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.
…Installs?
Do they know there’s a website?
You don’t even need the website. I just set the default search engine to DDG in my browser.
A search app makes zero sense to me.
The DDG app is pretty cool though. It has free app tracking protection.
As a tangent, it’s kind of insane that the NPR app seems to always have like 10x tracking attempts vs tiktok.
So much, this. My brokerage apps are my biggest offenders for phoning to unauthorized parties, makes me nervous as hell.
I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, that I miss using Mullvad but that DDG supplanted them as my VPN of choice, just because there are other anti-tracking and adjacent security Services integrated into my life so seamlessly.
Unrelated to DDG, if you sideload on Android I want to shill HARD for this FDroid package, called Hail, , which when powered with Shizuku can fully suspend apps selectively at will.
So I identify any apps that like to phone home regularly, and just tell them to aggressively take naps until summoned, I feel like I only want to allow 10% of my apps to run to the background regularly. This app gives me a toggle for that, and DDG is my lamp light for selecting the most egregious offenders.
Thanks for the recommendation, probably better than me just putting any app I haven’t used in the last week into deep sleep mode or whatever it’s called haha.
Surely that doesn’t mean you have the NPR app installed, does it?.. 🤢
“search app” is a weird categorization for “web browser.”
There are too many damn apps already imo, but apparently some people like having as many as possible
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%.
Well, in this case it helps to override my default search engine on my phone.
ngl, I never thought about changing the default search engine on Android. That was the last place where I was still using Google.
Installing the DDG app right now 😂
From Chrome to DDG browser likely. Google also have a website but people still install Chrome for it, the lastest AI thing might be the final straw for people to finally looking for the alternative
I think DDO has its own Firefox fork.
Nope, as far as i know it uses chrorium and on android a webview wrapper
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.
If there’s no user feedback reaching their servers, there’s limited value to be extracted from the logs.
There is feedback that makes it back to their servers: the next prompt.
Though from my understanding, a lot of the agentic tools do a lot of prompt generation, so that would be a weakness of just logging everything and using subsequent prompts to evaluate earlier ones. They’d have no idea whether each prompt is coming from an actual user or another LLM.
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.
More people will probably switch when they figure out they don’t need to install anything and can change their default search engine on their current browser.
More people will probably switch when they figure out they don’t need to install anything and can change their default search engine on their current browser.
FTFY
Thank you for this! I changed to duckduckgo just now and it took 5 seconds. Now to see if it works as well as Google.
The bangs are the addictive feature for me. You start by typing
!w lemmyin the URL bar, with DDG already configured as the default search engine, and DDG will directly serve the search result for this term from Wikipedia. There are hundreds of them like!ytfor YouTube or!gmfor Google Maps, and the acronyms are intuitive. https://duckduckgo.com/bangsThis should be a YSK post
O_o I had no idea. This is really useful.
Why… do you need to go through DDG for this? You can just set those custom search engines yourself in the browser without routing through DDG. They let you put any link (with
%sin place of the query’s location in the URL) and almost any keybinding. I havewset to attempt to pull up the direct Wikipedia article on the query,cfor Google Contacts,mfor Google Maps (ugh, I’ve gotta figure out a way outta these Google snares…), etc.
Happy to help - feel free to spread the word!
You can also set up the ai-free search, noai.duckduckgo.com, as a custom search engine.
Whoa, that’s great news. Thanks for that!
I didn’t even know they had an app. Why would I need a separate app for a search engine?
“install” websites, i’ll never understand
We’ve come full-circle. I used to download .html pages so I could browse them while offline. Now websites install themselves so they can browse you while offline.
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Too many people are brain hostages to the idea that apps do everything and you need an app for everything, even though most of the things are just websites. But all the apps are really doing is spying while they deliver their version of the website.
I bought a literal thermometer, not a thermostat just a thermometer, which I wanted to log temperatures, and it insisted on me downloading an app and then setting up a free account. Noped out of that s*** and left caustic reviews but it was impossible to use without a smart device, without internet access, and without the invasion of privacy.
Just repeat that story a hundred times and you’re describing modern domestic life.
I “love” when the wrong technology is applied.
