Ask HN: How to get rid of Gemini?

51•jacquesm•5h ago

After the google+ fiasco I thought Google had learned their lesson about ramming new products down people's throats whether they like them or not, but with Gemini it seems like this lesson has been forgotten.

I usually am a pretty happy user of Google's products but they have really ruined the experience for me (and on top of that they are charging extra for the privilege of ruining the experience). Is there a way to completely and permanently get rid of Gemini in such a way that my normal workflow isn't continuously interrupted by Google pushing their bug-ridden and unnecessary AI contraption? If not, I will probably have to get rid of Google entirely, which will be a massive piece of work but I'm really done with having my train of thought interrupted 30 or more times per day by popups or 'helpful' suggestions that only serve to illustrate how incredibly immature the AI field still is.

What we have done so far:

- disabled AI suggestions where ever such options were given - removed the App components to the point that normal device functionality is not impeded - searched online to see if there is still more that we can do

Ironically just typing this query into google still gives me an AI overview (despite these being disabled) which contains a whole raft of nonsense advise.

If it takes a browser (Firefox) extension to do the job I'm game. I only want to see the word 'Gemini' when it relates to Alan Parsons records or to Zodiac signs.

Any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Comments

incomingpain•4h ago

>After the google+ fiasco I thought Google had learned their lesson about ramming new products down people's throats whether they like them or not, but with Gemini it seems like this lesson has been forgotten.

I had to explicitly enable it multiple times now. I had to enable it to get it on home dot. Then again to get access to the widget.

>I usually am a pretty happy user of Google's products but they have really ruined the experience for me (and on top of that they are charging extra for the privilege of ruining the experience). Is there a way to completely and permanently get rid of Gemini in such a way that my normal workflow isn't continuously interrupted by Google pushing their bug-ridden and unnecessary AI contraption?

Is it really forcing itself on your this much? Like i only interact with it when i want to.

>Any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Buy an iphone?

JohnFen•4h ago

> Is it really forcing itself on your this much?

For my tastes, an emphatic "yes". I mean, it's an annoyance and not disastrous, but sheesh. It's a huge annoyance. Not just Google. Microsoft is arguably even worse.

incomingpain•4h ago

>For my tastes, an emphatic "yes". I mean, it's an annoyance and not disastrous, but sheesh. It's a huge annoyance. Not just Google. Microsoft is arguably even worse.

Do you have a pixel?

Because from my samsung point of view, it's not forcing itself on me at all.

kevingadd•3h ago

The Samsung experience is a lot better in this regard right now, yes. I haven't had Gemini forced on me on my phone, just in Google apps and websites.

JohnFen•3h ago

I was actually talking about desktop and SaaS, not smartphone.

glitchc•3h ago

The AI overview is the first result from a Google search in North America. It's not exactly Gemini but definitely sourced from Gemini. And this happens on browsers and machines where I'm not logged into my Google account.

incomingpain•2h ago

If you use google search from a browser to get this. Then it's not being forced on you. Stop using it.

_wli•4h ago

just VPN or route Google traffic to unsupported countries and Gemini will disappear.

gus_massa•3h ago

Yesterday Bluestein posted this: "Google is killing the web with AI Overviews – I made an extension to block them (tomshardware.com)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44346440 (5 points | 1 day ago | 0 comments)

Is this what you are looking for?

danieldk•3h ago

Just start using different, sometimes paid products? Kagi for search (yes, it has assistant, but you don't have to use it). Fastmail or Proton for mail. iPhone or GrapheneOS for phones, etc.

xmprt•3h ago

"Just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there

genidoi•3h ago

It often does[0].

[0] https://vfoley.xyz/just/

notpushkin•3h ago

Set up uBlock Origin (maybe Lite will do, too). Right click → Block element... → select whatever you don’t want to see again (and maybe tweak the CSS selector).

apazzolini•3h ago

As of June 2025, the CSS selector for the AI overview in Google search results is `.hdzaWe`.

arrosenberg•3h ago

Add the query parameter udm=14 to get AI free search results from Google. I agree with the other poster that you should consider paying for something like Kagi*, since Google will only continue to enshitten the internet with this stuff.

edoceo•3h ago

How did you even discover that?

kristopolous•3h ago

It's been a known flag for years.

recursive•3h ago

Known to who? How did they learn it?

lproven•3h ago

Widely known.

https://tedium.co/2024/05/17/google-web-search-make-default/

<- note the date.

easton•3h ago

It's the same as going to the "more" tab on the results page, then selecting "Web" which only gives you the traditional 10 blue links results.

falcor84•3h ago

"Kago" should probably be "Kagi", unless - is it Italian and "kago" is the proper singular form?

arrosenberg•3h ago

Nope, I just fat-fingered it :)

PartiallyTyped•3h ago

Kagi*

djbeadle•3h ago

https://tenbluelinks.org helps makes this easy

candiddevmike•3h ago

If this is for Google Workspace, AFAIK you had to open a ticket that seemingly made you justify not wanting it enabled for your organization.

adriand•3h ago

Do they reduce or remove the Gemini-justified price increase if you do this? I adore LLMs for coding but I find them so annoying and useless in the context of the Google workspace.

Just for fun today, I tried "Summarize this email" for a spam email I got, and the summary was a straight-faced, "This is an offer where YOUR_ORGANIZATION can improve its SEO results for blah blah blah", when of course, the correct summary is, "This is spam, delete it".

nerdsniper•3h ago

The utility is actually pretty high if you give a gemini chat all the emails and transcripts for a project. Can query it to make meeting notes, pull out action items, get some initial feedback on ideas you think up (someone else may ah e already mentioned something that makes your idea stupid, and instead of being told “i already said ____” in the next meeting, Gemini can help point out flaws.

Obviously all the usual caveats about LLMs and the standard workarounds (manual review). But Gemini fills the role of “personal secretary” and “new intern” auite decently.

xenator•3h ago

Google Workspace Gemini integration is a joke. We forced to switch to Gemini-included tier plan without ability to opt-out to find that is not available for part of our team. Because of regional restrictions.

For two months I was trying to find another solution, because some of our friends pay much less for Workspace. And fortunately I found how to go through dark patterns in the interface to downgrade from this cancer.

Found out that the difference is only some space and Gemini. So we paid hundreds of dollars for service that is not possible to legally use for all of our team (we are globally distributed).

Needless to say that statistics show that less than 10% of our team tried Gemini.

qoez•3h ago

I just use duckduckgo. Silly name but the results are no different (I switched not because of ai overview but because google said it had 'no results' for something that obviously did and I was fed up).

agnishom•3h ago

I really like duckduckgo for their bang commands.

callc•3h ago

Didn’t know about these, thanks for sharing!

alganet•3h ago

The normal DuckDuckGo also has their own AI assistant.

You need to use plain HTML DuckDuckGo in order to get rid of it.

https://html.duckduckgo.com/html

Throwthrowbob•3h ago

If you don't use Private Browsing (or the equivalent) or otherwise clear your browsing cache, DuckDuckGo's AI assistant can be disabled by:

- clicking the little gear to the right of the search types (near "Assist" and "Duck.ai")

- Click on "Manage" for AI Features

- Setting "Duck.ai" to Off

- Setting "Assist" to Never

To the right of the features above, I saw one can save their settings with a password, to the "cloud". This seems to be that you can enter this password when using DuckDuckGo elsewhere for your settings to be set again (or in Private sessions, though you'd have to re-enter the password on a new session).

yegg•3h ago

We also offer https://noai.duckduckgo.com/ which is just regular DuckDuckGo with AI features turned off.

jacquesm•2h ago

I have to pay you my respect. I've been watching DDG pretty much since day #1 and against all odds you've managed to both stay the course (which pretty much everybody claimed you would not) and steadily improve on it. It's one of the most impressive projects in this space, which many have tried and eventually gave up on (or compromised their ethics). Thank you.

alganet•1h ago

That is very cool, thanks!

mdaniel•30m ago

I had no idea about this subdomain. Had you not shown up to this thread, how would a DDG user have known about this?

KingMob•3h ago

Or you could turn it off in the settings, which is much easier: https://duckduckgo.com/settings#aifeatures

whitehexagon•2h ago

I use DDG too, but that has also recently started inserting AI spam as the first result. I keep switching if off, but soon reappears. I dont care if it useful or not, but on principle I wont buy or use any service with 'AI', I find it almost as offensive as all the advertising shoved down our throats.

Aurornis•56m ago

> Silly name but the results are no different

DDG is my default, but I’ll be the first to admit that the results are not as good. I have a bookmark to quickly switch to Google when I need something specific and DDG isn’t cutting it.

DDG also seems to have adopted the YouTube search strategy where once you scroll past the first several dozen results you start getting non-specific results that aren’t entirely related to your query.

raffael_de•3h ago

I'm not sure how to put it but given the rather impressive background that you provide on your hn profile (not to mention the first time I behold a six digit karma here) I'd assume that you'd be quite able to identify and implement a number of rather simple and obvious solutions to your issue.

