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

https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/duckduckgos-ai-free-search-saw-nearly-28-percent-more-visits-in-the-week-following-googles-insistence-that-people-love-ai-mode/

by HelloUsername • 2 months ago

1075 524 2 months ago

pcgamer.com

256BitChris• 2 months ago

From my experience the Google AI mode is more restrictive on what it will let you search for and the content it produces.

I personally have had to use DuckDuckGo to search for things that Gemini finds to be against its instructions to answer.

And I'm not talking about things that are NSFW, but some things that Gemini just doesn't want to discuss.

That's kinda Gemini's problem in general, it just is overly restrictive and doesn't like to talk about anything things that Claude will freely talk about and push against and discuss with you.

rvnx• 2 months ago

You are absolutely right, DuckDuckGo is better for porn than Google, but if you want even better results you can use Yandex.

For other things, Grok is quite fast — Perplexity too

John7878781• 2 months ago

AI mode isn't that terrible.

jeffbee• 2 months ago

AI summary isn't bad at all, but people don't understand it and Google hasn't explained it very well. It is just RAG. It is a summarization of the documents that are on the first page of the SERP. People think it is answering their question independently, but that's not what it does. It takes the docs that are top ranked from web search and digests them.

The corresponding "AI overview" feature of Gmail is amazing. It digests the messages that match your search. Because it is using your own docs, the output is way better. Or, at least, mine is. Maybe your inbox is full of lies but mine isn't.

josefritzishere2• 2 months ago

People understand it. They dislike it. Users want what they want. When Software companies purport to know better... they do themselves and their customers a disservice.

al_borland5• 2 months ago

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.

dylan6042• 2 months ago

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.

jeffwask3• 2 months ago

They only dominate Ads because they dominate search if everyone leaves Search the ad business grinds to a halt as well. These are the ying and yang of Google.

al_borland5• 2 months ago

Ads in Search make up a significant percentage of their revenue. It is also the gateway that gets people into the Google ecosystem.

Ads make the money, but Search is still the consumer facing product that brings people to Google and keeps them there. It’s so ubiquitous people don’t even think about it or notice it anymore.

I’m always surprised by how much people are still searching for stuff as we’ve moved from the open web to various platforms (Amazon, TikTok, Facebook, etc), but every time I see Google’s revenue breakdown I’m shocked by just how important Search still is to their business.

This is from 2024, but shows Search accounting for nearly 57% of revenue. Yes, this is made possible by the AdWords business, but without Search, that 57% goes away, unless that traffic goes to a 3rd party that is also using AdWords and Google were to make the same from 3rd party ads as 1st party. I find that doubtful.

https://www.doofinder.com/en/statistics/google-revenue-break...

autoexec2• 2 months ago

The main reason Google loved search was because it was the primary way they got your personal info. Now Chrome gives Googles your entire browsing history, Gmail lets them read your email, youtube tells them what you're interested in, android gives google your entire life offline and suddenly the only thing google search is good for is as just one more website pushing google ads.

AI is going to be great at pushing ads. Plus AI trains you to give google even more control. Instead of just presenting you with a list of websites offering different perspectives and opinions on something, Google can just tell you what they want you to know/think (or not tell you anything they'd rather you not know/think about). The more you get used to treating google like an oracle instead of a librarian the easier it will be to manipulate you.

nonethewiser6• 2 months ago

This is just wrong. They are working AI into search so that AI does not cannablize search. Search goes hand-in-hand with ads.

tayo422• 2 months ago

There's a no ads in the Ai result though. And even if they add there isn't space for like 4 or 5 ad results like some searches can return. Some Google searches I have to scroll a whole screen away before I see a real result.

bradley13• 2 months ago

This. Google wants to sell advertising. If they can embed advertising into AI and make more money, they will.

You ask AI for a product recommendation. It says "Buy X from Acme". Is that paid product placement? Who knows?

RegW• 2 months ago

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.

patates• 2 months ago

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 :(

thewebguyd3• 2 months ago

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.

8cvor6j844qw_d6• 2 months ago

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 :(

One of my friend ended up spending too much time on Candy AI or some sort of AI companion thingy :/

sourcecodeplz• 2 months ago

I think this is very true. They probably got scared of the almost 1b weekly active users of ChatGPT, and how people would rather ask ChatGPT than use Google. It will be a balance but this is a great opportunity for smaller search engines to make a real comeback.

therealdrag0• 2 months ago

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

al_borland5• 2 months ago

It can be set as the default search engine in Safari, one of the few options Apple gives for search engines. No need to change your home page. I told my friend this as well, but I think that idea was slightly beyond his current mental model of how things work on the phone.

I’ve tried using the homepage method before with Kagi, as the extension to set it as the default search is a pretty ugly hack. I found it created too much friction, as I’m often searching from an existing page.

Cider99863• 2 months ago

Customize Search Engine (https://cizzuk.net/projects/cse/) allows you to make whatever search engine actually work in the address bar.

technothrasher• 2 months ago

You have to set it to lite.duckduckgo.com (or noai.duckduckgo.com) or you still get AI crap from DDG too.

data-ottawa• 2 months ago

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 in the last few months.

My health insurance company decided calling support meant I consented to them saving my voice for model training. They said you can opt-out online, but that option didn’t exist in app or on their website. It was only after calling back and threatening to sue that they added an option to opt-out.

This is the daily experience now. Seemingly every company is opting you into selling your data, breaking your workflows, disabling features you use, and force installing AI integrations you have to fight to remove. And several companies are perfectly fine to reenable or reinstall them after removal.

It should be no surprise to anyone people are mad.

What real value AI does have has been poisoned by premature rollouts (training users it’s crap) and forcing it on people too aggressively.

al_borland5• 2 months ago

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 dark pattern. The only way to truly opt-out is to not register or use a service at all. There really needs to be legislation around this.

ghastmaster• 2 months ago

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’ve had the worst customer experiences of my life in the last few months.

I attribute that to the massive amount of tax breaks and money that has been funneled to them by various governments. The government is the customer that they are appeasing right now. As soon as the spigot is turned off, they will be more inclined to appease us.

I do not know the consumer or b2b AI market well right now. I do know that billions of dollars are at stake from government sources. A smart company would focus on that.

fhd2• 2 months ago

One fascinating thing about LLMs is the degree of evangelism it inspires in some. You can explain some of that with paid micro influencers, people invested in the success of AI, consultants looking for workshop opportunities and all that, but I know enough people with no skin in the game at all, that turned into very vocal advocates.

I think to some degree, that effect is also at play here. CEOs, product managers etc are simply amazed, and want to spread the good news. I doubt they can even _comprehend_ that others might not be as excited as them.

sharperguy• 2 months ago

I'm someone who makes extensive used of LLMs and agents for daily research, and I 100% of the time ignore the AI summary that google gives at the top of the page. If I am performing a web search, I've already decided that I'm explicitly NOT looking for an LLM summary.

giancarlostoro• 2 months ago

posthogs opt-out training,

It should seriously be 100% illegal to force someone's content into AI training without their explicit consent, and no not opting out should not be an escape hatch.

lukashoff• 2 months ago

One of the recent rollouts that really grind my gears was Spotify rolling out LLM explanations of songs. Which is the most useful wasteful piece of sh*t ever. Why would I want to get a theory of what is 174bpm and other random crap.

It is insane, and I hate modernity and every single modern product that just shoves random LLM crap at you and pretend they are not AI-enabled.

phatskat• 2 months ago

It’s been infuriating to see it shoved everywhere in the corporate stack - Teams, Outslook, Jira, GitHub, etc. and since tools are all company-mandated, the best I can do is continuously ignore or say “not now”, but one day Teams will rollover on a forced software update and I’ll have no choice but to “let” CoPilot schedule meetings in an app that already consistently warns that I’m in a different time zone despite all of us being east coast (I’ve checked so many settings, and even with another single coworker who has checked his we see the warning).

