DuckDuckGo's AI-free search saw nearly 28% more visits in the week following Google's insistence that people love AI mode.
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DuckDuckGo's AI-free search saw nearly 28% more visits in the week following Google's insistence that people love AI mode. Is anyone surprised by this result?
@nixCraft I gotta be honest, when I go to google.com to search, which isn’t my default I’ve been using ecosia for years, I still just see normal search results and get a list of links to various sites. I see a new tab for “AI mode” but it’s not the default
Am I missing something with all this? The news I see makes it sound like old google search isn’t available anymore, but that doesn’t match with what I see, are folks out there seeing the AI stuff as the default?
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DuckDuckGo's AI-free search saw nearly 28% more visits in the week following Google's insistence that people love AI mode. Is anyone surprised by this result?
@nixCraft Duckduckgo is bing, and when microslop follow google lead they also are dead.
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@nixCraft I gotta be honest, when I go to google.com to search, which isn’t my default I’ve been using ecosia for years, I still just see normal search results and get a list of links to various sites. I see a new tab for “AI mode” but it’s not the default
Am I missing something with all this? The news I see makes it sound like old google search isn’t available anymore, but that doesn’t match with what I see, are folks out there seeing the AI stuff as the default?
@greenpepper22 @nixCraft they anounced it in their google I/O and started rolling out in the US
The time it's expended (and the cache pass) it can take week / month before it's completly rolled out).
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@nixCraft With all the Rx uncertainty (my client has to go without morphine approx a full week every 2-3 months), I have been researching options and I only do that on DDG.
@Darkphoenix @nixCraft so you in fact did it on bing as DDG is bing with an extra step
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@shaedrich @nixCraft Yes, but when you do, it almost begs you not to " But you'll lose all these useful things☆, are you sure?" and you need to confirm it, so not a single kill switch, after all.
This is despite the results of a user survey that overwhelmingly dismissed AI in the browser.
I am not saying that either of them are right to do this, just pointing out the difference in the implementation.☆Most of which aren't really that useful.
@wyliecoyoteuk @shaedrich @nixCraft but DDG is not a search engine tough ... they simply are a Bing front-end
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@greenpepper22 @nixCraft they anounced it in their google I/O and started rolling out in the US
The time it's expended (and the cache pass) it can take week / month before it's completly rolled out).
@hidikem @nixCraft ahhh so I’m just lucky and they haven’t foisted it upon me yet. I’ll have to check it out again in a few weeks then
I am slowly trying to de-google my life, but goddamn some the services are still useful and straightforward to use. YouTube and maps in particular are pretty up there, but I could probably stand to watch a lot less youtube so maybe ill have to end that for my mental health
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@hidikem @nixCraft ahhh so I’m just lucky and they haven’t foisted it upon me yet. I’ll have to check it out again in a few weeks then
I am slowly trying to de-google my life, but goddamn some the services are still useful and straightforward to use. YouTube and maps in particular are pretty up there, but I could probably stand to watch a lot less youtube so maybe ill have to end that for my mental health
@greenpepper22 @nixCraft for youtube you can try to move out when possible and use alternative front end, like piped or invidious for the one you cannot live without.
So you use youtube ... without youtube.
Me i let youtube website app behind when they started to "force" login to prove you are not a bot (not like google own recapcha for this purpose).
So i use alt front end to bypass this bullying to accept their crappy TOS.
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@greenpepper22 @nixCraft for youtube you can try to move out when possible and use alternative front end, like piped or invidious for the one you cannot live without.
So you use youtube ... without youtube.
Me i let youtube website app behind when they started to "force" login to prove you are not a bot (not like google own recapcha for this purpose).
So i use alt front end to bypass this bullying to accept their crappy TOS.
@hidikem @nixCraft I might have to look into that
I am def a desktop user vs mobile user for youtube so that might be easier for getting around logins and app usage
Maps however I am full mobile and I’ve checked out some alternatives and google is still miles ahead of anyone in terms of UI last time I checked. That one I might be stuck in for a while.
