DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode • Hacker News Board

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

#471

Post by fsflover » Thu, May 28, 2026, 1:46 PM UTC

giwook wrote: post #467

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…

> weren't quite as good

A lot of people keep saying this, and yet I never saw a reasonable example. Whenever DDG fails for me, the Google's results are even worse.

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

#472

Post by heyjamesknight » Thu, May 28, 2026, 1:47 PM UTC

LtWorf wrote: post #447

marcus_holmes wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any government handouts for tech companies adding AI to their products, can you give an example, please?

https://openai.com/it-IT/index/our-agreement-with-the-depart...

The Department of War is a customer, there's no handout here.

The government does procure services from private firms, this isn't new or special.

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

#473

Post by fsflover » Thu, May 28, 2026, 1:47 PM UTC

tardedmeme wrote: post #452

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but that's because Google permits that. OP is saying Google should simply stop permitting advertising over the real answer.

Why would Google give themselves less money?

It should be illegal to mislead the users like this. The search terms weren't generic and didn't match anything.

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

#474

Post by p-t » Thu, May 28, 2026, 1:51 PM UTC

i started using duckduckgo after google added ai, and it runs way faster [i use lite.duckduckgo.com :3]

edit: my school blocks all search engines other than google though XD

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

#475

Post by ymhr » Thu, May 28, 2026, 1:56 PM UTC

siquick wrote: post #440

30minAdayHN wrote: post #70

I switched away from Google to Duck a few years back. But I observed that I mostly do !g and end up on Google. I read similar comments from many others on other threads. Recently I switched to Kagi and has been a very happy customer. I never visited Google after that. Only downside is the Search on mobile. You have to install an app and enable it as extension on safari. Logging in never worked and couldn't enable my…

> Only downside is the Search on mobile. You have to install an app and enable it as extension on safari. Logging in never worked and couldn't enable my premium Kagi on iPhone. I just have Kagi set a custom search engine in mobile browser - no seperate app needed. https://kagi.com/search?q=%s

Unfortunately the only way to do it on IOS Safari is as the user above described, you have to install and configure an extension, there are no 'custom' search engines natively. Other IOS browsers are fine, i.e. Chrome, Vivaldi, Orion, etc.

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

#476

Post by deaton » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:01 PM UTC

The top of every google search result is a confidently wrong chatbot now. It feels like Google has sacrificed correctness, the thing they were great at, the thing that built their search engine into the biggest internet service in the world, in the name of AI.

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

#477

Post by liampulles » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:08 PM UTC

Google's Search and its AI result can alternatively help or hinder me, I find.

If I'm looking for a relatively straightforward and simple piece of information quickly (e.g. "wooden arch mirror stores linden") then the AI summary can be useful, because I don't need more than surface level info.

If I intend to analyze and understand something (e.g. "developer API issues Zoho Thrive"), then the AI summary and the general degradation in the quality of search results from Google really hinder me. I have to work to avoid a lazy and low value answer, whereas what I really want to do is go through various actual websites and reflect on them to gain insight.

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

#478

Post by siquick » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:08 PM UTC

ymhr wrote: post #475

siquick wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only downside is the Search on mobile. You have to install an app and enable it as extension on safari. Logging in never worked and couldn't enable my premium Kagi on iPhone. I just have Kagi set a custom search engine in mobile browser - no seperate app needed. https://kagi.com/search?q=%s

Unfortunately the only way to do it on IOS Safari is as the user above described, you have to install and configure an extension, there are no 'custom' search engines natively. Other IOS browsers are fine, i.e. Chrome, Vivaldi, Orion, etc.

You're right, I use Brave on iOS but Safari doesn't let you choose beyond a defined list.

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

#479

Post by lumost » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

liampulles wrote: post #477

Google's Search and its AI result can alternatively help or hinder me, I find. If I'm looking for a relatively straightforward and simple piece of information quickly (e.g. "wooden arch mirror stores linden") then the AI summary can be useful, because I don't need more than surface level info. If I intend to analyze and understand something (e.g. "developer API issues Zoho Thrive"), then the AI summary and the genera…

I find it to be a fundamental hinderance as they use a cheap model. The cheap model gets confused based on conflicting reddit threads and then I get a wrong answer.

It's better to just ask codex to do the search for me, but this is much slower - but increasingly my go to. I wish there was a fast search api codex could hook into to answer internet questions faster.

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

#480

Post by eudamoniac » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:11 PM UTC

thewebguyd wrote: post #67

patates wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. My friends who previously had no interest in technology and never talked about it, are suddenly following tech news closely all because they have fear of missing out on AI :(

> because they have fear of missing out on AI That's been my experience too, both with friends and coworkers. It would seem that the negative sentiment around AI is largely an internet phenomenon. I've yet to run into a hardcore "AI skeptic" irl. People seem either neutral, or enthusiastic about it.

As a hardcore AI skeptic, no one has run into me IRL either, because I pretend at work to be neutral, except to the one other skeptic who also pretends to be neutral.