Something really irritating has happened to my google searches:
There's now a massive blank area to the right of the pane that fills with different images as I scroll down the search results. makes flash adverts on stw seem like a relaxing bath and a cup of coca by comparison.
DId I start this somehow, and how do I make it go away ?
just popping this up for the evening shift
anyone know ?
are you logged into google? i think its something that you can turn off in your preferences ... i'll go check
nope , seems that if you click the little cross in the preview, it only turns it off temporarily
agreed, its a crap setup
Click the wee magnifying glass next to any of the results and it'll pi$$ off until you click another one,
It's called "instant preview" and seems to be the subject of a lot of forum whining. Oddly enough.
Seems that freeload Plus can kill it (with the 'block element' feature), and Greasemonkey can script it out as well.
There doesn't appear to be a reliable way of permanently disabling it. You can click the [X] but then clicking search links re-enables it. Perhaps closing it, then clearing the cache and restarting the browser, might make it a bit more persistent?
Thanks, I have a feeling that changing search engine might just cure it
(edit/add) Can anyone guess what my next exciting thread's going to be ?
Yes it is very bad!
Anyone who has been using google all these years and shutting out the competition is to blame! This is the truth! 
And no... Yahoo are not the competition.
There are hardly any search engines left now except for those two.
What part did you play in the demise of freedom of choice in this case? 
I like it
I just had a look at Bing. Normally the only time I see it is the results page when it's the default search engine on customers' PCs / servers.
Can't say I'm impressed. Ugly as sin, and when I started searching for "singletrack" its first 'instant' suggestion was "single muslim."
Back in the pre-google days (wow, remember those?) I used to used dogpile. It used to aggregate the top results from all the other engines, quite clever really. Seems it's still going too (albeit unrecognisably...!).
googling (ah, I love the smell of irony in the evening) has led me to duckduckgo and wolfram alpha
Will be giving these a go for a while (except for Google shopping)
"Back in the pre-google days (wow, remember those?)"
Exactly sir! Every little sheepie who has put us on this path from which there is now NO RETURN is to blame. They all suck balls!
And No... google was not at all easier to use or the best search engine before they bought every other company that Yahoo didn't beat them to. 'They' simply chose them because the marketing executives drilled right down into their tiny little minds when they picked the cutsey childlike name.
Click the magnifying glass next to any result and it turns it off.
Let us know how long you manage to go without Google though - good luck!
Click the magnifying glass next to any result and it turns it offnot here it doesn't
... and nearly as much space has been reserved by google for the preview images as they've left me for the actual useful bit:
google page by scaredypants, on Flickr
"Let us know how long you manage to go without Google though - good luck! "
Easy. I use it about three or four times a year when I want to very specifically look for text that may be on facebook or even a few more obscure US sites of that ilk.
Apart from that it can sod right off.
If not for the sheepies I wouldn't have to touch Google. Chances are they didn't even hear of the internet before google were already walking them around it like a ferret on a string!
People who like choice have ultimately won the OS war. While the courts were busy giving Microsoft a beating, a lot of other things were going on that mattered a lot more, and now there really is no going back.
Yes... you can use other search engines still, but you will look harder for one that doesn't have yahoo or google behind it than any casual PC user ever will.
Would you be happy with two companies to buy mountain bikes from, and all the others are EXACTLY the same bikes with different decals on?
Probably not!
Firefox + Greasemonkey
Then install this: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/90222
or just search from: http://www.scroogle.org/scraper.html
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