My company is also heavily pushing AI, which is worrisome but no surprising - part of my goal for the coming year is to showcase using AI in a productive and innovative way, can’t wait.

Eventually my Google Nest Minis will stop asking me to try Gemini and force me to, and they’ll all get binned unless I can find a firmware replacement which I doubt is out there, and then I’ll get deep into HomeKit and local voice recognition for turning the lights on and off and setting timers because that’s literally 99% of my use-case, and I’m sure Gemini would fuck it up.

ninalanyon• 2 months ago

downloading DuckDuckGo.

What for? Just use the website via your favourite browser.

wiether3• 2 months ago

My friends who previously had no interest in technology

Their friend are probably the kind of people conflating Chrome/Google with "The Internet"

And I think on Android its even less clear the distinction between the browser app and "Google"

al_borland5• 2 months ago

That’s what I told him… just set Safari to use it in Settings, but it seemed like he had already done it and was now invested in using a whole new app just to switch search engines. This is a symptom of the app-based model people now think in.

carlosjobim• 2 months ago

What for? Just tap the icon to open the app.

burnte3• 2 months ago

If Google isn’t carefully they’re going to push people away from their golden goose.

Too late, people have started moving. They have to act fast to stop the migration from growing.

NuclearPM• 2 months ago

Downloading a search engine website?

Cider99863• 2 months ago

DuckDuckGo makes a webkit wrapper with their branding. It does actually have some good features built in, but I don't recommend it over Brave or Mullvad Browser.

abustamam• 2 months ago

I'm curious — how do non-techies know? During stand-up the other day I was making small talk like "hey did you guys know that Google search is dead" and everyone was like "it is?" and I had to link to the Google IO to prove it because indeed, doing a Google search worked the same way it always had.

So I'm wondering how other folks are finding this out.

dogwalker5000• 2 months ago

If Google isn’t carefully they’re going to push people away from their golden goose.

Won’t be surprised if Google thinks their Golden Goose is terminally ill and AI is the replacement.

Google is really an information provider powered by ads. That’s what people use their search for - to get information.

Google’s search basically has the internet as its backend - information-wise. I think it’s inevitable that AI slop (output from low quality GenAI) will render it useless eventually.

So Google’s solution is to build their own AI with information curated by them to try to stay the front page of the internet.

wsc9812• 2 months ago

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 a bit more expensive.

ipaddr2• 2 months ago

Its probably why you keep seeing them a click is marked as interest and clicking away doesnt cost anything they refund it.

gorgmah• 2 months ago

Youtube revanced on your phone + ublock on firefox and you'll never see youtube ads again. There's also a replacement app for android TV that I forgot the name of that works well. Do not use chrome, google nerfed its ad-blocking capabilities a while ago

account42• 2 months ago

I can't fathom why anyone would still willingly watch ads when there are so many ways to block them online.

weikju• 2 months ago

You’re just proving to them their ad costs are effective so they’ll spend more to show you ads though

DiogenesKynikos4• 2 months ago

AI being pushed so hard.

What I see is people using AI of their own free will, because it's incredibly useful.

It's true that inside tech companies, AI is being pushed into products, but outside of those companies, normal people are rapidly adopting AI for all sorts of daily uses.

"I don't know what this symbol on my dishwasher means." -> Ask AI.

"Why is my bread not rising properly?" -> Ask AI.

These are the types of things that previously would have taken a lot longer to figure out, but that you can get an immediate answer to with AI. That's the fundamental reason why it's taking off. Not because it's being pushed.

radarsat1• 2 months ago

You can talk all you want about generalization and reasoning ability and AGI, but the fact is that it's also useful simply as a really user friendly database.

Even if it's only able to report facts from its dataset or perform simple synthesis of search results.

That it can actually reason to a certain extent is bonus points.

VerifiedReports• 2 months ago

Google has been ever-worsening trash for years.

Their "AI" bullshit did in fact push me to finally make DuckDuckGo my default page. Happy to hear others are switching too.

thaumasiotes3• 2 months ago

DDG has the same AI overview at the top of their search results that Google does. What's the goal of switching?

polyamid232• 2 months ago

https://noai.duckduckgo.com/

rldjbpin• 2 months ago

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 be in their shoes, when any change is met with negativity. no surprise that the core interface has...had not changed all this time.

context: left to ddg almost a decade ago in a similar exodus wave.

Tade0• 2 months ago

All that being said the product is genuinely worse now.

The other day I googled "I'll be resolving" in quotation marks as I usually do when I'm unsure if it's idiomatic (or grammatically correct for that matter) English.

AI mode replied with: "I'm on it. Tell me what you're working on, and I'll jump right in with the exact steps, scripts, or details you need to tackle it! What exactly are you looking to resolve?"

Just give me the damn phrase used in a sentence along with the number of results so that I can assess how common this expression is.

dopidopHN2• 2 months ago

Been using Google since they exists. I stopped without any issue and even thinking too much about it 2 years ago.

This include work.

I use DDG, kagy and the LLM du jour .

Again, no friction. No plan. No transition période. I just changed the default search engine on a whim.

giwook• 2 months ago

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).

fsflover4• 2 months ago

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.

mt_• 2 months ago

As someone who has been driving DDG for the past 6 years, i have switched to Google back due to the new AI mode,, its such a nice quick way to check information and validate ideas.. no friction included.

Legend24404• 2 months ago

Both statements can be true, you know.

Some people can love AI mode while others hate it.

root-parent• 2 months ago

"Google’s AI Overviews Don't Have an Off Switch. 4 Tricks to Return to Traditional Web Results" - https://www.pcmag.com/explainers/googles-ai-overviews-dont-h...

john_strinlai• 2 months ago

they dont even recommend using a different search engine? shame on them.

why bother fiddling with url parameters or switching entire browsers when you can just go to one of many other search sites?

this is just an ad for brave being disguised as something 'helpful'.

NDlurker2• 2 months ago

I've been going back and forth between DDG and Google. I have DDG set as default and only use Google if DDG isn't giving me good results.

teejmya• 2 months ago

Same. If I need to Google it, I add "!g" to the search terms.

https://duckduckgo.com/bangs

NDlurker2• 2 months ago

Thanks for the tip; I didn't know about that.

floralhangnail• 2 months ago

I use !s for my fallback. I usually don't need the !g unless I want to see CAPTCHAS.

notepad0x902• 2 months ago

!g is the best of both worlds.

feverzsj• 2 months ago

Feels like google is purposely downgrading non-AI search results

bell-cot• 2 months ago

They were doing that long before they offered "AI" search results.

gblargg2• 2 months ago

AI is downgrading non-AI search results with AI slop pages that get ranked high.

lisplist2• 2 months ago

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 tried OpenStreetMaps years ago, but the lack of traffic data and the fact that it gave me bad directions made it untenable.

spencerflem• 2 months ago

This is my experience as well.

cocoto• 2 months ago

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.

lisplist2• 2 months ago

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

sublimefire• 2 months ago

Very similar experience. As an example I had to user Naver and Kakao maps in Korea instead of Google and those apps gave me sort of another perspective that other apps can be better than G for sure. For youtube I have been fighting the addiction and eventually disabled all options around privacy and eventually reduced the use quite a bit as they do not render the feed of random videos and shorts anymore (just subs).

notepad0x902• 2 months ago

I'll have to see Google's stats as well. I went the other way leaving DDG for google AI mode. I use ddg still if I just want it to find a site. if I want answers, I use Google.