Gmail I gotta change, but email clients seem much easier to switch
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DuckDuckGo's AI-free search saw nearly 28% more visits in the week following Google's insistence that people love AI mode. Is anyone surprised by this result?
@nixCraft My head has been elsewhere. I've been using Safari/duck for years. I go there when Vivaldi hits a website that's blocked. I'm too lazy to go in.
It's worse installed ... I had no intention of doing that again. But it will be toasted and uninstalled shortly.Ugh. People are just losing their brains.
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@hidikem @nixCraft I might have to look into that
I am def a desktop user vs mobile user for youtube so that might be easier for getting around logins and app usage
Maps however I am full mobile and I’ve checked out some alternatives and google is still miles ahead of anyone in terms of UI last time I checked. That one I might be stuck in for a while.
Gmail I gotta change, but email clients seem much easier to switch
@greenpepper22 @nixCraft for mobile use fdroid and install newpipe
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DuckDuckGo's AI-free search saw nearly 28% more visits in the week following Google's insistence that people love AI mode. Is anyone surprised by this result?
@nixCraft Duckduckgo isn't ai-free though?
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@nixCraft Duckduckgo isn't ai-free though?
@renardboy @nixCraft if you access it through noai.duckduckgo.com it doesn't show ai summaries.
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DuckDuckGo's AI-free search saw nearly 28% more visits in the week following Google's insistence that people love AI mode. Is anyone surprised by this result?
@nixCraft I switched to noai.duckduckgo.com - I love it!
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@renardboy @nixCraft if you access it through noai.duckduckgo.com it doesn't show ai summaries.
@AbramKedge @nixCraft That is very true, nevermind.
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@AbramKedge @nixCraft That is very true, nevermind.
@renardboy @nixCraft you just reminded me that somehow the noai option slid off of my phone's Vivaldi settings, I'm down a rabbit hole right now
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@nixCraft Serious question: If Google dies, what happens to Android? Google effectively owns it and it shuttering the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) in September.
@Mustardfacial @nixCraft hopefully it dies too
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@nixCraft I switched to noai.duckduckgo.com - I love it!
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@nixCraft I gotta be honest, when I go to google.com to search, which isn’t my default I’ve been using ecosia for years, I still just see normal search results and get a list of links to various sites. I see a new tab for “AI mode” but it’s not the default
Am I missing something with all this? The news I see makes it sound like old google search isn’t available anymore, but that doesn’t match with what I see, are folks out there seeing the AI stuff as the default?
@greenpepper22@mastodon.social @nixCraft@mastodon.social I also thought it was the same but it isn't, AI mode is chatbot but the search is agentic now
We’re bringing the power of Google Antigravity and the agentic coding capabilities of Gemini 3.5 Flash right into Search. Search can build the ideal response, in the right format for your question — completely on the fly. So you can get custom generative UI, including visual tools and simulations, tailored precisely to your needs.
https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/search-io-2026/#agentic-coding
It looks like they made it this way so it wasn't that shocking for regular Google users since they will see it like there was no change at all -
DuckDuckGo's AI-free search saw nearly 28% more visits in the week following Google's insistence that people love AI mode. Is anyone surprised by this result?
@nixCraft I’ve had enough of their garbage AI and garbage search results, I stopped using google search as soon as I heard about the change. Still considering whether I send them a feedback like I did when they switched to endless scroll. That worked, eventually I got paginated results back, but I doubt it’ll make a difference with this.
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@f4grx @nixCraft Lineage, Graphene, raw AOSP with fdroid is all well and good for the nerds like you and me. My concern is more on the general public who have no idea that you can install these OS's, let alone know how to it. What do those people do? Are we just going to expect them to buy a $2000 iPhone instead? That's not really an option for a lot of people.
@Mustardfacial @f4grx @nixCraft the phone manufacturers used to make their own OSs, and some still maintain their own variants of Android; if Alphabet stops updating Android, the phone makers will update their own forks and/or form an association to collaborate on continuing the base OS.
(They could do so anyway, if and when they decide Google isn’t serving their interests anymore, which might be more likely than Alphabet going under)
