- cross-posted to:
- pulse_of_truth@infosec.pub
- cross-posted to:
- pulse_of_truth@infosec.pub
EDIIT :
Apparently, there is an issue with the warning request to disable the ad blocker
I use Fennec F-Droid and Cromite, and I don’t see this issue.
to get around the adblocker warning, use this link.
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Ironically, duck.ai is also the only AI provider I use because on top of having multiple models available, it has no login requirement so I just ask whatever stupid question and be on my way.
Are people already getting these AI-only, blue-link-less Google results? Mine are still normal.
Afaik they are rolling out the whole thing gradually over this summer. For now I think it triggers AI only results occasionally. Give it a few months.
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.
I use DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine and have for a while. But I have noticed lately that every time I search for something, it almost always only returns product pages. I don’t know if this is effective SEO or a way of DDG monetizing their search. But unfortunately I’ve been looking for alternatives just because it’s so frustrating when searching for information to get nothing back but a bunch of sites trying to sell you their product.
Yeah I’m not a big fan of DDG either… it’s powered by Bing so hardly surprising it isn’t great. And Microsoft isn’t any less evil than Google.
Presearch is the best I’ve found - just a nice, basic search - but it’s a little slow and has some cryptoshit background so I’m open to alternatives. Ecosia is greenwashing bullshit afaik.
ecosia literally isn’t greenwashing
It literally has an AI function lmao
The environmental search engine has an environment-killing function that no one needs. They also partner with Google and Microsoft, both avid environment-murderers.
But yeah sure bro, plant a few trees, that’ll offset everything I’m sure.
And their search results are powered by Bing, so it won’t be any better than DDG anyway.
I’ve been quite happy to use the AI stuff actually. I’ve asked lots of random questions and within seconds it comes up with answers. Jesus should we go back to having to type in the specific web address to find everything !?
http/:www.whatdhfuckamitypingallthisoutfor?
Each to their own. Go in peace.
It doesn’t matter how fast it is if the answer is wrong, and it does seem to be wrong an awful lot. I will check their citations to see if they back up their output, and many times they do not.
Jesus should we go back to having to type in the specific web address to find everything !?
http/:www.whatdhfuckamitypingallthisoutfor?
Uh, no? Just use a search engine? You remember those, right?
AI in Google reminds me of browser ads back in the day, something that became more and more intrusive until I made an effort to block it. I got into a bad habit of reading the AI answer, then having to remind myself that it was just words thrown together using probability which is why it was wrong so often. I tend to search for obscure things that the AI has limited exposure to, and it will make shit up rather than admit it can’t find something.
Jesus should we go back to having to type in the specific web address to find everything !?
Yes, you should inconvenience yourself with the weighty first-world burden of having to press a few buttons for access to the full library of mankind’s knowledge in order to avoid using a product which is inherently destructive to the one and only planet currently available for our species to inhabit.
Hope that helps. Fuck peace, go in love, including the love of a mother bear to destroy what threatens those she loves.
You probably don’t remember since you’ve been eating glue at an LLM’s advice, but search engines have existed for a while, and even worked at one point!
Oh yeah wasn’t that coming out today? How’d that go?
I didn’t even know they had an app. Why would I need a separate app for a search engine?
It’s a browser.
Oh I didn’t know they had a browser. Interesting.
it’s my default browser on mobile. only after using it did i realize that i rarely need data stored, be it cookies or history. go to a site, read whatever, press the flame button to burn the session. for sites you want to keep you can “fireproof” them as well. ezpz
Yeah.
DDG mobile’s “privacy ergonomics” are perfect. Every browser should be structured like that.
I mostly use Orion for other reasons, but I still use DDG a good bit.
It’s good on mobile, but the desktop seems useless because I have Firefox/Waterfox
Not anymore, it’s a slopp-machine.
I think they’re talking about DDG, not google
Thank you for making me discover unwall !
Disable my AD blocker… Na I’d rather not read the article
Luckily 10 minutes after you posted that, another commenter posted the full article in plain text, in the comments here.
With ublock it opens normally. Also by disabling javascript, which is kinda ironic
In case people don’t want to, or can’t access, the article. Apologies for any formatting issues, I’m on my mobile.
Last week, after Google announced its huge overhaul to Search, I overheard a woman on the phone saying she was switching to DuckDuckGo because you can “opt out of using AI.”
“Google just isn’t Google anymore,” she said. It seems that others had the same idea.
At I/O, Google’s annual developer conference, the company said its traditional list of blue links is being replaced by an AI agent that answers queries, executes tasks, and runs background monitoring agents.
The backlash has been sharp.
Some have argued it will kill the open web, while others shared concerns that AI overviews surface inaccurate responses and take away control from users who might not want to use AI. It also overcomplicates simple things. Just try to Google the word “disregard.”
In response to Google’s changes, many have begun defecting to DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused alternative that has never been able to break past Google’s dominance, accounting for only around 2% of the U.S. search market.
During Google’s search antitrust trial in 2023, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg testified that Google’s exclusive default search contracts harmed its ability to pitch itself as the default on other browsers.
“Google is force-feeding AI with no way to opt out,” Weinberg said Tuesday in a statement, referring to Google’s Search overhaul. “As a result, their results are getting worse, not better. We want to be the place that puts users in charge and allows them to decide how much or how little AI they want.”
Now it seems that DuckDuckGo is beginning to benefit as consumers flee AI.