I would say it's more than visits that count, how many people are staying in the DDG or Google home page doing things? a lot more with Google I'd think. they've succeeded in trapping me in their product, instead of navigating away, and I'm happier for it. And... i still don't get what people's problem is (quality wise that is), you don't have to use AI results right, and it's pretty obvious what the AI interaction portion of the page is? I'm sure ad blocker extensions can remove it entirely as well. DDG's quality is not just lower, it requires me clicking around to get AI assisted summary.

I just don't get it, is people's time not valuable? even if half the time the AI results are wrong, it offsets (for me - and it's more like 5%) the time I waste clicking on random sites, some of them ad-trodden (where a blocker isn't available), outdated,etc.. and I usually don't even go to the second page of the result where as the AI reviews more than the first page or two to give me a summary. I'm saving lots and lots of time, getting more done with it.

This is tech, not religion, but it feels like people are conflating the two. it's just a tool that's used to search things.

marginalia_nu• 2 months ago

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.

culi2• 2 months ago

thanks for your work. Marginalia is important for the survival of the human internet

https://marginalia-search.com/

aryehof• 2 months ago

Just looked at it for the first time. My first impression - grey, gray and more grey. Please help brighten our day by adding some color to the page?

tokai• 2 months ago

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"

qsort• 2 months ago

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 ever use it. Dropbox comment moment incoming?

mrweasel2• 2 months ago

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.

Legend24404• 2 months ago

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 much so that last quarter, we saw queries reach an all-time high.
Another place where we’ve been rapidly innovating is in the Gemini app. Last year at I/O, the Gemini app had 400 million monthly active users. Today, we’ve surpassed 900 million, more than doubling in a year. In that same time, daily requests have grown over seven times.

nova22033• 2 months ago

That doesn't make sense. Presumably AI search costs more

jeffwask3• 2 months ago

it's not Google Search

...and it really hasn't been for a good number of years now. I left a while ago when results were all SEO copy pasta blogs this is just a final nail in the coffin.

BiraIgnacio• 2 months ago

Well, if the marketing teams are being told to reach people using AI or something like that, then Google is just playing to their real customers.

shevy-java2• 2 months ago

I truly don't get Google's move.

Because Google wants to kill off its search engine here. It is very clear.

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 ever use it. Dropbox comment moment incoming?

This assumes that Google search is still a high priority for Google. With their privatized adNetwork, they are trying to get people to trust them, and abuse users via their ads. That is their business model. Google is an adCompany. It stopped being a tech company many years ago already.

Also they control the adMarket for the most part. Just look at youtube.

micromacrofoot• 2 months ago

they ruined search a while ago and they want to stop the bleeding

mrdependable2• 2 months ago

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 ownership of the customer relationship. Stores will be a backend warehouse and manufacturer now with Google taking a percentage of all profits.

georgeecollins• 2 months ago

Exactly! They also have been letting the results of google search get seriously degraded by ads. Would many people prefer AI over google search circa 2010?

They killed their competition and now they will give you the product that gives them the most money.

strifey• 2 months ago

This has been their MO with their search for a decade+ now. "Native" results hiding actual search results below the fold killed many 2010s era websites that relied on search traffic.

jeltz• 2 months ago

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

eithed3• 2 months ago

Why let a cooking website get visitors and ad revenue when they are free to take the content and show it as their own?

I think this is a step beyond that - why should people be creating cooking websites when you can ask LLM how to cook given thing, while indeed, serving their own ads. It's the continuation of "we own content other people produce" policy

866-RON-0-FEZ• 2 months ago

Maybe it's high time to burn it all down.

Block Googlebot from your sites.

Let's go back to webrings.

throwaway274483• 2 months ago

Why would anyone go to google anymore tho? If it doesn't furnish results it's just a chatbot

worik2• 2 months ago

"Greed is bad"

jackp96• 2 months ago

Also — it's objectively a better search product to give users what they're looking for right away.

Though that's not to say they're acting altruisticly here.

Google seems to be racing toward a new dark pattern where users learn to trust rely on the AI for neutral, smart objectively correct answers — which boosts trust in its sponsored product recommendations. Super gross.

dandanua2• 2 months ago

The intention is to kill the web in its current form, obviously. If only 1/3 of their users have left, then it is still a win for them in the long run, as they will gain the fraction of content they directly supply to users. Singularity is here and it's spreading faster than a cancer.

pupppet• 2 months ago

They see AI killing the incentive for anyone to produce human-generated content so they're squeezing the last few bucks out of the internet as we know it before it finally goes belly-up.

nomel• 2 months ago

My read on it is "AI is taking over internet content generation, and we can't filter because we'll end up filtering everything that makes us the most money"

osigurdson2• 2 months ago

I don't see search and AI as fundamentally distinct things. Usually I just want an answer.

ttctciyf• 2 months ago

If you don't care about the facticity of the answer, AI is less clicks, granted.

malfist2• 2 months ago

For the same reason I read a book instead of just the plot summary on the back cover

scottmcmac2• 2 months ago

Maybe we use search differently, but I very often don't just want an answer, I want to find a website to help me. Maybe it is because I need to do business with a company and need to find their website to interact with them, or maybe I saw a cool site awhile ago that's relevant to what I'm doing now and didn't bookmark it (because I dropped that habit when Google search was good), or want to read the official documentation about a product I bought, that someone already put a lot of effort into making complete enough and digestible to a wide audience... and the LLM responses tend to get in the way.

Like the parent I use good/paid AI when I want an AI response. So, yeah, an omnibox that knows when I want "an answer" and one that knows when I want to find a thing sounds slightly more convenient than switching between two tools, but Google search is not that Omnibox.

crazygringo2• 2 months ago

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 need to follow a link, I find the source result links in the AI mode to be a better quality than the search result links.

It's the best of both worlds.

miltonlost• 2 months ago

Hope the answer in the AI response is right!

tredre32• 2 months ago

I can scan the first couple sentences of the AI response, and if that already has the answer then great.

But how do make the determination that the answer is good and you should stop reading the page? Vibes?

culi2• 2 months ago

It replaced some of my most used tools with google search. I used to be able to search "define inoculant" and I would get a definition, synonyms, and even a history of the word usage. Now it's replaced by an often mistaken AI summary. Even "inoculant synonyms" doesn't work.

mauriciolange• 2 months ago

I thought the same at first, but now I find myself relying on the AI answer (as it is usually reliable) and, also more and more, I continue interacting in the AI mode on the topic that motivated my search in the first place.

burnte3• 2 months ago

I think it's a multifold problem and they've chosen bad solutions.

1. To protect ad revenue they make search results worse to increase the number of searches by making people refine their searches. This made people upset because search result quality went down. 2. "AI everywhere!" put them in a panic, so they shoved am LLM into results, hoping it could pick through bad results and give good data to the user. 3. LLMs are expensive to run, so they're using a cheap model.

Cheap model + bad results = abysmal user experience.

There are too many groups with opposed interests fighting. Ad groups wants worse results so people search more (not realizing this just drives users away). Search groups want a better product so they stop losing users, and the AI group is being given a bad name because management is using their worst AI product on search. So the whole experience is just garbage.

gruez2• 2 months ago

1. To protect ad revenue they make search results worse to increase the number of searches by making people refine their searches. This made people upset because search result quality went down.

Why would this work? Were yahoo and askjeeves sandbagging their results too just so they can get more clicks?

alex1138• 2 months ago

I don't know how much control Goog has over Youtube despite owning them but I do note in passing they removed dislikes, removed upload dates (apparently?), removed 5 stars. Easier to trick people into ads

The platform has been various kinds of hostile for a few years now

SecretDreams• 2 months ago

Soon, the internet will be so completely full of AI crap enabled by the mega corps that search will be quite a bit less relevant anywho. Maybe google is trying to front run the demise of the internet that they were supposed to protect?

