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DuckDuckGo installs are up 30% as users reject being ‘force-fed’ Google’s AI Search
(techcrunch.com)
Oh yeah wasn't that coming out today? How'd that go?
this post was submitted on 27 May 2026
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i remember googling a script how to code in a something google engine with a -noai into my firefox. not one week passes and that search extension has somehow turned into an ai exclusive search engine swear to, uh, fuck. i forgot i can't believe i legitimately have to look this one up. Hieronymous Theodor Richter and Ferdinand Reich, gods of me breaking electronics whenever i walk into the fucking room. my religion is getting so goddamned weird my wife is right. anyways that was when i stopped using google for good and using duckduckgo. but even the duckduckgo-noai bullshit script did that, i did all the antivirus malwarebytes bullshit swear to... fuck. Hieronymous Theodor Richter and Ferdinand Reich. I really should have picked people to engodden with shorter and easier to remember names, like Pierre Jules Cesar Jannsenn. Anysays, i just ended up having to make a duckducklogin and tell it no ai which doesn't that defeat the purpose of going from the duck?
If you change your region to France on Google it doesn’t give you the default AI results.
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(5 replies)
who knew...
Well, isn't that a shock. What I want to see is 💯 of web searchers avoiding Google.
Are people already getting these AI-only, blue-link-less Google results? Mine are still normal.
I got it once, and didn't like it one bit.
And I'm long time user of local LLMs. I use Google AI Studio sometimes. But that's just "AI" precisely when and where I do not want it.
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(1 replies)
I haven't used Google for about three years now, other than to compare it to DDG results now and then.
They are not the same, in spite of the claims of others on Lemmy.
DDG does have an AI assistant that you can turn off (allegedly). This is on Firefox browser, Windows OS.