DuckDuckGo sees a spike after Google’s Search overhaul

Users unhappy with Google’s increasingly AI-driven Search are apparently voting with their downloads.

DuckDuckGo said U.S. app installs rose 18.1% week over week on average during the May 20 to May 25 period, compared with the prior week. The company said the increase held for six straight days and peaked at 30.5% on May 25. On iOS, growth was even sharper: installs averaged 33% week over week and reached a peak of 69.9%.

The privacy-focused search engine also reported increased traffic to its AI-free search page, noai.duckduckgo.com, which turns off AI-assisted answers and AI-generated images by default. Visits to that page averaged 22.7% week-over-week growth and peaked at 27.7% on May 24. DuckDuckGo said the trend was stronger in the U.S. and continued through Memorial Day weekend, when traffic usually softens.

The surge follows Google’s announcement at I/O that its traditional list of blue links is being replaced by an AI agent designed to answer queries, execute tasks and run background monitoring agents. The move has drawn criticism from users who say they do not want AI inserted into every search, and from those worried that AI overviews can surface inaccurate responses or make simple searches more complicated.

DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg said in a statement Tuesday that Google is “force-feeding AI with no way to opt out,” adding that the company’s results are “getting worse, not better.” He said DuckDuckGo aims to give users control over how much AI they want.

DuckDuckGo has long struggled to challenge Google’s dominance, holding only about 2% of the U.S. search market. The company does offer its own AI product, Duck.ai, which is free and does not require an account. It provides access to models including Anthropic’s Claude 4.5 Haiku, Meta’s Llama 4 Scout and Mistral’s models.

Sources:

techcrunch.com