I finally switched to duck duck go, not because of the AI push of google, but because of the constant nagging popups to download the google app. Just let me google things in mobile safari in peace!
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
#412The 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…
> The world seems to be fragmenting, into those that see the value in the latest from Google, and those that resist changes like this.
This reads as a strongly closed minded claim that has been "whitewashed into corporate appropriate speech" by an llm. If you cannot understand any validity to the other side of a debate then you are not engaging in discussion, no matter how your claims are dressed up.
Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
#413I've been using Kagi for years and am not looking back. Okay, it costs money; it could sometimes be worse than Google, but the only free cheese is in the mousetrap.
how is duckduckgo using us?
Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
#414I genuinely find DDG more effective than Google Search. I have used it as a daily driver for 2+ years now. When i cannot find anything with DDG, i try with the !g macro, but results are more often than not even worse.
It certainly struggles a lot more with non-English queries. Been using it since 2019
Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
#415[flagged]
Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
#416My 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.
> The AI product rollouts in the last two years have been some of the most aggressive and user hostile product rollouts in my entire life. I’m getting extremely annoyed by the Base44 ads I see on YouTube every other video. First I pressed skip all the time, but the ads keep popping up. So now, every time I see it, I click on the ad and then immediately close the site. At least I can make their aggressive ad strategy…
I can't fathom why anyone would still willingly watch ads when there are so many ways to block them online.
Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
0.3% is definitely not a ”rounding error”. For Google it would mean roughly $650M drop in revenue.
Two issues with this. - Search ad pricing is inelastic and auction based (supply goes down price goes up). - A jump in traffic to DuckDuckGo does not mean Google is experiencing a decline in search volume. Number of queries per session has increased since launching AI Overviews.
> Search ad pricing is inelastic and auction based (supply goes down price goes up).
False. Advertisers have budgets and ROI targets. If Google cannot compete people will get their clicks elsewhere.
> A jump in traffic to DuckDuckGo does not mean Google is experiencing a decline in search volume. Number of queries per session has increased since launching AI Overviews.
But it does produce lower ROI for advertisers (in this case: CTR goes down because my ad is being shown to more people). Once user is on my landing page, my conversion rate is fine month on month (±1%), but my CTR on google got sharply worse by 5% since, and if it goes much further I'll stop completely on Google.
I doubt I am alone: Maybe others will jump ship sooner and the price will recover (demand goes down) but in either event Google is less net revenue, and given how aggressive their sales pushes have been I think it could be that big
Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
The AI product rollouts in the last two years have been some of the most aggressive and user hostile product rollouts in my entire life. All conventions and user centricity go out the window with AI feature launches lately. If you look at examples from the last week it’s stuff like posthogs opt-out training, Copilot training, or Google’s antigravity chat-app switch. I’ve had the worst customer experiences of my life…
After-the-fact opt-outs are something I never trust. Most data selling is opt-in and requires the user to opt-out. It seems to me that when I submit the form, the data would be instantly sold and by the time I get to the opt-out form it’s too late. If this isn’t how it works, I’d be interested to know. The whole idea of these opt-outs seem like smoke and mirrors to act good while still gaining the advantage from the…
The GDPR specifies that opt-outs are also retroactive, but of course we know that all corporations happily follow the law.
Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but Search is still the consumer facing product that brings people to Google and keeps them there. And let's not forget, these are the same people that when searching for "eBay" will put an ad at the top of the results, linking to eBay, and then place eBay as the top search result. I've found it hilarious that every single search engine does the same thing. You can do it even in Apple's App Store too. (Not seeing t…
It’s basically a guaranteed way to get your term into the first rank. When people run a simple keyword search without intending to visit the site itself, for example when eBay is caught in a scandal and you’re curious, you type “eBay” expecting a news link somewhere on the first page. That and mafia-esque protection money basically
A lot of big tech behaviour, is very much like mafia behaviour. I always use that description, when people asks me what cloudflare does or how the spam network works. They sell both the problem and the solution and the most unfilterable spam always comes from those aggressively filtering legitimate stuff out (Gmail, Outlook).
Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
#420I've been using Kagi for years and am not looking back. Okay, it costs money; it could sometimes be worse than Google, but the only free cheese is in the mousetrap.
how is duckduckgo using us?
duck shoves AI results down my throat no matter how many times I say no. And they are getting more aggressive with their ads.