EDIIT :
Apparently, there is an issue with the warning request to disable the ad blocker
I use Fennec F-Droid and Cromite, and I don’t see this issue.
to get around the adblocker warning, use this link.
Unfortunately the internet still with enshittify with a speed we cannot yet imagine
…Installs?
Do they know there’s a website?
There are too many damn apps already imo, but apparently some people like having as many as possible
DuckDuckGo said U.S. app installs went up 18.1% week-over-week on average during the May 20 to May 25 period, compared to May 13 to May 18. The company said that growth was sustained for six consecutive days and peaked at 30.5% on May 25. On iOS, the rate of install is even higher, with week-over-week growth hitting a 33% average, peaking at 69.9%.
Well, in this case it helps to override my default search engine on my phone.
From Chrome to DDG browser likely. Google also have a website but people still install Chrome for it, the lastest AI thing might be the final straw for people to finally looking for the alternative
I’m reading this within two hours of setting up and playing around with my own local SearXNG instance. I’m glad people are utilizing a more privacy respecting platform, but too bad it’s more about “God! Fuck this AI shit, get it out of my face!” more-so than people taking control of their own privacy.
Don’t get me wrong though, “God! Fuck this AI shit, get it out of my face!” is the appropriate response.
Searxng is cool but I find myself needing to constantly tweak the container, Google keeps blocking access
I hope this takes off so DDG improves their search engine. I’ve tried to switch, but 2/3 of the time the results are off target and I end up back at Google anyway.
More people will probably switch when they figure out they don’t need to install anything and can change their default search engine on their current browser.
More people will probably switch when they figure out they don’t need to install anything and can change their default search engine on their current browser.
FTFY
Thank you for this! I changed to duckduckgo just now and it took 5 seconds. Now to see if it works as well as Google.
Happy to help - feel free to spread the word!
You can also set up the ai-free search, noai.duckduckgo.com, as a custom search engine.
Whoa, that’s great news. Thanks for that!
that is on level that i meanwhile believe 90% of people can’t handle or even understand
Thats depressing. % stats like this always oversell it. There are probably not many people installing duckduckgo so a 30% increase is a small handful of users. I’d expect like 500% if there was actual pushback.
Unfortunatly there will not be an actual pushback, because most people will always prefer convinience above almost anything else.
Even facts.
I know so many people who will use ChatGPT fully knowing it might be wrong. They dont care.
Scary, right?
50 million+ installs on Android, so it’s not a tiny number.
Are people already getting these AI-only, blue-link-less Google results? Mine are still normal.
LibeWolf is, once again, my response.
LibreWolf is really great and something I use myself, but AFAIK it is a browser, not a search engine.
If you use the Voyager app, you can turn on “Always use reader mode” in the settings. It strips away the JavaScript and you won’t see those annoying messages.
It works it 95% of the articles, but there are a few that still have issues.
Thank you for this. 🩷
Edit: not that Apple is a huge turd and it seems you must use safari for this work work on iOS
I need to get a Linux phone
Editx2:
Incredible. I’m dine with the internet today.
In case people don’t want to, or can’t access, the article. Apologies for any formatting issues, I’m on my mobile.
Last week, after Google announced its huge overhaul to Search, I overheard a woman on the phone saying she was switching to DuckDuckGo because you can “opt out of using AI.”
“Google just isn’t Google anymore,” she said. It seems that others had the same idea.
At I/O, Google’s annual developer conference, the company said its traditional list of blue links is being replaced by an AI agent that answers queries, executes tasks, and runs background monitoring agents.
The backlash has been sharp.
Some have argued it will kill the open web, while others shared concerns that AI overviews surface inaccurate responses and take away control from users who might not want to use AI. It also overcomplicates simple things. Just try to Google the word “disregard.”
In response to Google’s changes, many have begun defecting to DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused alternative that has never been able to break past Google’s dominance, accounting for only around 2% of the U.S. search market.
During Google’s search antitrust trial in 2023, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg testified that Google’s exclusive default search contracts harmed its ability to pitch itself as the default on other browsers.
“Google is force-feeding AI with no way to opt out,” Weinberg said Tuesday in a statement, referring to Google’s Search overhaul. “As a result, their results are getting worse, not better. We want to be the place that puts users in charge and allows them to decide how much or how little AI they want.”
Now it seems that DuckDuckGo is beginning to benefit as consumers flee AI.
DuckDuckGo said U.S. app installs went up 18.1% week-over-week on average during the May 20 to May 25 period, compared to May 13 to May 18. The company said that growth was sustained for six consecutive days and peaked at 30.5% on May 25. On iOS, the rate of install is even higher, with week-over-week growth hitting a 33% average, peaking at 69.9%.