1vuio0pswjnm74• 2 months ago

"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

1vuio0pswjnm74• 2 months ago

"AI Mode queries are doubling every quarter."

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

aprdm5• 2 months ago

I don't disagree with you, but google search has gone so downhill that I had stopped using it before they moved to the AI approach, which is actually pretty decent.

elorant• 2 months ago

What if their move is to make AI search horrible so that OpenAI has no moves left here because trust in the product collapses?

varenc• 2 months ago

that can also search the web?

Slight digression: Claude/ChatGPT/etc all can search the web, but Google's AI already has a local copy of the web. It's much faster because of Google's TPUs, but also because Google has a copy of almost the entire web available locally. I recall others testing this and they observe that Google doesn't actually make HTTP requests to sites it references. It just uses its local cache. That's an advantage that all others seem to lack.

Of course, I agree that when I want search, I want search. But personally I've found if I want an LLM to very quickly answer a simple question, the type of thing all of them would do an equally good job on, I prefer Google's for its sheer speed.

ubermonkey• 2 months ago

Bad results keep you on their site longer, increasing ad revenue.

basisword• 2 months ago

I imagine most people aren't actually searching the web these days. They're searching for an answer to a question. They already now the 5-10 websites they use and go to those directly. They're mostly living in walled gardens, streaming services, or Amazon. When they use Google they want an answer and AI provides that.

ptdorf• 2 months ago

I truly don't get Google's move.

Because the goal is not to provide the best answers.

It's for users to train their AI.

jm4• 2 months ago

They probably lose a ton of traffic to AI or anticipate that happening. This is a way to keep people on Google search.

Like you, I use both search and AI separately. Even casual, nontechnical users are starting to work like that. Including AI with traditional search results will keep a lot of users from jumping ship in the first place and will help win back users from ChatGPT.

I know a lot of people hate AI - at a minimum, there’s a vocal minority - but the reality is AI is eating search like nothing we’ve ever seen.

JoeOfTexas• 2 months ago

I find it useful, and use it almost daily. Helps answer "how to" questions for working on my house, development or just general questions. If I need more info, I just look at the links or videos which are also right there.

To each their own.

stainablesteel• 2 months ago

initially, not a lot of people were using gemini

google pushed it into their other products to attract people to AI

there was and still are a decent number of people who haven't really used it, as crazy as that sounds

paustint• 2 months ago

On the flip side I retrained myself to ask llm questions on my phone or computer browser search bar with the expectation of getting an llm response toy question with no desire to look at anything else.

If I truly want to search I will ignore the llm results, but I like the convenience of a quick llm search that knows "all the things". I get the answer to my question without searching multiple ad-ridden websites (since the ad provider does all the things)

bko• 2 months ago

Just for a start, visits to its AI-free search page noai.duckduckgo.com between May 20 to May 25 are said to have increased by 22.7% on average week-on-week, with the figures peaking May 24 at 27.7%.
The DuckDuckGo mobile app saw installs spike in the US by 18.1% on average compared to the previous week. TechCrunch reported this growth was sustained over six days, peaking at 30.5% on May 25. An even greater number of iOS users hit download on the app though, with installs seeing an average week-on-week growth of 33% and a peak of 69.9%.

Why do they report only relative numbers? These numbers alone are meaningless. This is just lazy reporting.

bee_rider• 2 months ago

They wanted to write a story where this was a negative consequence for Google, I suspect, but the absolute numbers wouldn’t have supported that (they mention that it is inconsequential to Google a couple paragraphs in, if your browser can sustain the site for that long. Mine had trouble).

mossTechnician• 2 months ago

noai.duckduckgo.com probably receives much less traffic than the main domain, which enjoys placement in many prominent browsers (and offers AI overviews by default, although they are far smaller and less likely to appear than on Google). It would be much more interesting to see absolute numbers... in the context of the main site.

phillipcarter• 2 months ago

...because the absolute numbers are incredibly low. And I say this as a fan of DDG! It's just the reality we live in; those who are negatively polarized against AI enough to make this sort of change are just very small in number.

sunaookami2• 2 months ago

Because it's an ad for DuckDuckGo and PCGamer loves anti-AI engagement bait outrage articles because they bring clicks from outraged "gamers" and this brings them ad revenue, too so you are reading an ad for an ad.

input_sh• 2 months ago

They used to have public-facing relative figures located on /traffic, but it looks like they got rid of that page some years back and now it just redirects to the homepage.

Random snapshot of what it looked like: https://web.archive.org/web/20220101023001/https://duckduckg...

robryan• 2 months ago

0.2% of google users try out duck duck go after google pushes more AI doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

noncoml• 2 months ago

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

Hugsbox2• 2 months ago

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.

yegg• 2 months ago

Duck it.

jraph3• 2 months ago

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

You look it up.

tredre32• 2 months ago

But none of Google's alternative sound any better.

I'll bing it.

I'll brave it.

I'll ecosia it.

I'll kagi it.

I'll startpage it.

I'll yandex it.

Okay "I'll brave it" does sound fine, especially in our brave new world, but it's still ambiguous when speaking it.

mlongval• 2 months ago

New Google -> perfect example of en$hi++ification.

hightrix• 2 months ago

Google is the OG of enshittification. When DoubleClick bought Google, I mean when Google bought DoubleClick, that is when Google started printing money in exchange for a terrible user experience.

bitpush• 2 months ago

Google bought DoubleClick in 2008. That's nearly 20 years back. Either you're suggesting Google Search has been bad for 20 years, or you're just being willfully ignorant.

cute_boi• 2 months ago

The problem with DDG is they don't have their own infra like brave and rely so much on bing...

jraph3• 2 months ago

Yeah, there's no really good option in the search engine space.

osigurdson2• 2 months ago

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.

nemomarx• 2 months ago

If you could use something like a ddg bang for it? like !chat at the end of the search and it goes to some router?

wlesieutre• 2 months ago

In DDG's case, searching with !ai sends it to duck.ai

gchamonlive• 2 months ago

Kagi does this really nicely, you just add a question mark at the end and it'll add on top of the search results an LLM summary of what's been found. It's subpar in quality but more than enough to aggregate the results by theme

nonethewiser6• 2 months ago

Yeah you'd need to support it in the term itself. So many queries coming from the url bar. As opposed to a toggle or something. I wonder if we have info on that - what percentage is input in address bar vs google homepage/app.

The problem is that's not discoverable though. The toggle on google.com would be nice but most people probably arent searching that way.

nonethewiser6• 2 months ago

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.

ajdude• 2 months ago

Just do what Kagi does and turn on AI mode only if there's a "?" At the end of the query.

qwerpy3• 2 months ago

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 attention to them and AI mode has been really useful for me to learn about my new printer and troubleshoot things. There is so much information and I don't have time to read everything. I just want to ask a targeted question and have something summarize the literature's answers for it.

It will be a sad day when Google inevitably enshittifies it, but for now I'm happy for them to subsidize my expensive LLM queries.

dgan• 2 months ago

"Surely the last time after handing out carrots long enough to kill all competition, they switched from carrots to sticks, that sucks; but look? now they started giving out carrots again!! It will be such a sad day when no more carrots"

kenhwang• 2 months ago

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 provider. The switching cost for moving to a different LLM provider in the future is practically zero.

nitwit0052• 2 months ago

It's fast, free, not yet cluttered with ads

That was essentially how people praised Google in their early days. It certainly has ads now.

wiether3• 2 months ago

People already talked about the Kagi Quick Answer feature with the question mark.

