Simple Search browser extension gives you raw Google search results

Over the past 10 years, Google has incorporated new widgets into its search results – and now a group of journalists have created a browser extension to show you what search would look like without them. Built by The markup, Simple Search removes information boards, shopping boxes, and search ads to show only raw web search results. It’s a view from an older, simpler Google, with surprising antitrust implications.

In presenting the extension, Maddy Varner and Sam Morris describe it as a conscious return to an earlier version of Google Search, before the integration of the Knowledge Graph and the information boxes that accompany it.

“The extension lets you travel to a time when online search worked a little differently,” they write. “These days, you don’t always have to click on one of the ‘blue links’ to get information about your search. Google gives you what it thinks is important in information boxes with information from other websites.

The extension works on Google and Bing searches and is available for Firefox and Chrome browsers.

Google antitrust critics (especially Yelp) have long called for this type of unbundling of search results from Google products such as Maps or Shopping, arguing that integrating infoboxes allows Google to deprive its competitors. While the broader “research neutrality” argument has failed, narrow concerns about product integration have found significant traction with regulators, most recently at the House antitrust hearing this summer. .

As Representative David Cicilline (D-RI) said at the hearing, “Our documents show that Google has gone from a turnstile to the rest of the web to a walled garden that keeps more and more users on its Site (s.”

At the hearing, Google CEO Sundar Pichai defended the changes saying they were meant to provide a better user experience in Google search. “When I’m running the business, I’m really focused on giving users what they want,” Pichai told Cicilline. “We conduct ourselves to the highest standards.”