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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

#461

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #157
qsort wrote: 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…

"I truly don't get Google's move." "AI" gets higher volume of use than search. This was disclosed by Google under oath More traffic, more usage time, more data collection

"AI Mode queries are doubling every quarter."

https://www.wired.com/story/even-if-you-hate-ai-you-will-use...

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

#462

Post by tokai »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #16

Yeah, starting from a much lower baseline than DDG, I've had something like a 10x increase in queries last ~week. Seems like a lot of people are looking for alternatives. For as much as how the startup space loves to pay lip service to contrarian bets, people sure do all be running in the same direction.

Seems cool. I'll definitely try using it. Do you have a shorter url? Its going to be an uphill battle telling people to check out" marginalia no not magnolia HYPHEN yeah hyphen not underscore or dash search DOT com"

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

#463

Post by 1718627440 »

cassianoleal wrote: post #454
1718627440 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GDPR specifies that opt-outs are also retroactive, but of course we know that all corporations happily follow the law.

You can’t un-sell data though. Sure you may ask nicely that the buyer doesn’t use it and deletes it, but at that point the cat’s out of the bag.

In praxis, yes especially if it has already left the jurisdiction.

Disregarding that, laws don't apply to the first processing party only. If you keep data, that you got informed are not consented to anymore, it is the same as if you keep selling fenced goods.

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

#464

Post by RegW »

dylan604 wrote: post #32
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.

Search is not the golden goose. Ads are. If search was the golden goose, they wouldn't be trying so hard to replace it with AI. Just because Google used to do search as their main point of business does not mean that holds true today. Holding on to the false premise will only add to your confusion about their decisions.

May be search is not the golden goose, perhaps more the carrot that brings the user into range of the shitty stick of ads and data leeching.

I'm a bit afraid that although AI is being presented as part of the carrot, it may actually be a shittier stick.

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

#465

Post by c7b »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #374
c7b wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume that they've A/B-tested any such important change extensively and basically know that it won't affect their numbers for the worse.

Given my own time at google, I highly doubt these a/b tests are constructed to actually yield a better product rather than push pet products

Then we should take your word over mine. My assumption was that those A/B tests will lead to products that do increase the numbers they were measuring (retention, conversion,...) at the expense of enshittified UX (up to the point of things feeling objectively broken, like notification badges re-appearing for the same items, settings that reset after user changes, search results missing,...). At least that was my explanation for how products by major tech giants like LinkedIn, Facebook, Outlook,... could end up being shipped with such flaws. What would you say?

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

#466

Post by tactlesscamel »

tardedmeme wrote: post #451
1718627440 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GDPR specifies that opt-outs are also retroactive, but of course we know that all corporations happily follow the law.

Corporations seem deathly scared of GDPR, for some reason, while in reality it's enforced about as much as American antitrust (not at all).

Same goes for any "regulation" in the states. Gov't does their job only when it brings revenue in the $$$$$$ territory. Everything else is civil and ignored - even if it's promoting the sale of millions of protected information.

Of all the reports I've submitted (evidence included) followups and fines have been issued to exactly 0 companies. Hell, Quadlock [phone mount company] happily acknowledged that their policy is to verify identity by requesting plain emails including photocopies of the credit card used for purchase and full state ID. Absolutely against regs.. who cares? Not the SCC nor the FTC.

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

#467

Post by giwook »

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.

While there is a meaningful subset of the population that will do this, I wonder if the vast majority of people, even if they share the same negative sentiment towards AI and in particular how Google is pushing it in their products, will find the friction in changing up their workflows and routines to be too much to actually change things up.

While Google has certainly failed with their products before, by and large as a company they are "too big to fail" at this point so to speak where the myriad products they offer have become a very significant part of the digital infrastructure on which much of the world runs.

Anecdotally I've also switched to DuckDuckGo in the past because I didn't want Google looking over my shoulder on my browsing history (this was pre-AI), but I ended up coming back because I felt the search results weren't quite as good (or perhaps it was just in my head, and the differing UI was enough to throw me off).

And this may be a contrarian opinion, and while I hate the idea of Google mining all of my data and monetizing it, I actually find value in the AI 'previews' that Google provides (and will often ask it follow up questions as a means of getting 'free' LLM responses back for 'easier' prompts that I don't want to burn Claude tokens on).

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

#468

Post by jve »

simmerup wrote: post #457
jve wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother with no programming experience took some AI courses and automated adding products to his ecommerce site from his suppliers. Fetches images, converts them, categorizes, adds descriptions/specs in multiple languages translated via DeepL API, calculates prices. He also tries to troubleshoot/debug stuff without calling me... and just asking me to choose right path offered by AI. I love it :) Because I usually…

And the customer of his site gets a bunch of AI generated rubbish Could be correct, could be not, who cares?

Nop - that is a niche site, every product is stocked locally and it is to immensely reduce time required to insert new products. And it is not to generate new information, but to add existing info (apart from translation but most languages are known to check).

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

#469

Post by redsocksfan45 »

bflesch wrote: post #351
onemoresoop wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What really sucks is that Google pushed actual content creators out of the way in the first place. That is horrible. I think they should be challenged on this. Food bloggers, recipe writers, and creators have helped shape a huge amount of food culture, and they deserve to be protected rather than erased. If this kind of theft continues from the AI industry Im not sure what type of culture is is going to be left or wh…

Their assumption is that all relevant culture has already been invented and capturing the status quo is enough to get 80% of the benefits.

[dead]

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

#470

Post by lisplist »

cocoto wrote: post #407
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…

For hiking trails, I highly recommend https://www.comaps.app/ . It's simply miles ahead of Google Maps and Apple Maps for hike and biking.

Thanks, will have to check that out! Also use Strava, so maybe I should just refer to the heatmaps
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