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DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

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Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#121

The world seems to be fragmenting, into those that see the value in the latest from Google, and those that resist changes like this. I search for how much oil does my take" and get the exact answer in a single sentence, or I suppose I could click the links and wade through all the validation for choosing and how often one should change the oil, and which brand of oil that blog is pushing etc etc. I love Google's AI a…

Are you going to enjoy a future where those different sources can't be found, so now Google requires you to have a subscription that includes data about vehicle repair? The great thing about the web before was that the information was available for everyone, it was decentralized. This is what they are trying to kill.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#122

I actually like AI mode in Google. My main reason is if I just have a quick question it seems a lot quicker than logging into ChatGPT/Claude as I can just type it in the address bar. Of course DDG / others can do the exact same thing as they already have an AI mode. Maybe you can even set up ChatGPT as a search engine - not sure. The key for this use case is speed - it has to be nearly instant.

>I actually like AI mode in Google. My main reason is if I just have a quick question it seems a lot quicker than logging into ChatGPT/Claude as I can just type it in the address bar.

This is the exact use-case, and it makes a lot of sense. The hard part for Google is identifying when someone wants search and when someone wants an AI response. It's somewhat identifiable by the input but of course thats extremely messy to determine systematically.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#123
post #20

I truly don't get Google's move. I'm sure the model is fine, but it's not Google Search, and when I want Search I want Search. If I wanted to ask an AI, why can't I ask the one from my subscription... that I'm already paying for... that's actually good... that can also search the web? I assume it's a play to test the waters for how the ad market is going to work, because as a product I really can't see why I would ev…

> but it's not Google Search, and when I want Search I want Search. Not me. I really appreciate having both results simultaneously. I can scan the first couple sentences of the AI response, and if that already has the answer then great. I can expand it to see if there's more. Or, if I see that the AI mode didn't understand my brief search query, I just glance at the search results below. And often times, when I do ne…

Hope the answer in the AI response is right!

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#125

My friends who previously had no interest in technology and never talked about it, are suddenly following tech news closely all because they hate AI being pushed so hard. One was just messaging me this morning about alternatives to Google search and maps. He ended up downloading DuckDuckGo. If Google isn’t carefully they’re going to push people away from their golden goose.

For what it’s worth, you don’t need to even download DDG. I just set it as my homepage on my iOS safari.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#126
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want to capture more of the value that was previously going to others. That's basically what this has all been leading to. Why let a cooking website get visitors and ad revenue when they are free to take the content and show it as their own? Now they are going to do the same to e-commerce. Either they are going to let customers buy their products through Google's interface, or they won't be discovered. No more o…

It is the same thing as when they pushed for AMP. They wanted to prevent traffic from leaving google.com then too.

In that case at least they could point out that end users got better results with AMP than they do with news sites w/o ad blockers. The AI results are just wrong so often I don't really get it.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#127
post #34
post #22

DuckDuckGo have to change their brand name if they want non-technical people to take them seriously

This has been my issue with DuckDuckGo from the start... it needs to be something a little more catchy and that rolls off the tongue. Saying "I'll DuckDuckGo it" feels so clunky. As small of a gripe as it sounds like, it really does matter.

No need to turn a brand into a verb for this.

You look it up.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#128
post #124

Duckduckgo is blocked in my country. Reddit is blocked in my country. My country is also one of first countries agree to ban free (non playstore) android app installation. My country is so against freedom. What a shitty country.

Which country did this so I can avoid the hell out of it?

Also sorry!

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#129
post #47
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my issue with DuckDuckGo from the start... it needs to be something a little more catchy and that rolls off the tongue. Saying "I'll DuckDuckGo it" feels so clunky. As small of a gripe as it sounds like, it really does matter.

Duck it.

Mind the F being dangerously close to the D on most keyboards here :-)

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I truly don't get Google's move. Users aren't adopting their AI at the rate shareholders expect, so they now force the adoption at the cost of search.

According to Google, users are adopting it. They say AI mode is the most popular feature they've ever introduced, and is driving an increase in total search queries. >Just one year after its debut, AI Mode has surpassed one billion monthly users, with queries more than doubling every quarter since launch. As people have realized just how much more Search can do for them, they’re searching more than ever before — so m…

These are the same folks that removed the very useful Google cache feature because people weren't using it any more. What they forgot to say is they hid the feature beforehand.

Of course they have more AI queries every day. They have full control over what goes to LLMs and what doesn't.

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