Artificial Intelligence Summaries from Google are Eliminating the Web's Essence - Created a Browser Add-on to Eliminate Them

Reddit, let's get real. The web isn't the sparkling treasure chest it once was, and Google, baby, ain't innocent - at least not entirely. They've popped the AI bubble and shoved it onto search users, causing turmoil to user experiences and potential harm to publishers and the entire open web.

Recently, they've been pushing AI Overviews, clunky summaries that pop up above organic search results, onto even more countries and queries. These overviews can be downright laughable. Let me give you an example: when I asked Google on Friday, "Is today Friday," it replied, "No, today is not Friday. Today is Friday, May 30, 2025." Now, come on, that's absurd, right? But here's the kicker: there's no expert behind these answers, no PhD in Time-Keeping diligently verifying the information. We're supposed to trust Google as if it were a wise, old librarian with decades of experience... on everything!

The world's greatest card cataloguer has decided that their knack for arranging books qualifies them to be a reputable authority on everything under the sun. You and I just wanted directions to the right shelf, not a lecture on quantum physics!

Before you know it, it seems, the company may want to replace the entire search, not just the top section, with chatty AI like you see in their AI Mode tab. Their goal? Keeping users stuck on their site, pocketing all the ad revenue instead of sharing it with publishers. Isn't that a bit rude, considering these publishers are the reason Google is successful in the first place and the reason their AI has so much training material to learn from?

Who will publish the content Google uses to train its AI if publishers can no longer make a profit from putting their content on the open web? I guess that's a tomorrow problem for one of the world's largest and most profitable companies.

In the meantime, the hunk of rubbish clogging our search results is a today problem for all web users. But don't despair, I've got one big solution and a few small tricks up my sleeve.

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Say Ta-Ta to Google AI

Last year, I was so sick of Google's AI Overview mode that, in my free time, I whipped up a browser extension called "Bye, Bye Google AI" - works in Chrome or Edge for any desktop browser that supports Chrome extensions. I'm currently working on Firefox and Safari versions. This little puppy allows you to hide the AI Overview section from all of your queries and even hides other areas of the Google search results page (SERP) that you might not want, like the videos section, text ads, or "People Also Ask."

Since I spent one lazy Saturday afternoon making it, Bye, Bye Google AI has been installed by 41,000 users. I get constant shout-outs from people who are thankful they can use Google without the nonsense on top of their search. And I get criticism from non-English speakers, who were left out in the cold initially. So, I upgraded Bye, Bye Google AI to version 1.5, which now supports 19 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Mandarin (Traditional and Simplified), Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, Hindi, Thai, Greek, Italian, Polish, Russian, Dutch, Danish, and Portuguese. Plus, you can now hide the AI Mode tab, not just AI Overviews.

Another Route: Add -noai to Your Search String

You can opt out of AI overviews if you remember to add "-noai" to all of your searches. That's five characters you have to remember to type every time you make a query, so there's an added hassle.

Another Route: Add ?UDM=14 to All Searches

You can add ?UDM=14 to any Google search string to search Google's web tab, a tab devoid of AI or video or other content. You can also configure Chrome browser to send all searches to the web tab if you search from the address bar. To do so:

Navigate to in Chrome or click Settings > Search Engine > Manage search engines and site search.
Click the Add button next to Site search.
Fill in the fields like so, then click Add:
Name: Google (Web)
Shortcut: google.com
URL: {google:baseURL}/search?udm=14&q=%s
Select "Make Default" from the three-dot menu next to your new entry.

Block Google AI Overviews on Android, iOS

While Google Chrome on the desktop offers easy ways to change your address bar search or install extensions, Chrome on the go is a different story. On Chrome for Android and iOS, you can't use extensions, and you can't manually enter in your own custom search engine (you can on Firefox).

Yes, you can select a custom search engine, but it has to be an existing one on the Internet you've visited; you can't manually type in a search URL and, therefore, can't add the all-important to the query string on your own. The good news: a site called tenbluelinks.org has a solution. When you visit the site, it references an XML file that follows the OpenSearch format, telling your browser to add an engine called "Google Web" to your settings menu.

Here's how to do it on Chrome or Edge (Safari won't work).

Visit (on desktop or mobile).
Open a new tab and use it to search Google.com.
Go to your settings search menu. On Chrome, it's at Settings > Search engine, and on Edge, it's at Settings > General > Select search engine.
Select "Google Web" from the list. Your browser will now search from your address bar. It will pass these queries directly to Google – no need to revisit tenbluelinks.org.

The integration of technology, specifically AI, into Google's search results is causing disturbances in user experiences and poses potential harm to publishers. In an attempt to circumvent this issue, a browser extension named "Bye, Bye Google AI" was developed last year, which allows users to hide the AI Overview section from their queries and other unwanted sections of the Google search results page.

On the other hand, an alternative approach to blocking AI overviews is by adding the string "-noai" or "?UDM=14" to the search query when using Google. However, these methods require manual intervention and may not be convenient for all users.

Artificial Intelligence Summaries from Google are Eliminating the Web's Essence - Created a Browser Add-on to Eliminate Them