Lucky! Some of us live places that don’t allow you to own one of these

Tape is still the cheapest option for mass amounts of storage since the actual tapes are so cheap. You just need to store enough data to offset the cost of the drive. Drive cost increases very quickly the higher you go in storage density.

Key word is “watching”. They’re more than happy to have an audience as long as they get what they want. And they do and they are.

Fret not! Lots and lots of apps are just PWAs packaged into thin wrappers so they can be distributed through an app store. Humanity gets all, or at least most, of the benefits of the web with unmatched cross-platform support, and our Grandmothers and 12 year olds still get to tap on the Spotify and Starbucks icons. Win-win!

Interesting that that is the workflow that works best for you. I’ve personally always found it a much better experience to do my searching/browsing off of the server and wget whatever I need to download. If that’s truly your situation, then you may just need to use another browser that supports JS or use a different search engine. I prefer DDG anyway, lol. Not a huge deal.

You’ve seriously been in situations where you had no access to the internet except through a terminal, and you had to do a google search? No phone or other computer that you’re remoting in from?

Even so, there are terminal-based browsers that support javascript like brow.sh or links (not lynx).

I doubt the nothing-but-terminal users comprise a significant enough portion of Google’s userbase to justify the extra costs to test and maintain non-JS functionality.

I think this isn’t a case of if Google can, but rather of why they should. Do enough people really use the modern web without JavaScript to justify spending the resources to test and maintain functionality without JS? And they probably don’t want to let the few people that don’t have JS to open support tickets or write articles about how google.com is broken. Easier to just block it on purpose than to let it decay.

It makes more sense that a government website would support it, since they can’t let even a single person fall through the cracks, and changing laws/regulations is more difficult than making a company decision.

Search suggestions require JS. Also, why would Google spend the resources supporting the 5 people that block JS when virtually all websites and users rely on JS. This is a nothingburger of a story.

Google is a lot more than just the one google.com page. And even if it were, JS adds some nice features like predective text / suggested searches.

Tracking, ads, and AI can be done without JS. They may be slightly less granular in the same way as the user experience will be slightly worse, but disabling JS won’t stop it.

I’d bet the biggest reason Google decided to do this is so that they don’t have to support a version of the site that virtually nobody uses.

Imo, the most compelling reason for non-JS versons of typically JS-driven sites is to support lower power devices. But it’s 2025 and even a 10 year old phone you found in a dumpster behind a decaying Radio Shack can run modern websites without issue.

Even the article is grasping at straws for why this might be bad. “It might make accessibility more difficult or add security issues”. One of the most valuable companies in the world, with some of the best engineers in the world, is going to have problems adding aria attributes and updating dependencies? Give me a break.

If you want to block tracking, ads, and “AI”, there are plenty of ways to do that without disabling literally all JS. If you want to construct your google search request without the rest of the stuff on google.com, use your browser’s search bar.

I’m as anti-google/tracking/etc as the next guy, and I’ve been using DDG almost exclusively for years, but I’m not going to pretend like asking companies to make HTML/CSS-only versions of their sites is a reasonable request in the modern web environment. It can be really fun and cool to build a site without JS, but there aren’t many scenarios where it’s actually beneficial.

The replies in this thread are just plain ignorant. Basically every website uses JS heavily and disabling all JS with something like noscript is just a plain bad time.

Even in your comment, every sentence is wrong. Google searches are done with GET requests, and there are plenty of reasons to force JS other than tracking, ads, and ai.

Honestly, JS is such a core part of the web, I’m surprised it took this long.

I still have never been able to see white and gold

Tell that to my therapist

diffemples

Oh, and “other AI CEO agrees, saying just imagine a world where everyone uses our AI, isn’t it wonderful?”

“Company selling AI snake oil claims that they will maybe consider possibly using AI to run their business maybe and not immediately rehire the engineers they laid off only a few months ago, definitely because of the AI and not for any other reason.”

And

“Our custom AI has revolutionized the way we do business and saved us millions! No, you can’t see how.”

Ha, ok that makes more sense. I was like “this guy is saying reasonable stuff in other comments and now they’re subtly pro-kkk?” Didn’t add up 😂

Lol, I’m genuinely confused by this. I have conflicting feelings on H1Bs and agree with the OP that it’s the oligarchs’ faults, but that doesn’t automatically make them good or bad. The oligarchs like H1Bs because it lets them exploit the working class more effectively.

Also, and this is the most confusing part, are you implying that hating the KKK is a bad thing? Or is that supposed to be more nuanced, like “killing the KKK on sight is bad, they deserve a fair trial and punishment”? Either way, kinda bad taste tbh. There are plenty of other non-universally-agreed-upon evil things you could have used instead. It’s just bad rhetoric.

No, not any circles. I said the circles I frequent, which tend to be more progressive towards immigration. I’m sure someone blames the immigrants themselves, but it’s not a widespread/both-aisles belief like the post insinuates.

I’ve seen understanding and sympathy for the immigrants trying to better their lives and being given the ugly end of capitalism. Working for less pay than your peers and being under constant thread of deportation is no way to live. And if, as a country, we’re so desperate for workers that we’re bringing in people from overseas, we better be giving them a path to permanent residence since they’re obviously beneficial to have around and they should have some skin in the game and the chance to be treated as equals rather than expendable cost-savers.

Labor is already significantly cheaper overseas than via H1B visas. There are many influences on business location besides employment costs. For example, Disney is a high-profile abuser of the H1B system, and I hopefully don’t need to explain why Disney might want to remain in the US, even if it means paying workers a little more.

I personally haven’t seen people blaming the H1B workers in any circles I frequent. It’s mostly that H1Bs are generally bad for both the American and Immigrat workers, but great for corporations that get the screw both of them over.