Network-Layer Trick Forces Google Web Results, Blocking AI Overviews Before They Load
Most Chrome extensions that remove Google's AI Overviews work by hiding the panel after it renders using DOM manipulation, a method prone to flickering and breaking whenever Google updates its markup. A developer argues a more reliable approach is to intercept search requests at the network layer using Chrome's declarativeNetRequest API. By appending the query parameter udm=14 to every Google search request, the browser is directed to Google's classic Web results view, meaning the AI Overview is never generated or sent to the page. This rule-based redirect requires no content script to race against the render, and works regardless of the user's language settings since udm is a server-side parameter. The author notes that an additional experiment with Google's AI Mode revealed that the DOM was never the appropriate layer for this kind of suppression in the first place.
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