This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Shoutout to https://uruky.com/
It's a paid private search engine.
https://theprivacydad.com/interview-with-the-engineer-of-uruky-a-private-search-engine/
Trying them out right now, so far so good!
yeah that's what i meant
...Installs?
Do they know there's a website?
You don't even need the website. I just set the default search engine to DDG in my browser.
A search app makes zero sense to me.
The reason why companies like to push apps over websites is that apps can gather more information about you. Not saying DDG does this, but it is weird.
For their defense this could be to place search bar on main screen, as looks like Google no longer allows to switch to a different search engine in their default launcher.
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.
ngl, I never thought about changing the default search engine on Android. That was the last place where I was still using Google.
Installing the DDG app right now 😂
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
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.
The bangs are the addictive feature for me. You start by typing !w lemmy in the URL bar, with DDG already configured as the default search engine, and DDG will directly serve the search result for this term from Wikipedia. There are hundreds of them like !yt for YouTube or !gm for Google Maps, and the acronyms are intuitive.
https://duckduckgo.com/bangs
This should be a YSK post
O_o I had no idea. This is really useful.
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.
It doesn't and when you discover that, try Kagi.
People here love things to be free and in doing so, they recommend worse search engines.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Unfortunately the internet will still enshittify with a speed we cannot yet imagine
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'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.
I didn't even know they had an app. Why would I need a separate app for a search engine?
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.
I for one don't install any search engines. I don't see a point in doing so.
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?
I made a video on Google alternatives a month or so ago. There are chapters in the description if you want info but don't want to watch.
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.
