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Comment by mft_ | Hacker News Reader

I recently dumped Google on my phone because of the awful dark pattern they'd put in with a popup trying to generate an installation of the Google search app.

While I'm usually good at avoiding such things, this one somehow worked on me and was insanly frustrating: you click the wrong button, the App Store pops up, you switch back to the web page, go back, and then (via a redirect) the same thing happens again. (Whoever implemented that deserves punishment.)

Anyway, between this and also that for many a technical topic Google search results are just so full of nonsense sites that asking the question of an LLM is actually the rational approach despite the risks of hallucinations, maybe it's time to give Kagi a go...

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Many dark patterns at work there. The popup uses misleading words: “continue” which is what you want to do, actually means continue in app and it takes you to App Store. The popup helpfully colors “continue” a nice shade of blue and the “stay on webpage” button is a less visible outline instead of a colored button. When I’m in an hurry, even though I’ve dodged the App Store redirect hundreds of times in the past, it somehow still manages to trick me. And then the whole redirect loop which is rage inducing.

Hopefully ublock origin lite can keep the popups away for a while.

> The popup uses misleading words: “continue” which is what you want to do, actually means continue in app and it takes you to App Store.

Ah yes, they do exactly the same thing with Maps.

Redirecting safari sites to apps (including app store) should be a per-domain permission that I can revoke.

You're in luck, Orion browser from the same company has this config and asks at the first redirection!

This was precisely the last straw for me as well. The dark pattern is so outrageous and abhorrent that it felt right to dump Google on principle even if Kagi were not better. That it is better is a welcome bonus.

Just as an FYI for anyone on iOS that is still tolerating this egregious dark pattern example, I successfully used Distraction Control in Safari to block this popup. Details here https://support.apple.com/en-gb/120682

Is there a way to use it to hide the "microphone" button on Google? That's what keeps redirecting me to App Store if I accidentally click it once.

I tried selecting it in the distraction picker but it seems to hide the entire page.

Not that I can see. I just tried it and get the same issue you describe.

This one, specifically, drives me crazy. The boldly colored 'Continue' does NOT, in fact, continue the results. Instead, it continues to the app store. Just awful.

I changed my default search engine on iOS from Google to DuckDuckGo for this exact reason.

It's because the "install app" option is styled to look like the "go away" option. I fell for the same trick many times; now I use Perplexity.

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