But if you still want ChatGPT/Claude, then you simply create a custom bang and associate it with something like `https://chatgpt.com/?q=%s`

So now in your address bar you type "how to center a div !gpt" and it will start a session with your query

aembleton• 2 months ago

If you use Firefox, then you can add chatgpt as a search engine with keyword gpt. Then you can type "gpt how to centre a div" into your address bar and get the same thing without routing it through Kagi, or needing Kagi.

jfim• 2 months ago

Claude is https://claude.ai/new?q=%s

0123456789ABCDE• 2 months ago

try this:

  https://chatgpt.com/?q=how%20to%20decompress%20a%20tarball
  https://claude.ai/new?q=how%20to%20create%20a%20tarball

17186274404• 2 months ago

You could get the same result from registering ChatGPT as a search provider in your browser.

leokennis• 2 months ago

Me too. To be honest, I am not that interested in reading the first 5-10 search results to find what I am looking for. If Google can do that for me and summarize the main points, that's another 10 minutes of my life saved.

LtWorf6• 2 months ago

If it didn't just make stuff up it would be even better!

acdha2• 2 months ago

The problem is that it’s both slow and treacherous. They can work on performance but the convenience is really undercut by it being wrong a significant amount of the time and incomplete even more frequently so I have to review the search results anyway.

wisemanwillhear• 2 months ago

It takes me little more than a second to open a chat session with an AI. I spend way more time asking my question that pulling it up. All I have to do is type two characters in my address bar the browser knows which URL I want. That's like VI command speed. Two letters... <Enter>... the website loads within a second, the chat text box is focused and I make my request.

bratsche• 2 months ago

There have been a few times where I found Google's AI mode useful. But most of the time I just want regular search results.

I'm among the people who finally moved to DuckDuckGo as my default. And for the occasional time when I want some AI mode I know how to get to Google.

ctrlkctrls• 2 months ago

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 <ICE vehicle> 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 <ICE vehicle> and how often one should change the oil, and which brand of oil that blog is pushing etc etc.

I love Google's AI answers and their AI Mode tab. DDG is just Bing or a search vendor proxy, so I've never understood the fascination. At least Perplexity is different to Google. DDG seeing a 28% increase is like Google saying they saw a drop of 0.0000000001% in traffic.

HN crowd forget that the world isn't like us, they didn't grow up with Yahoo and Alta Vista, with Excite etc etc. Our SOP is to resist all change, anytime Apple brings out a new version it'll be the end of Apple according to HN - Apple - the biggest company in the world - what do they know about UI, "Liquid Glass sucks!" :) :)

We're a community in danger of pushing out those new to the tech world, recent graduates will be made to feel unwelcome if we continue to trash everything that the biggest companies in the world do, like we always know better. I implore the community to be more positive about the future, about the technologies that will take us into that future.

SoftTalker2• 2 months ago

I like having a direct answer to my question "how much oil does my engine take" but as of today I do not trust the answer to be correct, so I still cross check several sources, ideally ones that appear to be authoritative.

dualvariable2• 2 months ago

I asked claude to dig up the current Ford Bulletin for the engine in my truck to tell me the recommended motor oil. And it found the updated recommendations properly. I wouldn't trust google AI because I know specifically that the recommendations changed, and I don't want whatever the published specs were when the engine was first manufactured, which is out of date (and found on lots of low quality blogs). I don't even trust claude, but it gave me the URL to click on to verify and summarized it well enough that I mostly trusted that it wasn't using the cited technical bulletin and not a bunch of random AI-slop web pages.

pesus3• 2 months ago

Being critical about AI companies isn't what's pushing new people away from the tech world. The AI companies and the consequences of their actions are, as well as comments like this pretending the issues don't exist and that we need to just be positive about the "future".

And supposing these technologies do take us into the future: when said future is bleak and worse in most ways than what came before, people aren't going to be encouraged or enthusiastic about the tech world.

mrdependable2• 2 months ago

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.

malfist2• 2 months ago

I search for how much oil does my <ICE vehicle> 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 <ICE vehicle> and how often one should change the oil, and which brand of oil that blog is pushing etc etc.

Don't you have to do that _anyway_? Unless you're just blindly trusting the AI to be correct, and if that's the case, please do enjoy gluing your cheese to your pizza.

argomo• 2 months ago

Yeah, but perhaps we're getting to the point where the AI synthesis of all reachable data sources is going to be more truthy than trusting whatever random anonymous result you pick from the top half of the results page.

I'm also finding that the AI-cited links are often more helpful and authoritative than the top search results.

bigstrat2003• 2 months ago

You're entitled to your opinion. But "we should embrace the stuff big tech is doing" does not follow from "let's be welcoming to new entrants to the field". They are, of course, welcome to their opinions as well. But even if they and I disagree on things, that doesn't make them unwelcome. So no, I'm not going to embrace the slop Google is putting out based on a spurious concern over welcoming newcomers.

48terry2• 2 months ago

search for how much oil does my <ICE vehicle> take" and get the exact answer in a single sentence

How do you know the answer is exact?

or I suppose I could click the links and wade through all the validation for choosing <ICE vehicle> and how often one should change the oil, and which brand of oil that blog is pushing etc etc.

Where do you think that "exact answer" is being scraped and averaged-out from?

gverrilla• 2 months ago

I've never seen such a reaction to Apple on HN. Quite to the contrary, there are a lot of fanboys here. A lot of macOS-only software is promoted here and I rarely see any complaints in the comments.

amoss• 2 months ago

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.

asciimoo• 2 months ago

I'm seeing the same increased activity around my search engine project (https://github.com/asciimoo/hister). While Google's decision is very controversial, it's good to see that people are seeking for alternatives - nice motivation boost to keep developing alternative search projects.

Imnimo• 2 months ago

I direct a lot of questions to LLMs, but I want to ask a high-quality model, not the crappy one that Google uses to answer queries. If I'm typing something into Google, it's because I want a search result, not an LLM answer.

xmprt• 2 months ago

I've actually changed that. When I type something into Google it's because I want an LLM answer - their search results have been useless for a while now. But that's only because I rarely use Google these days. I'm mostly using DDG to search (I might try Kagi at some point). Google is relegated to my phone when I want a quick answer where accuracy isn't critical without needing to scroll through a bunch of search results/open and read websites on a small screen.

ruszki• 2 months ago

Kagi, unfortunately, is getting worse too. I think mainly because they don’t get access. But I’m not sure. I had to fallback more and more to Google, because Kagi couldn’t find exact matches, while Google could. Like texts which I copied from a webpage (for example from Android’s source), and it can’t find it.

Its search results ordering is quite good, but the accessible information for them seems to be shrinking. And quickly.

I’m at the point where I don’t search for complex things anymore. I use Kagi for things which can be found with any search engines. Not because I chose it, but because I was forced. This was not the case a few years back, when I started to use it.

Btw, there was one thing with which Google was superior all along: define <word>. And they fucking killed it in the past months, for a far, far worse solution. Nothing comes even close.

deltoidmaximus• 2 months ago

If I'm typing something into a google it's usually so I can be hit with a Captcha on my home internet connection and then get search results that aren't even any better than DDG. And DDG has a LLM as well.

pesus3• 2 months ago

You've got the captcha issue as well? Seems like it's happening constantly now. I suspect Apple Private Relay has something to do with it, but I'm not sure.

