This Weekend’s Score: Technology 1, Kevin 0

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.

So here’s a weird thing. When I do a Google image search, I get a screen that looks like this:

What’s weird is that this isn’t what a Google image search looks like. It looks like this:

What’s even weirder is that Google switched to this new look nearly a year ago. The reason I didn’t know about it until recently is because nothing ever changed on my browser. It just kept returning images the same old way.

Very strange. This all came to my attention because a few days ago Google stopped giving me more than one page of image results. When I click on the second page I just get an error message. So I checked around and eventually discovered that I was stuck on an old version of image search for some reason — at least, I was stuck there on Opera, which is my normal browser. But when I cranked up an image search in either Firefox or IE, I got the new version. At the bottom of this new version, I learned, there’s a link called “Switch to basic version,” which is apparently what the old results page is now called. But at the bottom of the basic version, there’s no link called “Switch to new version.” So I’m stuck with a single page of results from the old version and no way to switch to the new version.

And even weirder: after playing around a bit, I discovered that if I left click normally on the second page of image results, I get the error I mentioned above. But if I right click and then click “Open,” the second results page comes up fine. So there’s some kind of difference now between normal left clicking vs. right clicking and using the context menu. Isn’t technology wonderful?

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate