Last week, after Google announced its huge overhaul to Search, I overheard a woman on the phone saying she was switching to DuckDuckGo because you can “opt out of using AI.”
“Google just isn’t Google anymore,” she said. It seems that others had the same idea.
At I/O, Google’s annual developer conference, the company said it would transform its search box into a conversational engine that expands for longer queries, anticipates user intent, and autocompletes searches. Rather than just returning a list of links, it will use AI Overviews to answer questions directly first. Google also unveiled a more seamless AI Mode, allowing users to ask follow-up questions within AI Overviews.
While a Google spokesperson noted that AI Overviews have existed for two years and AI Mode is not the default, the backlash has been sharp.
Some have argued it will kill the open web, while others shared concerns that AI overviews surface inaccurate responses and take away control from users who might not want to use AI. It also overcomplicates simple things. Just try to Google the word “disregard.”
In response to Google’s changes, many have begun defecting to DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused alternative that has never been able to break past Google’s dominance, accounting for only around 2% of the U.S. search market.
During Google’s search antitrust trial in 2023, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg testified that Google’s exclusive default search contracts harmed its ability to pitch itself as the default on other browsers.
“Google is force-feeding AI with no way to opt out,” Weinberg said Tuesday in a statement, referring to Google’s Search overhaul. “As a result, their results are getting worse, not better. We want to be the place that puts users in charge and allows them to decide how much or how little AI they want.”
Now, it seems that DuckDuckGo is beginning to benefit as consumers flee AI.
DuckDuckGo said U.S. app installs went up 18.1% week-over-week on average during the May 20 to May 25 period, compared to May 13 to May 18. The company said that growth was sustained for six consecutive days and peaked at 30.5% on May 25. On iOS, the rate of install is even higher, with week-over-week growth hitting a 33% average, peaking at 69.9%.
The search engine also said visits to its AI-free search page, noai.duckduckgo.com, averaged 22.7% WoW growth, peaking at 27.7% on May 24. The page turns off every AI feature, like AI-assisted answers and AI-generated images, by default. (A spokesperson pointed out that Google offers a web filter on Search for those who just want to see a list of blue links.)
DuckDuckGo said the trend is stronger in the U.S, and that DuckDuckGo continued to gain users over the Memorial Day weekend, when it usually sees a dip in traffic.
Some of that data is backed up by third parties. App analytics company Apptopia found a 29% increase in average daily downloads in the U.S. and a 12% increase globally over the same period.
DuckDuckGo offers its own AI product called Duck.ai. It’s free and doesn’t require users to make an account, but provides access to models, including Anthropic’s Claude 4.5 Haiku, Meta’s Llama 4 Scout, Mistral’s Small 3 24B, and OpenAI’s GPT-5 mini. All chats are private because DuckDuckGo strips the user’s IP address before requests reach model providers, deletes conversations within 30 days, and prevents chats from being used for training.
“Not only do we respect user choice, but also user privacy,” Weinberg said. “Everything you do in DuckDuckGo is private, we don’t collect search histories or chats and nothing is used for AI training.”
DuckDuckGo also offers Search Assist, which is similar to Google’s AI overviews, and an AI Image Filter that filters out AI-created images from search results.
Kamyl Bazbaz, DuckDuckGo’s chief communications and policy officer, said both of those AI features are among the company’s most popular, despite their differing ethos.
“People just want a choice,” Bazbaz said.
A Google spokesperson pointed TechCrunch to a blog post published recently by VP of search Elizabeth Reid, in which she states that a year after its debut, AI Mode has surpassed one billion monthly users with queries more than doubling every quarter since launch.
This article has been updated with analytics from Apptopia and comment from Google. An earlier version of this article misstated Google’s search overhaul.
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