Google seems to be all-in on its “AI” search results, to the detriment of the web at large and no small amount of users. It seems to be the end result of years of diminishing quality for search results, and a search page that’s more and more crowded by ads and other junk meant to keep you from… well, what you’re actually searching for. If you want the “old” Google back, there’s an extension that might help.
“Bye Bye, Google AI” is an extension for Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers (Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, etc.) that makes me start humming a certain Don McLean song. It does exactly what you think it does, stripping out the AI Overviews panel from the top of almost all current Google searches. It’s a pretty basic CSS adjustment, and it can do a few other things too, like get rid of video results, discussion blocks, the “People Also Ask” module, and sponsored sections. Some of it works at removing the extra stuff, some of it doesn’t.
Here’s a look at a demo Google search before and after the extension is applied, in a logged-out mode:
This extension was spotted by GHacks and it’s not the first one that gets rid of Google’s intrusive AI slop. But with over 60,000 users and a 4.5-star rating, it seems to be doing very well. As always, be careful of third-party extensions (even those on the official Chrome Web Store, which are nominally scanned and approved by Google). The extension can always change with a new owner or release a sneaky update.
Or you could just switch to another search engine from a company that hasn’t essentially admitted that being evil isn’t such a bad thing after all. Alternately, you could go all-in on AI in search and in the browser.