Google has begun requiring users of its search engine to turn on JavaScript, a programming language that makes web pages interactive.
The company said it protects against malicious activity such as bots and spam, and improves the overall user experience.
“I guess this is the inevitable end of the era of the web as a collection of hyperlinked documents and the beginning of the web as an application delivery protocol," a user wrote on the social site Hacker News, which covers computer science and entrepreneurship.
One person on Reddit wrote they began seeing it with the last FireFox update. Another described using google.com, blocking JavaScript to filter out Sponsored Ads.
“I've been using uBlock on top of NoScript, but NS filters out all the garbage results (sponsored results?) without it,” the person wrote. “Toggling off JavaScript through uBlock gives me the same ‘Turn on JavaScript to keep searching’ result as well.”
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Only “a tiny fraction” of Google searches are done by people who disable JavaScript, a Google spokesperson wrote in an email to MediaPost on Friday.
Without JavaScript enabled, the search experience is degraded, and the results page may not render properly.
For example, with JavaScript disabled, many features in Google Flight are broken, as well as those relying on immediate information like News, Sport, Weather and Stocks.
“The modern web largely requires JavaScript to be enabled to function properly,” a Google spokesperson wrote. “With this update, we’re bringing Search to parity with most major platforms across the web, which require JavaScript.”
JavaScript is also prone to security vulnerabilities, TechCrunch points out.
In its 2024 annual security survey, tech company Datadog estimated 70% of JavaScript services were vulnerable to one or more “critical” or “high-severity” vulnerabilities introduced by a third-party software library.
Google processes an estimated 8.5 billion searches daily. It’s safe to say that most people who search on Google use JavaScript.