The search engine also said visits to its AI-free search page, noai.duckduckgo.com, averaged 22.7% WoW growth, peaking at 27.7% on May 24. The page turns off every AI feature, like AI-assisted answers and AI-generated images, by default.
The company said the trend is stronger in the U.S., and that DuckDuckGo continued to gain users over the Memorial Day weekend, when it usually sees a dip in traffic.
DuckDuckGo offers its own AI product called Duck.ai. It’s free and doesn’t require users to make an account but provides access to models, including Anthropic’s Claude 4.5 Haiku, Meta’s Llama 4 Scout, Mistral’s Small 3 24B, and OpenAI’s GPT-5 mini. All chats are private because DuckDuckGo strips the user’s IP address before requests reach model providers, deletes conversations within 30 days, and prevents chats from being used for training.
“Not only do we respect user choice, but also user privacy,” Weinberg said. “Everything you do in DuckDuckGo is private; we don’t collect search histories or chats and nothing is used for AI training.”
DuckDuckGo also offers Search Assist, which is similar to Google’s AI overviews, and an AI Image Filter that filters out AI-created images from search results.
Kamyl Bazbaz, DuckDuckGo’s chief communications and policy officer, said both of those AI features are among the company’s most popular, despite their differing ethos.
“People just want a choice,” Bazbaz said.
TechCrunch has reached out to Google for comment.
I like Duckduckgo been using it a while, they have a tor based search page as well which is another thing I like.
Wouldn’t say they are anti-ai but at least you get the option to turn it off.
Wouldn’t say they are anti-ai but at least you get the option to turn it off.
Best you can hope for these days, really.
The phone app I use to turn my lights on and off is now calling itself an “AI life assistant” and has an AI prompt box front and center that I can’t get rid of. But at least I can ignore that and still use the real function. Which, to be clear, is a fucking light switch. I use this app exclusively for turning a single light on or off. It does not need a LLM ‘assistant’ built in. But that’s just what you get these days – it’s shoved into everything.
Apparently I’m the Luddite here for sticking with the light switch on the wall that has always just worked. ;p
I exaggerate slightly, I guess. It turns the light on and off and also changes colors.
It’s definitely possible to do color changing LED lighting without an app. Half of my room is lit that way, and I love it. But it’s more expensive and more complicated to install, so when I went for a second light, I just went with the app-controlled bullshit.
I didn’t even know they had an app. Why would I need a separate app for a search engine?
It’s a browser.
Oh I didn’t know they had a browser. Interesting.
It’s good on mobile, but the desktop seems useless because I have Firefox/Waterfox
Not anymore, it’s a slopp-machine.
I think they’re talking about DDG, not google
Disable my AD blocker… Na I’d rather not read the article
With ublock it opens normally. Also by disabling javascript, which is kinda ironic
Luckily 10 minutes after you posted that, another commenter posted the full article in plain text, in the comments here.
That’s great but…are people really downloading an app to search? Or are they talking about DDG browser?
The amount of absolutely undue shit ddg got for innovating on par with literally every other search engine is ridiculous.
Kagi introduced the same AI search and got exactly zero shit.
I’ve seen Kagi get plenty of shit online for their AI features.
Assuming this is about duck.ai, I didn’t know they got shit for it. People I’ve talked to generally enjoy having that option available. It’s free and about as private as you can get with the current LLM chatbots, unless you self host one yourself.
At least until Confer gets off the ground. Once that happens, I’m hoping DDG switches to a similar model
I don’t keep up with the drama. I use Kagi and disabled the AI. Simple as that. Does DDG make it easy to disable?
Yes a simple one time settings toggle
or https://noai.duckduckgo.com/
the search box on that page can be added to the browser’s search engine choices… in firefox, right click it and ‘add search engine’
I consider the people paying to use Kagi, which simply uses Bing indexers included in its search results because there is no way in hell any company can have the infrastructure/resources/money to index the entire internet for the last 30 years other than Google and Microsoft, in the same boat of people who purchased NFT tokens of an image.
I don’t know man, I’m just paying for a service that works better than the mainstream free alternatives.
…I really should have sold my NFTs earlier, though.
Does Bing even have an API anymore? I thought they mainly use Brave and Yandex now and some other smaller ones
They don’t track you, but you just need to be logged in to make your searches and just trust them not to collect data
I don’t know what to tell you other than they offer the best search results and AI in the game
That’s a bit of a stretch?
People who pay for Kagi likely tried the trial and found the results to be far enough better than google/microslop that they are willing to pay for the ongoing service. Or they want to support a business model that isn’t based around the advertising industry, so that someday Kagi can realistically compete with the incumbents. I don’t need to search for things often enough to justify the cost, but I know people who use it for work and consider it to be worth the cost.
Meanwhile people who bought NFTs thought that they could sell a copy of a digital image for lots of money.
My NFTs will be worth something one day! /S