DuckDuckGo said U.S. app installs went up 18.1% week-over-week on average during the May 20 to May 25 period, compared to May 13 to May 18. The company said that growth was sustained for six consecutive days and peaked at 30.5% on May 25. On iOS, the rate of install is even higher, with week-over-week growth hitting a 33% average, peaking at 69.9%.
The search engine also said visits to its AI-free search page, noai.duckduckgo.com, averaged 22.7% WoW growth, peaking at 27.7% on May 24. The page turns off every AI feature, like AI-assisted answers and AI-generated images, by default.
The company said the trend is stronger in the U.S., and that DuckDuckGo continued to gain users over the Memorial Day weekend, when it usually sees a dip in traffic.
DuckDuckGo offers its own AI product called Duck.ai. It’s free and doesn’t require users to make an account but provides access to models, including Anthropic’s Claude 4.5 Haiku, Meta’s Llama 4 Scout, Mistral’s Small 3 24B, and OpenAI’s GPT-5 mini. All chats are private because DuckDuckGo strips the user’s IP address before requests reach model providers, deletes conversations within 30 days, and prevents chats from being used for training.
“Not only do we respect user choice, but also user privacy,” Weinberg said. “Everything you do in DuckDuckGo is private; we don’t collect search histories or chats and nothing is used for AI training.”
DuckDuckGo also offers Search Assist, which is similar to Google’s AI overviews, and an AI Image Filter that filters out AI-created images from search results.
Kamyl Bazbaz, DuckDuckGo’s chief communications and policy officer, said both of those AI features are among the company’s most popular, despite their differing ethos.
“People just want a choice,” Bazbaz said.
TechCrunch has reached out to Google for comment.
Re: DDG AI convos “aren’t used for training”.
They can’t be sure of that. The models themselves could be logging prompts and outputs for training or whatever reason. Only question is if they value those logs, though they could just have their LLM curate them to filter out low quality ones, if the space is even an issue.
Yeah, I was about to say that’s a bit of a pipe dream. There’s just way too much of a cost to processing prompts by someone else without trying to get something out of them.
If there’s no user feedback reaching their servers, there’s limited value to be extracted from the logs.
My friend just told me ddg is now better than google search
The thing that is hilarious about this is that DDG is powered by Bing. 😂
The thing about THAT is Bing built their house literally copying Google’s homework. In the early days (maybe 2013? Long before they went masks-off) google published examples of them inventing new unique words that didn’t organizational exist in open web pages, and those popping up and Bing search indexes 3 weeks later.
Kagi, at least according to a few talks Doctorow of the EFF gave in recent history, admit their indices just came from Google’s as well.
Watching everyone’s favorite advertising agency turn heal so swiftly has been one of the biggest bummers of my adult life.
Its not crazy hard to install your own searxng instance. Works pretty well. The problem is that the Internet itself is turning into AI slop.
Last time I tried I had issues but it was quite a while ago. Do you know a good guide or something you can post?
I hate to say it, but I just had Claude generate the guide. The docker container is the easiest way I think.
I have it installed in a docker container in Linux both as a search 3ngine for my local AI setup, and for regular browsing.
Setup and installation is a great use case for AI.
Go to Google gemini, and ask it to create a step by step guide to install a container with searxng, and how to allow searches from your browser(s). Make sure you tell gemini that you are a simple user, not a power user, so it shouldn’t assume anything. Also ask it to make sure it shows you how to make the container autostart with the pc. Tell gemini that you want this in a step by step tutorial.
Should make it easy, as you can ask questions if you get stuck, or something doesn’t work.
Dude I don’t even know what that is or what it does and I’m pretty sure most people don’t either. It might be easy but what the heck even is it?
It let’s you have one search website where you have it pull results from all other search engines (that you want) and then it can rank results based on where things rank on the various engines.
Tl;dr self hosted search proxy, with some advanced features
Check out yacy, its not well polished but at least it doesn’t rely on major search engines afaik (p2p)
The problem with your own searxng instance is that your searches across other engines come from your IP address.
So if you’re searching for something, everyone knows it’s you using IP triangulation. Google then tracks you around the internet.
If that doesnt bother you, OK great.
You could install a proxy to expose their IP instead of your i guess
Shoutout to https://uruky.com/
It’s a paid private search engine.
https://theprivacydad.com/interview-with-the-engineer-of-uruky-a-private-search-engine/
Trying them out right now, so far so good!
I appreciate their comparison to Kagi also notes Kagi’s strengths.
I made a video on Google alternatives a month or so ago. There are chapters in the description if you want info but don’t want to watch.
I hate that ddg has “show AI images” on by default
But I like that it has that toggle at least
It’s great it even has a toggle.
You can use https://noai.duckduckgo.com/ to avoid AI all together.
Good thing it takes one click to disable and it’s right in your face too
I hope this takes off so DDG improves their search engine. I’ve tried to switch, but 2/3 of the time the results are off target and I end up back at Google anyway.
I tried ddg too and wasn’t super happy, especially not when searching in a different language. I switched to Qwant and I’m very happy with it so can recommend trying that. There are other search engine options as well
I’ve been using it for a couple of year now and I only double check Google maybe 1% of the time. And most of those times, I also can’t find what I am looking for on Google. I also can’t go back after getting used to the ! commands.
I’m the same. I use Google maybe 1-2 times a year and only after exhausting my search terms in DDG, most of the time Google also can’t find what I’m looking for.
