Ask HN: How to get rid of Gemini?
64 comments
·June 23, 2025quintes
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
projektfu
Have you tried udm=14?
lproven
Try before you buy:
EvanAnderson
This is what I do. I worry discussing it publicly will motivate them to take it way, though.
projektfu
There's a couple good searchable articles about it, maybe the cat's out of the bag.
layer8
Is this why this submission is now gone from the front page? :)
danieldk
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.
qoez
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).
Aurornis
> 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.
whitehexagon
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.
agnishom
I really like duckduckgo for their bang commands.
callc
Didn’t know about these, thanks for sharing!
alganet
The normal DuckDuckGo also has their own AI assistant.
You need to use plain HTML DuckDuckGo in order to get rid of it.
Throwthrowbob
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
We also offer https://noai.duckduckgo.com/ which is just regular DuckDuckGo with AI features turned off.
KingMob
Or you could turn it off in the settings, which is much easier: https://duckduckgo.com/settings#aifeatures
null
gus_massa
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?
notpushkin
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
As of June 2025, the CSS selector for the AI overview in Google search results is `.hdzaWe`.
quaintdev
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/
1vuio0pswjnm7
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.
gburn
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.
jasonpeacock
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.
deivid
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
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
Yes, this is what I found.
candiddevmike
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.
xenator
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.
adriand
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
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.
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!