SubiculumCode3• 2 months ago

I do have to say, and this is from recent observations, not outdated ones, but their AI summaries get things wrong, alot, and these are things that gemini (proper), Claude, or ChatGPT subscription AI's don't get wrong.

sunaookami2• 2 months ago

I don't know why their AI summary model is so bad, yet when you just click through to AI mode it's miles better...

yieldcrv• 2 months ago

0.1% to 0.128% is 28% as well

gsky• 2 months ago

I moved from ddg to Google ai. I find it really awesome

ChrisArchitect• 2 months ago

What is the source of these numbers? Where is the DDG statement posted? Techcrunch? Thurrot? Links to links to links to nothing

arikrahman• 2 months ago

I'm not sure why people go with DuckDuckGo as their engine as it's just trading Google for Bing. After learning about their deal with Microsoft, I started using Brave Search instead.

fckgw• 2 months ago

Because they want something they know that resembles the old Google Search which DDG provides.

dawnerd• 2 months ago

It's also pretty ironic for people to ditch Google over ai just to move to another search engine that has AI by default unless you happen to know about the noai subdomain. But it is good that people are willing to break the habit and try alternatives. That's what Google should be scared of.

chrismarlow9• 2 months ago

It's been my default search for years. Lately for quick one shot AI prompts I use duck.ai (they put some basic effort into anonymizing your chat: https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/duckai/ai-chat-... ).

For the search, some of the local results are wrong but I live in a very small area so it may be more reliable for highly populated areas. Lately I've been checking out Kagi for a few things just to see what the quality is like on competition. The anonymized chat (proxy) for AI is cool but very small context limit. Good for looking up random questions and they typically include references.

shevy-java2• 2 months ago

I am trying to find a replacement for google search.

DuckDuckGo was also useless. Qwant just copy/pastes Google's awful UI.

We kind of see that all search engines suck now, but in many cases there is no real reason why that should be the case. For instance, why did Qwant copy/paste Google's horrible UI? There is no logical reason for this other than trying to bait in people who like the Google search UI. I don't like that UI Google chose since like 10 years or more; Google ruined its search engine already way before AI.

We really need a search engine that works and isn't control by a greedy, Evil adCompany. DDG isn't the answer; neither is Qwant.

benced2• 2 months ago

... DDG had .7% marketshare (https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share). 28% more visits would take it to .84%. Assuming those all come from Google, that would mean .16% of Google users didn't love AI mode enough to switch.

Classic example of misleading with stats.

onlyrealcuzzo• 2 months ago

DDG is probably regularly growing at ~20%+ anyway...

Google's search volume has been growing 12%+ per year for 20+ years, there's obviously much more room for volatility when you're smaller...

hansmayer2• 2 months ago

Well... it is still a huge relative increase. And who knows where it could lead them, if they can sustain that sort of growth on a weekly basis...compounding and all...

benced2• 2 months ago

The headline is implying that AI mode is super unpopular with the very large number "28" and not the more accurate number of .16.

Tubelord2• 2 months ago

I wonder what other alternative search engines Google lost to besides DDG.

30minAdayHN• 2 months ago

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 premium Kagi on iPhone.

metalliqaz• 2 months ago

Google is better than Duck's backend (Bing or Yahoo, IIRC)

However, I find that most of my queries don't require Google to find the result. Maybe once every couple days I do a search, don't like the results, and then add a "!g". Most of the time it's fine and I get to avoid Google's ecosystem.

specproc• 2 months ago

Yeah, same. Switched my default to Duck about a year back although I've still got Google on mobile (something I only just clocked as I type).

Google search had degraded so badly pre-AI, I was already finding it equivalent for most things. The odd few searches benefit from Google, but nowhere near enough to warrant them as a default.

siquick3• 2 months ago

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

ymhr• 2 months ago

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.

nyjah• 2 months ago

It's the french open. There's always been a bug with google search where sometimes I have to search 'french open' or 'australian open' twice to get it to give me the google scores. That bug still exists, sometimes it just brings up the site, but now it will also sometimes just go into AI mode and it will refuse to get out of it. Like even when you click for otherwise, it will force its way back.

The google live scores is a great feature. But when it's not coming up, even googling "french open google live scores" doesn't just bring it up every single time. It might if you try, but try multiple times over the day...

vessenes• 2 months ago

Both can be true. A small number dropping off could be a big boost for DDG.

wordpad• 2 months ago

28% more visits

So, from 3 to 4 people?

d--b• 2 months ago

maybe AI agents prefer duckduckgo?

SubiculumCode3• 2 months ago

I dislike the AI summaries always popping up. I do now see an AI mode button. But so far I am not forced into AI mode. Is this happening for other people?

runjake• 2 months ago

Append "udm=14" to your Google searches to make this stuff go away (for now, until Google removes it).

You can add a custom search engine to your browser with something like:

  https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14

Sometimes that will glitch out on Chromium browsers. If so, try this variant:

  {google:baseURL}search?q=%s&udm=14

dartharva• 2 months ago

This↑ - I had also jumped ship to DDG until I realized this query string still works on Google.

jmyeet• 2 months ago

If you want to use DDG then go for it. Let people enjoy things, I say. But let's not pretend DDG is suddenly surging, or even relevant really. It's a niche service largely for virtue-signaling by people who insist that "Google sucks". That's their core demographic.

Some Googling claims DDG gets 145M searches per day and claims Google gets ~14B. Well, 14B translates to ~162k QPS. I know for a fact that Google's traffic is significantly higher than that so I'm not sure where that claim comes from.

I honeslty don't believe a significant percentage of Google users even know Sundar made a statement about people loving AI mode or would even care, one way or the other. This is just more marketing fluff trying to will DDG growth into existence.

ymolodtsov• 2 months ago

AI Mode is pretty good. It's quite reliable and much faster than any LLM chatbot.

AI Overviews are pretty bad though.

nikole96962• 2 months ago

If I want AI, I'll use AI. If I want Search, I want Search. Give me the option. Then again I switched to DDG like, last year.

bagol2• 2 months ago

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.

cryo322• 2 months ago

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

Also sorry!

bagol2• 2 months ago

Indonesia

wasting_time• 2 months ago

I don't have enough karma to vouch bagols answer, but in case you don't have showdead turned on: they live in Indonesia.

pjmlp• 2 months ago

Yeah, nowadays it is a tragedy to find anything useful on the first results page.

partiallypro• 2 months ago

AI snippets are just terrible, I always just scroll past it. I want to find the website I'm looking for, if I wanted to use AI I'd open up an AI app or website.

ashm1104• 2 months ago

Oh thank God, I am not the only one here, I mean idk why but I am still not so comfortable with AI mode,and I just need Search, like good old search. I feel this all started when people were saying things like google search is dead or gpt will take over..

Also why is AI mode default?

josefritzishere2• 2 months ago

Consumers have spoken. They hate AI. Woe unto those tech companies who fail to listen. Your competitors will be happy to take your customers.

apparent• 2 months ago

I wonder if the 28% more visits was mostly among existing users. I skimmed the article and it didn't look like this was broken out. It would be much more impactful/impressive if they brought in a bunch of new users, as opposed to ratcheting up usage among people who were already aware of it.

ThomPete• 2 months ago

That will fall again and everyone will be back to google

juancn• 2 months ago

Google has ~90% of search where DuckDuckGo has <1%.

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.

throwaway274483• 2 months ago

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

schnitzelstoat• 2 months ago

The ‘bullshit’ is often better than the results though.

I don’t have to click through a load of cookie banners and login popups to see it.

cheeseface• 2 months ago

0.3% is definitely not a ”rounding error”. For Google it would mean roughly $650M drop in revenue.

crowcroft2• 2 months ago

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.

r0fl• 2 months ago

$650mil rounds to zero in a company worth trillions

gonational• 2 months ago

$400,000,000,000 revenue, 2025.

