DuckDuckGo usage has skyrocketed after Google announced its biggest search overhaul in decades, suggesting some users may be looking for alternatives as the internet giant pushes deeper into AI.
In the seven days following Google’s May 19 I/O conference announcement, U.S. installs increased an average of 20.8% week over week, according to privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo.
Growth peaked at 37.6% on May 26, according to DuckDuckGo. For iOS in the US, installs increased by an average of 33% during the same period, reaching a nearly 70% increase on May 25th.
DuckDuckGo also announced that visits to noai.duckduckgo.com pages, where AI features are disabled by default, increased by an average of 22.7% week over week.
It’s unclear whether Google’s changes directly caused the increase, but the timing is notable.
At I/O, Google announced a major redesign of search that incorporates more AI features into the core search experience. The company is integrating AI mode functionality directly into the main search box, allowing users to ask longer conversational questions and upload images, videos, files, and browser tabs. Google is also adding AI-generated suggestions and follow-up conversations directly within search.
DuckDuckGo executives claimed that some users are pushing back on that approach.
“Google is force-feeding its AI with no way to opt out,” DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg said in a statement. “We want to give users control and be a place where they can decide how much or how little AI they want.”
DuckDuckGo spokesperson Kamil Bazbaz said this spike in usage was completely unprecedented in recent memory.
“There hasn’t been a news event that generated this much buzz in a long time,” BuzzBuzz told Business Insider. “I would have remembered one.”
Still, the data is limited to DuckDuckGo’s internal numbers, and it remains difficult to measure broader changes in search behavior.
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