It’s happening. Not quietly. DuckDuckGo is seeing a wave of new users, and it lines up perfectly with Google’s big I/O conference. Coincidence? Maybe.
DuckDuckGo launched in 2008 on one promise: privacy. They don’t track you. They don’t log IPs. They don’t build a profile to sell ads based on what you typed at 2 a.m. Just results.
“We want to be the place that puts Users in charge…”
— Gabriel Weinberg, CEO of DuckDuckGo
The numbers are sharp. Between May 20 and May 26, US browser installations jumped 21% compared to the prior week. Tuesday alone? A 37% spike. iOS installs on Memorial Day shot up 69%. Social media mentions skyrocketed 500% across TikTok, Reddit, Instagram, and X. People are talking. They are switching.
Why now? Google I/O.
May 19-20 was filled with announcements. More AI. Expanded answers. You can now drop videos or pictures into the search bar. It’s multimodal. It’s impressive tech, maybe, but users aren’t celebrating. They are retreating.
Gabriel Weinberg says Google is force-feeding AI with no opt-out. Search quality is dropping, according to reports, and users are fed up.
Control vs. Convenience
Google claims its AI Mode button has over 1 billion monthly active users. Elizabeth Reid, VP of search at Google, says AI Mode queries doubled every quarter last year. Total searches hit an all-time high in Q1 2026. The growth is undeniable.
But growth doesn’t always mean love.
There is a text-only filter on Google search, a way to strip the AI overviews, if you know where to look. DuckDuckGo bakes this into their DNA. Their “Search Assist” feature uses AI, but you control the dial. Turn it down. Turn it off completely.
Or go nuclear.
Use noai.duckduckgo.com. No AI answers. No generated images. Pure web. This specific tool saw a 23% bump in searches last week.
People want choice. Not forced features.
Kamyl Bazbaz, DuckDunkGo’s head of communications, puts it bluntly: “People just want a choice.”
There’s also Duck.ai. A chatbot. You pick the model. OpenAI? Anthropic? Your pick. And when you hit that Ask AI button? They don’t keep your history. They don’t train models on your chats. Nothing is used for AI training.
Is privacy still a selling point in the age of algorithms? Or are we just tired of being the product?
Google pushes forward with integration. DuckDuckGo stands back and waits.
The door is open. The path isn’t entirely clear, but for the first time in a long while, users might actually get to choose which way to walk.