$650 million is a rounding error.

nitwit0052• 2 months ago

That's users changing products in advance of a change, which is a relatively uncommon thing. We'll presumably see another bump when Google actually rolls out their changes.

furyofantares• 2 months ago

Well, it's users trying another product anyway.

jstummbillig• 2 months ago

Why would that be problematic? People are AI outraged. Some of them will move. Those who stay like it better.

dminik• 2 months ago

I'm in these stats I think. But mostly because I was trying to do an exact search ("something to search") and discovered that google just ignores it.

There's a local search engine with a motto that translates to something like "Find what you don't know." Google has seemingly adapted "find what you don't want."

gdiamos• 2 months ago

Instead of move to duck duck go I just stopped using search

Ferret7446• 2 months ago

How much traffic does ddg get normally? For such a small player, 28% could very well be normal variance.

chasd00• 2 months ago

I’d like to see the total number of visits. Also, I hope no one is reading this as a 28% reduction in Google use.

add-sub-mul-div• 2 months ago

About a third of the comments on this site are in this genre of: imagine the typical reader is dumber than you so that you can explain things to them.

dtnewman• 2 months ago

Google has 90% market share. DDG has 0.7%. I don't have a POV on whether AI mode is good or not, but surely there's gonna be some people who dislike it, and even if that's a tiny percentage, it can be a huge boost to DDG.

Retric• 2 months ago

0.7% * 1.28 = 0.9% market share today.

A large fraction of the people using Google probably have no idea DDG exists. So the backlash is likely significantly larger than just the 0.2% who left to this search engine.

wiether3• 2 months ago

Chrome/Android users in the UE have, at least, heard about DDG.

FiatLuxDave• 2 months ago

I rarely use Google for search, but I've actually gone back a few times just to use the AI search function. Occasionally it is useful, especially when I can't think of the correct term to search for.

But recently I had an entertaining experience with it. I was trying to apply a math technique to an application it wasn't normally used for, and I figured that somewhere out there was a paper or two explaining how to do what I was attempting. So, I tried Googling, and the response was something like:

"You appear to be working with two completely different areas of mathematics, which have absolutely no connections between them. That's fascinating! Would you like to know more about either of these two completely separated subjects which have nothing to do with each other?"

Not useful, Google, but definitely good for a laugh.

ShinyLeftPad• 2 months ago

I read it because it's shown before search results now but I have to stop myself to not accidentally rely on it. Had two times it misinformed me pretty blatantly and its links to sources are wrong a lot.

KaiMagnus• 2 months ago

I've been using it a lot in recent months, even though I was very critical about this in the past.

Of course, asking it to give yes/no answers or specific numbers is asking for trouble, but finally I can let something else read the SEOed garbage, point me in the right direction and let me browse the search results in a much more pleasant way than before.

puskavi• 2 months ago

wheels gotta turn even if driver is heading towards ledge

worik2• 2 months ago

Duckduckgo.com has a AI advisor too. I know not of Google's, I really do not give a soft hoot.

The DDG one is good, useful

Tubelord2• 2 months ago

Also toggle-able with a very visible and accessible widget that remembers your choice.

1vuio0pswjnm74• 2 months ago

Neither Google nor Kagi has an .onion address. Unlike DDG

freediver2• 2 months ago

Not sure what you use for search, but it could be better ;)

http://kagi2pv5bdcxxqla5itjzje2cgdccuwept5ub6patvmvn3qgmgjd6...

(from https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/accessing-via-tor...)

1vuio0pswjnm74• 2 months ago

Thank you. I confess I only looked for it in the HTTP headers, no search

For example, DDG puts it in the content-security-policy header

dayeye2006• 2 months ago

Feel duckduckgo can make an API for agent usage of search engine

dmkolobov• 2 months ago

when I saw this headline my first thought was: wow DDG must not have a lot of users.

bborud• 2 months ago

Let’s be honest: ai mode is less shit than the ads that, for some searches, all but replace all legitimate content.

But it is still shit compared to a search engine. Which Google no longer is.

There’s a real opening for actual search engines now.

arjie• 2 months ago

Wait, Duck Duck Go has some 50 million MAUs and that went to 65 million MAUs or so. Google has 5 billion MAUs, so some 15/5000 users went to Duck Duck Go. That doesn't seem damning. 99.97% of Google users didn't go to DDG.

foxglacier3• 2 months ago

Yep but most news readers are innumerate and scientifically illiterate so they just get swept up by the narrative.

erfgh• 2 months ago

For those that don't know, DDG already has an AI mode: duck.ai

da768• 2 months ago

More like Google started requiring a captcha in Firefox mobile

luckydata• 2 months ago

that 28% is what, 3 people?

felooboolooomba2• 2 months ago

I like the AI mode, but only because Google intentionally destroyed their search engine. There wasn't any real competition back then, but now everyone has access to AI. They're frantically trying to keep their search engine customers.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

gblargg2• 2 months ago

Years back Google temporarily put their old database from the good times up for searching. You could actually find technical results reliably. It was so nice.

RigelKentaurus• 2 months ago

Makes sense to me. When I use Google, I am interested in getting the information quickly and in the right length and format, and am not interested in navigating to particular page(s) and looking up that info myself. Perhaps this will impact Adwords revenue in the long run but Google will find a way out. If Google didn't have AI mode, I would've stopped using it completely.

andxor2• 2 months ago

The same people who told you Google was going to zero three years ago because Search would become irrelevant are now telling you users will move away from Google because it’s removing Search.

When will people learn that the quality of Google’s leadership is better than that of the average Joe on Hacker News or a random tech journalist writing clickbait articles?

foxglacier3• 2 months ago

Looks like you're making the common mistake of counting all people you disagree with as the same person. In this case they're clearly different - AI proponents and AI skeptics respectively.

But your 2nd paragraph is spot on.

andxor2• 2 months ago

I'm calling out the "tech opinionist community" broadly speaking. I don't know if it's the same exact people but it's often the same forums or news outlets.

oofbaroomf• 2 months ago

If DDG got 28% more visits, Google lost about .6% of their visits.

uejfiweun• 2 months ago

I use DDG but the problem I have with it is that, well, the results just kind of suck. I have slowly used the "!g" operator more and more over the years to the point that now probably 95% of my DDG searches are just Google searches.

madrox• 2 months ago

It's difficult to put my finger on it, but there is something about Google's AI UX that I deeply dislike. It has nothing to do with the quality of the response, which seems fine, but...

The header and input bars are too big. The max width of the response is too narrow. The font is too large. The way it renders onto the page feels weirdly clunky. There is a whole sidebar in addition to the top bar just for two buttons. In the + button under user input, they hide everything under there like model selection even though there's a ton of real estate to the right of it. Everything feels unnecessarily cramped on the page in spite of ridiculous amounts of whitespace.

Yet my ultimate dislike feels like something more than the sum of the parts. It feels like the Yahoo of AI. Anyone not relying on distribution advantages would know they need to do better.

It really speaks to Google's perennial weakness: they can never seem to make an incredible UX.

flaviolivolsi• 2 months ago

I guess that's because they hardly ever build a product that's really theirs. Google Cloud came in response to Amazon (who built AWS because they needed it themselves), Gemini came in response to ChatGPT, etc. and it always shows

epolanski• 2 months ago

I use a mix of Bing (as Edge Is my daily driver) and duckduckgo, and i have to say I rarely need to use Google.

I don't think that's because they are better search engines, but because their usage covers 99% of my queries and some AI like perplexity covers the remaining 1%.

ljsprague• 2 months ago

I just don’t like the name.

crowcroft2• 2 months ago

Important context: In terms of total share of search a 28% lift for DuckDuckGo rounds down to zero.

