American search company DuckDuckGo saw a surge in users following Google’s AI search announcements, and the company is trying to capitalize on anti-AI sentiment.
Last month, Google hosted its annual I/O developer conference in California where it unveiled tons of AI tools and features. Some of these were standalone, but many are integrations into Google’s existing products. Most notable was the focus on AI search, which struck a chord with frustrated users.
See, there’s a growing sentiment that Google search as gotten worse in recent years, and the AI features certainly aren’t helping.
DuckDuckGo says that over six days following Google’s AI search announcements, it saw a surge in installs of its app and in visits to its AI-free search page.
App installs jumped 18 per cent week-over-week, peaking at nearly 30 per cent on May 25. Further, DuckDuckGo said iOS led all platforms with 33 per cent average week-over-week growth and peaking at almost 70 per cent on May 25.
Visits to DuckDuckGo’s AI-free search page, on the other hand, averaged nearly 23 per cent week-over-week growth and peaked at almost 28 per cent on May 24.
Unfortunately, DuckDuckGo only shared U.S. stats, though it did note that U.S. growth “ran multiples of the international rate.” The search company attributed that to Google limited many of the new AI features to the U.S. initially.
However, Google will likely expand many of the new features to other regions, including Canada, so it will be interesting to see if competitors like DuckDuckGo see growth in other regions as Google expands AI to more places.
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DuckDuckGo is leaning into the anti-AI wave as well. It launched new browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox that let users set their default search to DuckDuckGo’s AI-free search engine (noai.duckduckgo.com). The company has also placed ads on popular websites like Reddit highlighting its no AI search engine, which have received some praise from users. (For what it’s worth, the ad is clever, inviting people to the “duck” side of search.)
Of course, it’s worth noting that DuckDuckGo does offer AI search tools like Google, but makes them easy to disable for those who don’t want to use them. Still, it’s smart for DuckDuckGo to promote its no AI option and take advantage of the growing discontent with Google.
Whether you want to switch to DuckDuckGo or another search engine, we’ve got a full guide detailing the many Google altneratives out there and how to switch to them.
Header image credit: DuckDuckGo (screenshot)
Source: DuckDuckGo Via: Gizmodo, TechCrunch
