting “““typos”””. Google doesn't always respect quotation marks unfortunately.

– verbatim=1 → search as is, it complements nfpr=1.

– pws=0 → disable personalization.

– filter=0 → stop “filter[ing] out some of the results for a given search” in order to “enhance the user experience”[1][2].

– tbs=li:1 → stop including other forms. e.g. without it searching for “test” also returns results that contain “testing”.

– udm=14 → disable AI-augmented features.

– q=%s → the query itself!

————————

[1] http://www.google.com/apis/reference.html (dead)

[2] Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20021201103155/http://www.google... (section 2.3, “Automatic Filtering”)

Why not just switch to Startpage.com? It's essentially getting results from Google (and Bing?[1]) without trackers, AI, personalized results, etc

[1] https://support.startpage.com/hc/en-us/articles/452243553384...

Won't load right now where I am. (I'm at a library)

That's unusual. Startpage has been known to filter IP ranges that it thinks might be scraping it, but normally it just throws up a CAPTCHA.

It's a large & well known search engine though. So you could ask the librarian, maybe it's blocked from the library's WAN for some reason.

https://support.startpage.com/hc/en-us/articles/445538045083...

Probably, but they don't block google so I'll continue to use that. Path of least resistance.

DDG user here, worth the switch?

It's definitely worth a try if you're not satisfied with DDG's results. They seem to more closely match Google & have a few more privacy features, such as visiting a page through their anonymized proxy.

I've been quite impressed with Brave's search, tbh. They do have optional AI answers & I've been happy with the results.

More info: https://www.privacytools.io/private-search

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/search-engines/

This seems to work excellently. I’d forgotten what it was like to not have to scroll past a load of junk to view what I’m looking for.

For those that have firefox, there is a really simple extension for that: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/straight-to-t...

Nice! This is definitely the best default. It'd be cool if explicitly clicking the "All" button still worked, not sure if there's a way you can avoid overriding that?

+1 for this - could the 'All' button's target href be modified by the extension (so it contains a query string param for example) so that, if it's clicked, the user is not redirected to 'All' but then immediately redirected back to 'Web'?

I recently filed a PR adding macOS support to this.

Instant install!

Now please please make the same for Safari for macOS.

It's strange that it isn't - extension API is the same (example: AdGuard) and it should be available there too unless the author opted out...

I little research shows the author does not use a Mac but does use an iPhone.

I was hoping this would fix Google’s completely asinine behaviour on iOS Safari where it returns to the very top of the Google search results when you hit back, but no luck.

I'm sorry, but what does it do?

When you type a search query directly into the address bar on iOS/iPadOS, instead of going to the main Google search page for 'All results', it redirects to the 'Web' section of Google's search results, as if you had manually tapped on the 'Web' button in Google. Many people prefer the 'web' results as they feel they do not have as much 'noise' and cruft in them, e.g. sponsored posts, attempts to override your search term by guessing what you meant instead, etc.

More than that, the search results default to showing "AI Suggestions". This stops that, and just shows you the actual search results.

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