The flip side is that multiple AI Search engines have overtaken and lapped DuckDuckGo many many times over in the past year or so.

motoxpro• 2 months ago

And its 28% on the noai.duckduckgo.com domain, not in total. So it's even smaller.

abirch• 2 months ago

could be the AI overlords going there to scrape more data.

starkeeper• 2 months ago

Go Go DUck Maaan.

Even if the backend is bing, they have somehow made it work. It's is a weird bonus for Microsoft.... If they don't try to copy google they can finally get some search market share!

LOL.

Hopefully this will inspire new teams to create indexed based search alternatives that are free and not enshitified, like google used to be in the early 2010s.

Hobadee• 2 months ago

I love the way Kagi does AI - it defaults to a regular search, but if you add a question mark to the end, it will give you an AI answer. Additionally there is a small "quick answer" button at the top of all results that will give an AI answer if clicked.

Grimblewald• 2 months ago

AI is like sex. I don't mind it, heck in the right situation I'm quite partial to it. However, if you keep trying to sneak it on me while I sleep, keep trying to slip it into agreements, keep involving people i didnt consent to being involved etc. The whole thing takes on a very ugly vibe. In fact I'm going to grow to be quite hostile toward it. Consent matters, not that I'd expect that lesson to land within silicon valley, second most rapey place in the USA after LA.

dev1ycan• 2 months ago

You know what is crazy, that this whole bullshit "MDC" garbage "API" that websites and stuff like Outlook have is stuff that they could have had by having SIMPLER settings in their services, they obfuscate them like hell then they give the "solution" simple API to agents so that THEY can easily use their services, but not humans.

It's so disgusting, I hate this industry.

brikym• 2 months ago

So a tiny fraction of people left Google to DDG? Seems like they both win.

yakbarber• 2 months ago

it's a solution looking for a problem and google are desperate to stay relevant there.

We just don't need to search as much. But I _do_ still want to search sometimes, it's still a valid use case, just not as important as it used to be.

But when a do search, I want simple, relevant, external search results so that I can go straight to those good sources. Google isn't satisfied with their returns on that though.

arun6582• 2 months ago

I want alternative to YouTube where dislike button count is shown.

timsuchanek• 2 months ago

I hope they use DuckDB

matt3210• 2 months ago

Ai is free now, how cool. Now we make an agent that uses google search ai in playwright.

frr149• 2 months ago

We have all overused a single solution to "finding stuff on the web": the search engine. Now it's dying, killed by AI and by Google's greed.

There's no alternative left, no webrings, no web directories. If all your content is now only on your server, you're invisible.

somat• 2 months ago

Do your part, link to a website you enjoy.

In some ways the last bastion of the real web are the web comics. Small personal projects where they link to like minded other projects.

PAndreew• 2 months ago

I already submitted my take on this to Show HN: https://currantfeed.cc/. Noone gave a shit so it's most likely a very bad idea and certainly a very steep uphill battle. It's basically an Airbnb for websites that by default randomly sorts them and then you can filter by different attributes. Owners have to submit and maintain their "listings". It does have an optional subscription (I'm not sure if it works haven't tested it).

p0w3n3d2• 2 months ago

To be honest I use Google AI mode a lot. And Duckduckgo for private search. I default to DDG and use !g if I want to resign from privacy or find some merchandise to buy

Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe• 2 months ago

You mean looking for merchandise is something you're fine being tracked and funneled into the product with the best SEO game?

p0w3n3d2• 2 months ago

actually yes. Google has better mechanism of finding the products I am looking for. Some would say this is serene acceptance (fifth stage of grief). Also when tuning my browser too much towards the privacy, I kept getting mugged by "please show all the bicycles on the picture" for too many times, so I acknowledge I will be shoved up in my a...throat with new models of the washing machine I've just bought, and the sexy lingerie for some reason, that I'm not really sure of.

mock-possum• 2 months ago

Wonder how satisfied all those new people are with ddg’s results

I never had much luck with it - this mostly covers my experience: https://www.tumblr.com/ddgvsggl

deafpolygon• 2 months ago

People don't love AI mode. It's just the only way to get good results on Google anymore.

thecopy• 2 months ago

I 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.

TonyStr• 2 months ago

It certainly struggles a lot more with non-English queries. Been using it since 2019

ChuckMcM• 2 months ago

The AI stuff got my wife to switch. So there's that. I've been using DDG for a while.

nikolay• 2 months ago

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.

txdv• 2 months ago

how is duckduckgo using us?

shantnutiwari• 2 months ago

duck shoves AI results down my throat no matter how many times I say no. And they are getting more aggressive with their ads.

siquick3• 2 months ago

+1 for Kagi. Been a subscriber for almost 2 years and no intention of cancelling, it just works.

narrowtux• 2 months ago

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!

timbaboon• 2 months ago

I’m now paying for Kagi :/

lorentzokonwo• 2 months ago

Well good for them, stop forcing AI on people.

CodeWithAgents• 2 months ago

28% more of 100 users is still nothing ... who actually uses DuckDuckGo? It seems at least in the german market not relevant and a clone of BING anyways.

xinayder• 2 months ago

I remember when I watched a presentation from a Google engineer at a summer school for AI tech last year and I asked why Google shipped AI slop when no one wanted it. He tried to gaslight me saying "users like this feature", and I told him to look up every major forum on the web, there is not a single good comment about Gemini being forced on. Then he said it was just an A/B testing and that not everyone had it enabled by default.

I wouldn't be surprised if they made up the statistics to justify the enslopification.

p-t• 2 months ago

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

deaton• 2 months ago

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.

liampulles2• 2 months ago

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.

lumost• 2 months ago

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.

trvz• 2 months ago

I feel like the second scenario was never good with Google. You had to go through several search results describing other problems, and there was a high chance you still didn't find anything relating to yours; and then, it wasn't guaranteed that a years-old problem got fixed.

If I have an issue with my Mac, seeing an Apple Discussions result at the top readies me for disappointment.

Meanwhile, I've found a normal chat with current ChatGPT to be very helpful, as long as it isn't about itself or other OpenAI products.

liampulles2• 2 months ago

My usecase would be investigating a potential integration - I want to go and see everyone's comments on the websites themselves. I'm not looking for an answer - I don't know the question - I'm looking for understanding.

hedora• 2 months ago

If you love AI mode, then won't you just use a chat app? That'll search Google for you, and it'll keep more context, use a better model, etc, etc.

When people open a search bar and type stuff, they're showing an incredibly strong intent to... search the web.

This reminds me of when MS tried to turn all Windows user interactions into bing, or (even worse) copilot. How did that work out for them?

Anyway, unlike windows, there's zero cost to switch away from Google's search product. I'm predicting a bigger backfire.

pmdr• 2 months ago

Alternative search engines are popular with the tech/HN bubble. Other than Bing, they have no palpable market share. Google does not care about said bubble because it mostly overlaps people who would use an adblocker anyway and who are capable of finding their way around other for-profit restrictions (i.e. downloading videos with yt-dlp instead of paying for YT Premium).

DDG has <1% market share, so +28%, while encouraging, means nothing for the monopoly. I use it. I use Brave Search as well. Paid for Kagi for a while.

But getting people to use anything other than Google (or the default Bing for on Windows) is nearly impossible at scale.

4rachelp• 2 months ago

in case this point hasn't been made -- what was the baseline for the 28% more visits? duckduck go has like 1-2% search share. So, if there is even a small group of opinionated users who flee google, that would make a big difference. We can't conclude as a result that everyone hates the AI push.

dyauspitr• 2 months ago

People do like AI mode, though just notice the next time someone googles for something they will stop on the AI summary like 99% of the time

guluarte• 2 months ago

This reminds me when people where moving away from yahoo, ask jeeves to google

heyaco• 2 months ago

searXNG dumbojack

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

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