New Delhi: Google’s push to make searches more AI-led is starting to send some users in the opposite direction. Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has reported a sharp rise in US app installs and visits to its AI-free search page after Google announced its new feature at I/O 2026 on 19 May.
According to data shared by DuckDuckGo with TechCrunch, US app installs rose 18.1 per cent week-on-week on average between 20 and 25 May, compared with 13 to 18 May. The increase peaked at 30.5 per cent on 25 May. On iOS, installs rose 33 per cent on average and peaked at nearly 70 per cent. DuckDuckGo also said visits to its search page with AI features turned off rose nearly 22.7 per cent on average, peaking at 27.7 per cent on 24 May.
The spike followed Google’s announcement last week that it was bringing more Gemini-powered features. The search engine described it as the biggest upgrade in the past 25 years, with AI agents and a more intelligent AI-powered search box. In a separate I/O roundup, Google added that AI-mode had crossed over one billion monthly users and was upgraded globally with Gemini 3.5 Flash as the default model.
The future of the search box
For Google, this is the next phase. Some users, however, prefer a search engine that behaves less like a chatbot. DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg told TechCrunch that Google was “force-feeding AI with no way to opt out” and that his search engine instead wanted to let users decide how much or how little AI they wanted.
DuckDuckGo is not anti-AI. It has its own AI tools, including Duck.ai and Search Assist. The difference it is trying to sell is control. DuckDuckGo’s no-AI page turns off Search Assist, Duck.ai and filters out AI-generated images by default. Its help page says that the version is meant for users who want to search without AI.
Before it became the anti-AI search option of the week, DuckDuckGo already had a reputation among internet users who wanted to move outside Google’s field of vision. It has been associated with Tor, a free overlay network for enabling anonymous communication, since 2016. Tor switched to DuckDuckGo results by default, making it familiar to people using Tor for anonymous browsing.
The shift is still small in market terms. Google remains overwhelmingly dominant, and DuckDuckGo is nowhere close to replacing it as the default habit for most internet users. But the moment is useful for DuckDuckGo because it turns an old pitch, privacy, into a newer one: escape from AI clutter.
The issue is no longer only whether users want their searches tracked. It is whether they still want search results to look like search results.
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)