931
DuckDuckGo installs are up 30% as users reject being ‘force-fed’ Google’s AI Search
(techcrunch.com)
this post was submitted on 27 May 2026
931 points (98.9% liked)
Technology
84940 readers
3838 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I never bother to disable AI in duckduckgo so I just use a search engine that doesn't have it out of the box
It's not even about disabling it, DDG keeps turning it back on.. I live in a constant battle.
are you sure it's not resetting because of your privacy settings
Clearing cookies will reset it because there is no way of ddg to know.
Which is crazy as they also made a big deal about how many users don't want an AI result and how they are credibly the choice for those people.
I get offering the feature, but insisting upon it while also bragging about how they cater to the majority of respondents that didn't like it is bizarre..
Google at least is consistent, they just plainly act as of the people who dislike it don't exist.
Try https://noai.duckduckgo.com/
That works as the starter page, but can't be set as the custom search engine.. Only the real DDG can be set as that.
I just tested it. It stores a cookie when you disable duck.ai and Search Assist but no cookie corresponds to them being enabled. Perhaps you might have cleared cookies?
Yeah, I'm aware this is the reason. Which fucking sucks because I need to remember turn them back off every single time I happen to need clear cookies.. But that's probably their plan.
I have Firefox and have it set up to erase all history and cookies. I just like a clean and cleared browser when I get on. To prevent myself from having to log in to every website I might need to use that day, I took all of my websites I go to regularly, and made a container for them in Firefox Containers. Then, I go into Firefox settings and paste the websites into the Exceptions under Browsing data.
This has worked for me for years, so I hope you try it out and it works for you too! :-]
You could set up an exception for that website to not have its cookies cleared when you wipe the rest
Are you suuuuuuurrrreeeeeeeee you don’t want it turned back on?
Which do you recommend?
I use Startpage. Also if you have Firefox check out the search engines that come preinstalled
Mojeek is a good one. Qwant is another, but it does have a 'Flash Answers' box that you can disable and it will stay disabled. My browser has it disabled by default, though.
If you're wedded to google you can use udm14.com and it will remove the AI, ads, and knowledge panels.