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

Post by sublimefire » Thu, May 28, 2026, 9:50 AM UTC

lisplist wrote: post #14

I switched to DDG about a year ago and it works fine for me. For some queries, Google still surfaces better results, but DDG is good enough that I don't really miss it. The only Google service I haven't been able to replace is YouTube - no real alternative. I still use Google Maps as well, but could probably switch to Apple maps without missing much. For hiking trails, Apple Maps has often been superior. I briefly tr…

Post by Tade0 » Thu, May 28, 2026, 9:54 AM UTC

rldjbpin wrote: post #426

al_borland wrote: post #5

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.

> If Google isn’t carefully they’re going to push people away from their golden goose. we have moments like this every few years (almost as frequent as crypto waves in recent memory), but they keep chugging along. couple years back it was all about saying the GPTs have replaced search for people and how google is dead. now when they implement the same, it drives people away. i can imagine how it can be difficult to b…

Post by cmoski » Thu, May 28, 2026, 10:07 AM UTC

kenhwang wrote: post #171

qwerpy wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm as anti-Google as anyone out there. I block all their ads, refuse to pay for youtube, go out of my way to avoid their hardware, etc. But I have to admit AI mode is great. It's fast, free, not yet cluttered with ads, and useful. I treat it as a search engine that does a fuzzy search rather than the more literal text match search that we're used to. I recently bought a Bambu 3d printer after Reddit/HN drew my atten…

I'm the same way, I hate using Google search for searching because it's basically useless, and their other ecosystem offerings generally get enshittified over time so it's not worth paying for or relying on. But if they're letting me using AI for free without logging in and I just need a dumb AI slop answer, then I'm more than happy to burn their tokens instead of my own. Any serious work goes to a different LLM prov…

Post by schnitzelstoat » Thu, May 28, 2026, 10:26 AM UTC

throwaway27448 wrote: post #202

juancn wrote: post #199

Google has ~90% of search where DuckDuckGo has A ~30% jump of DuckDuckGo is about 0.3% of global search traffic, basically a rounding error for google. Still, it's an interesting signal, but not nearly enough to worry Google. If the jump had been 300% that would merit some thought.

I don't think you can even refer to google as search anymore when it spews bullshit rather than furnishing results

Post by siquick » Thu, May 28, 2026, 10:30 AM UTC

nikolay wrote: post #410

I'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.