DuckDuckGo says U.S. installs of its privacy-focused search engine rose an average of 20.8% week over week in the seven days after Google announced its biggest Search overhaul in decades at I/O on May 19, with growth peaking at 37.6% on May 26. iOS installs in the U.S. climbed an average of 33%, reaching nearly 70% growth on May 25. Visits to DuckDuckGo's noai.duckduckgo.com page, where AI features are turned off by default, rose 22.7% week-over-week. The Google overhaul brings more AI features into the core search experience, letting users ask longer conversational questions and surfacing AI-generated suggestions and follow-up conversations inside Search itself. DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg said “Google is force-feeding AI with no way to opt out,” positioning his company as the alternative. The data is limited to DuckDuckGo's own figures.
