How I Cut My Google Search Dependence in Half
February 9, 2026 How I Cut My Google Search Dependence in Half TL;DR: I built Hister, a self-hosted web history search tool that indexes visited pages locally. In just 1.5 months, I reduced my reliance on Google Search by 50%. The Problem: Online Search Isn’t What It Used to Be Like many developers and knowledge workers, I found myself constantly reaching for Google Search throughout my workday. It had become such an ingrained habit that I barely noticed how often I was context-switching away from my actual work to perform searches. But over time, something had changed about the experience. The search results that once felt reliable and helpful were increasingly problematic in several ways. Too Many Advertisements What used to be a clean list of relevant links now requires scrolling…
