Lucky removes ads and tracking from Google Search – Knowligent
Lucky removes ads and tracking from Google Search

Lucky removes ads and tracking from Google Search

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Google Search has been steadily deteriorating over the past few years. The number of bad sponsored results, AI-generated junk, and misleading low-quality web pages is increasing, and it’s becoming harder and harder to find useful things on the web. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way.

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If you’re yearning for the Google of old, when a search results page returned 10 links and nothing more, then you need to check out Lucky. This Safari extension was created by Zhenyi Tan, the developer of Vinegar, a Safari extension that forces YouTube to run in an HTML5 player. Just as Vinegar improved my YouTube experience, Lucky has made a huge difference in my Google Search experience. Lucky is available for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, but I use it most on my iPhone since there are plenty of other ways to block ads and tracking on the Mac.

This doesn’t change the default search engine, but it’s necessary because Lucky is grabbing results from Google and displaying them on Yahoo. Tan has explained this extensively on his blog, but the gist is that this workaround will allow you to use other Google sites (like Flights, Hotels, etc.) without a hitch. It will also prevent Lucky from accessing data on Google.com, which helps prevent tracking.

Once installed, you’ll use Safari’s address bar to search as you normally would. However, when Google appears, you’ll see 10 search results per page. There’s no infinite scrolling going on here. When you reach the bottom of the page, you can tap a button to view the next 10 results. These results are displayed without any sponsored posts, images, videos, or shopping links in between. It’s not flashy, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing: now you can focus on the results, click what you want, and leave the page.