Just published a blog post on this topic. We've been fortunate at SerpApi to avoid too many negative effects of this, but I think other web scraping companies were hit harder.

https://serpapi.com/blog/google-now-requires-javascript/

Just wrote a blog post covering this topic:

https://serpapi.com/blog/google-now-requires-javascript/

Generally works for me with https://www.google.com/search?gbv=1&q=test with JS blocked at domain-level by uBlock Origin.

With the caveat that this used to 100% work, but since a couple months, it indeed occasionally redirects to the “Turn on JavaScript to keep searching” page you mention, https://www.google.com/httpservice/retry/enablejs . I'd say the refusal happens 1 / 20 searches. Said differently, I’d prefix your “refusing” with a “sometimes”.

I haven’t investigated the reason for this sometimes-ness. Would love to find an answer here, or ideas/leads (aside switching to another search engine, yes I do know about them, but sometimes Google remains better). Or maybe the sometimes-ness was just A/B testing, and the full switch is happening and this is now a thing of the past.

EDIT you must have posted precisely at the moment of the end of the A/B test: I did several non-JS searches today at $job, and to confirm what I was writing here I did a test one, successfully. But 30min later, I confirm your observation: 100% blocked.

Google is now forcing my to go elsewhere and I pay for gsuite. I may as well move it all over to Proton.

I use noscript and refuse to turn on JavaScript for anything but actual Web Applications. I do not turn it on for general browsing of content to be read or search because the the UX abuse that JavaScript enables.

The majority of exploits in the wild are delivered via drive by JavaScript.

That said I'm all for honest Advertising if the UX is not shit.

In fact I think there should be an HTML5 <ad></ad> tag implmented in the browsers sandbox that supports IAB VAST specs so none the that "VAST MACRO" garbage would need to done via huge JavaScript payloads.

I think that lamenting the end of an era because Google doesn’t offer hyperlinked docs is like lamenting the end of fine dining because Olive Garden doesn’t offer cloth serviettes.

We’re looking in the wrong place if we want an ad company to be the champion of anything but revenue optimization.

I got it to work again with a user agent from Links: `Links (2.29; Linux 6.11.0-13-generic x86_64; GNU C 13.2; text)`.

   It occurs to me this might be of interest to readers in this
   thread.

   A couple years ago I put together a list of sites that render
   well using Lynx and EWW.  Since both browsers don't support
   JavaScript out of the box, maybe this is interesting to people
   here?

   https://ohmeadhbh.github.io/bobcat/

   I noticed the Greycoder site has several sites I should probably
   add.  But if you have a link you think should be included,
   please submit a PR on GitHub.  While I'm not horribly sensitive
   to Github's weirdness after being purchased by Microsoft, I am
   sensitive to people who are sensitive to it.  So if you don't
   want to go onto GitHub to submit a PR, you can find my email
   address at https://github.com/ohmeadhbh, just send me an email.

I've filed this issue in their Google Search Community: https://support.google.com/websearch/thread/318978583

You can also click the wrench icon in the Google SERP and choose Send feedback.

In the meantime, use another search engine, such as Brave Search, DDG or Searx.

Good time to get off google then!

Highly recommend Kagi Search as an alternative. The results are generally better than Google's anyways, and don't require JavaScript. It is a paid service, but at this point having reliable/privacy-respecting search is worth it.

Not affiliated with Kagi btw.

Somewhat apropos... this isn't the first time people have been curious about which websites work with JS turned off:

From five years ago: https://dev.to/ziizium/famous-websites-with-javascript-disab...

And eight years ago: https://www.jakobstoeck.de/2017/websites-which-work-great-wi...

It does seem like JavaScript is required on more sites as time moves forward.

I guess google is fed up with freeloader piggy backing. Requiring JS is going to break a bunch of LLM crawlers immediately

I think google did this to force AI on us. Does not matter to me, I left google a year or 2 ago.

Makes me wonder about Google and AI, with my tin-foil hat on, I cannot help but think Google/AI searches your cache and cookies looking for info.

What's FF esr 128?

EDIT: Figured it out - https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1ca4ii3/what_is_fi... - it's "Firefox Extended Support Release" - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-esr-release-cyc...

Is anyone collecting links to interesting sites that work without javascript? This could slowly be turned into a simple search engine that returns only results compatible with Dillo and other small browsers.

Are there any alternatives? On the browser that I use, with javascript disabled,

Ask.com: Does not work; does nothing at all.

Ecosia: Blocks me indirectly by cloudflare.

Startpage: Blocks me explicitly, saying "Your connection has been suspended"

Pretty proud of the fact that Kagi not only works without Javascript, but it looks and behaves almost the same. Javascript is used to enhance the UX not create it. It is like 'lite' mode is always on.

This is just outrageous, I'm off to DuckDuckGo then.

Same on Dillo, reloading makes the JS wall go away for now, but probably won't last.

Edit: Reloading doesn't work anymore for me. Unless the sca_esv=xxxxxxxxx param is present it will redirect to the JS wall.

Maybe try changing the user agent? I can use Google on my Kindle's web browser and that can barely handle Javascript (though the Kindle does do limited execution)

SERP systems are no longer working because of this. Lynx seems to be a solution here.

It is not just Firefox esr 128. I can reproduce this with other UA strings. It has been intermittent for me so far. Sometimes I get /hhtpservice/retry/enablejs? and sometimes I get results as usual. I do all searching from the command line. No Javascript.

Some HN commenters suggest DDG or paid search. Funnily enough, DDG is returning a CAPTCHA at the moment.

Fortunately I have many other free www search engine options that are working fine.

In addition there are countless website search engines that all continue to work. No Javascript required.

Disappointing. DuckDuckGo seems to still work w/o JS enabled. But Bing also fails to do anything w/o JS. HN comments still seem to work, thankfully.

Stop using Google. Google has literally nothing but SEO spam and malware. Use DuckDuckGo or Kagi.