"User" here is most likely people being forced to see the Gemini output on Google Search.

Is there any easy and effective way to permanently disable that? (Without having to be logged in)

I've found it at least 10X more distracting than useful.

EDIT: There are some browser extensions, or simply change your search URL to include udm=14 as a query parameter: https://www.google.com/search?udm=14&q=%s

You are saying you find google search useful or you mean you mean the gemini is a distraction from a use case like measuring google results?

I find Google search useful. I find the AI generated snippets they inject into the top of the page a distraction. Roughly 9/10 times the information is generic, unhelpful, or plain wrong.

I stopped finding their search competitive around 2015 but kept checking with gradually less frequency, so I can't really comment on whether anything new has added or hurt their results.

Some of their semantic web based info results seemed good and would have benefited by more complex algorithms to figure out when to show it.. But I kind of got the sense that they went into the Amazon territory where no one was authorized to sort anything out any more to get out of some kind of local optimums.

Are you using something better? (Are you a Kagi customer?)

I originally moved to duckduckgo to use their !g/!b/!.. for quick search comparisons when I was very much a power user of search, but these days ddg's first results or results after adding a qualifying word are usually adequate for my usage and my power search skills are in decline.

Interesting I've found it pretty helpful for my searches. Maybe I search for more simple things :-)

Not too surprising. The Gemini API free tier is quite generous:

https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/rate-limits

They train on your data. Even when you use the api. You have to both have a GCP account, be using the right model name and the api. “Preview” no “experimental”. This is so convoluted and hidden that there’s an argument to be made that that’s by design.

Every org is probably training on users data.

But for now, I'd say their latest model is quite good and they are offering it for free.

So I can digest it.

both OpenAI and Anthropic promise they don't train on user data when opted out and submitted cuts the API. You don't have to believe them, but that's their claim, anyway.

Opting people into their sludge generates high engagement numbers. Or is it enragement?

I thought the headline was referring to lawyers using Gemini for antitrust case help