Having said that, Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview is by far the most useful model available with Kagi Pro - at least as far as my experience goes.

nerdsniper•3h ago

Only one other user has more HN karma than OP. https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

jacquesm•2h ago

If there was a 'simple and obvious' solution to this I'm pretty sure I would have found it. There are no settings in my Google profile that will disable this categorically across all Google products (Mail, Drive, Search, Chat, probably others), and the ones that are there seem to be happily ignored. I don't want more of this shit I want less of it, in fact I want none of it and it is driving me nuts that Google would force this on people, charge them for it and annoy them without ever so much as a 'by your leave'. I was reasonably happy with G-Suite (or whatever they call it today) but all of this crap opens us up to security risks, potential lawsuits and breaks our workflow which we have established over many years. This is not a case of 'random user types in query into Google and is annoyed' but a case of 'whole company is continuously distracted by new and to us utterly useless (and even detrimental) google crap'. Even fixes at the organizational level did not get rid of it and it is getting worse just about every day. It now even offers to mess in conversations and in written text (that we get paid for to write).

raffael_de•1h ago

You certainly have my sympathy. It's just that there are alternatives to Google and ways to block traffic and filter web-site content. That Google is a terrible company is also not exactly news. But hey, maybe you just had to vent - sure, why not. We're all human.

xyst•3h ago

Kagi

deivid•3h ago

You can add '-ai' to your google search to disable the AI summaries.

The rest seems here to stay. I've gotten popups offering me to summarize 1-line emails on Gmail..

graypegg•3h ago

That's really odd. That should just remove results that match the "ai" keyword according to google's search syntax. Messing around with it, it looks like google just doesn't provide summaries for queries using search operators.

So you could actually add a meaningless negative keyword and be good to go, like "-asdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdf". Should get nearly the same results without removing results that might happen to contain the letters "ai".

extra88•2h ago

Yes, this is what I found.

projektfu•3h ago

Have you tried udm=14?

https://www.google.com/search?q=quit+ai&udm=14

lproven•3h ago

Try before you buy:

https://udm14.com/

EvanAnderson•3h ago

This is what I do. I worry discussing it publicly will motivate them to take it way, though.

projektfu•3h ago

There's a couple good searchable articles about it, maybe the cat's out of the bag.

layer8•3h ago

Is this why this submission is now gone from the front page? :)

nickpsecurity•3h ago

For search, consider bypassing their nain oage by using Google's paid, search API or SerpStack API with a custom, HTML view. SerpStack was so easy to setup that I had a basic, search client working in Python very quickly. Maybe first afternoon but I don't recall for sure.

quaintdev•3h ago

I switched to Ecosia long back when AI answers were getting in the way of search. It became apparent that Google wanted me to spend as much time as possible on their search page instead of websites from the results. I wrote about it extensively here https://rohanrd.xyz/posts/goodbye-google.-hello-ecosia/

half0wl•3h ago

I'm curious - why?

I personally find the search summaries helpful more often than not, and it works nicely in products like Google Sheet.

There is an extension posted here a few days ago that you could try [0], but I think that's only for search summary.

[0] https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/block-google-ai-overview...

josefritzishere•1h ago

I reject the entire premise of AI. Having a non-sentient algorith with no understanding of objective reality read or edit for me is counter productive. What it read, I did not read. What it researched, I did not research. What it edited, I did not edit. If we do nothing, we learn nothing and accomplish nothing.

If we go too long without doing things we lose the ability to do them. It degrades our skills, and cognition. From this perspective AI is antithetical to life, and in fact harms life.

I can read my own damn emails thank you very much.

nottorp•3h ago

Hmm is this an US thing? I don't see "AI" in my personal google account or in a work google workspace.

Google search, I haven't used in ages. Duckduckgo as others have said.

Funny enough, I do use Gemini. On the chatbot page. Explicitly.

jasonpeacock•3h ago

It's time to move away from Google. They have not learned any lessons, users are the product and they will continue to monetize your attention.

The only winning move is not to play.

gburn•3h ago

I joked to a colleague that I’d pay google workspace another $10 a month just to remove the Gemini features. We are actively looking for a workspace alternative.

We tested out proton’s ‘business suite’, and it just doesn’t come close. Proton Pass is nice, but the ‘drive’ feature doesn’t have anything remotely close to what the Google Drive / Docs / Sheets / Slides ecosystem has. It also seems relatively new, so we’ll revisit it in a few months hopefully.

We also tested out Microsoft teams, and no, just no.

It’s just really convenient to onboard employees and the browser management with chrome is ultimately the deciding factor, as well as not having to worry about email deliverability.

I feel like there is a somewhat big market for someone who wants to take on the Google workspace / MS teams products. For the most part, I feel like this wouldn’t be difficult to build besides the email deliverability part being most crucial. Along with forking chromium or Firefox and reimplementing the browser management system, which also can maybe be done with an extension.

josefritzishere•2h ago

There is a new horrible Gemini feature used in Google Drive called "Catch Me Up" which clutters the UI with nonsense. There appears to be no way to disable this particular garbage.

1vuio0pswjnm7•1h ago

Commandline search still works. No Javascript, no Gemini, no prefixed URLs.

When I try adding udm=14 I get a 302. I send no cookies, I never search while "logged in". YMMV.

quintes•26m ago

I have gmail and don’t use Gemini in it, it appears to be out of the way enough.

I have a Google workspace as well and Gemini was recently included. I don’t really see it bugging me to much. In the Gemini console (Gemini.google.com??) it works quite nice and I actually find I use it more than I’d have thought, positively

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