On the the dawn of the smartphones Mozilla tried to enter the space with an FirefoxOS and the pitch was that every app was just a website just more tightly integrated with the phone. The problem is that all the web stack is wonderfully resource hog and at the time phones were super underpowered running websites were not optimized in a browser that were not as optimized as today. So it was a terrible choice for the time being.
Other good one was Android early days. They choose Java as the default app environment and development. It kinda makes sense to use it if you want the same program to run on different platforms, the problem, again, it runs worst and with the underpowered devices of the time everything was a slog. And they doubled down on the mistake by using a garbage collector that doubled the memory usage of every app. The cherry on top, at least in hindsight is that arm was and still is the de facto Android plataform, greatly disminishing the advantage of using Java/JVM. And today Google enabled apps with native code optimized for specific plataforms, but everyone only care about ARM so of you try to run Android like in an Intel laptop a lot of apps are not compatible.
End of rant.
Hey dude, just wanted to say that I learned a little bit from you today. Thanks for sharing on here.
I remember Apple famously disallowing any kind of “Write Once, Run Anywhere” platform tech at the dawn of iOS, ATVos and iPad OS, quite openly trying to fuck with Adobe’s and Sun’s shit.
But using apps to avoid needing all of the traffic and rendering capabilities for modern websites was key in its early days and I remember even 10 years ago recommending to clients and customers that were stuck with awful internet connections or underpowered devices, to try using the apps instead of the websites for things.
Nowadays, I only want to visit so many corpo resources strictly through a browser and fighting tooth and nail to avoid ever letting their apps on my phones. I would literally fire a bank for not having a functional Web page to do what I need done , especially since I probably can’t be on vanilla android for much longer the way things are going and too many secure apps require Google Play services for their circle of trust.
I thought it meant changing your default search engine.
I never considered that it was an app.
Everything is an app.
There’s a DDG privacy first browser on Android. This is probably what they are referring to.
I can’t find anything I’m looking for on Google anymore. It’s not a search engine, it’s just ads.
Disable my AD blocker… Na I’d rather not read the article
With ublock it opens normally. Also by disabling javascript, which is kinda ironic
Luckily 10 minutes after you posted that, another commenter posted the full article in plain text, in the comments here.
I’ve defaulted to ddg for like 2 years now. Solid. Good enough. Really what happened is that SEO optomization websites even before the AI craze made Google search so awful that ddg became just as good if not better for me than google
Google literally redesigned their search engine to be worse so that you would scroll through more ads to find the results you want. On average, the best result now is the fifteenth result.
That’s what happens when the engineers are forced out and the marketers are given control.
Same here and I recently purchased a degoogled Fairphone 6.
I let the default fall to DDG on some of my machines. I find they’re a better experience for 80% of searches. The rest are not handled well by any modern search engines and only Google in verbatim mode (and surprisingly Kagi) come close to delivering good results for those. I hope DDG improves and the team there sees the market forces that are essentially driving customers towards them. We don’t want AI shit, just good, non-evil, search.
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.
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
Well that’s neato, thanks for sharing
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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
Sure, but it’s a buyer beware kind of thing.
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.
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.
Fair enough, I’ll look into it!
I just wish they had their own web crawler instead of relying on Microsoft’s
Unfortunately the internet will still enshittify with a speed we cannot yet imagine
I’m reading this within two hours of setting up and playing around with my own local SearXNG instance. I’m glad people are utilizing a more privacy respecting platform, but too bad it’s more about “God! Fuck this AI shit, get it out of my face!” more-so than people taking control of their own privacy.
Don’t get me wrong though, “God! Fuck this AI shit, get it out of my face!” is the appropriate response.
Searxng is cool but I find myself needing to constantly tweak the container, Google keeps blocking access
I just run an update when that happened and it fixes itself.
Yes, in the last few months they got it right. But there was a long period, maybe half a year where they could not get Google search to work
Not to sound too facetious, but is that really a negative these days?
It just is nice to have Google results in there. I find that’s the coolest part of searxng, showing when the different indexers corroborate each other as important.
DDG isn’t the holy grail people make it out to be; it has contracts with Microsoft and we all know how Microslop likes AI.
No, they’re not, but they are one of the better-known alternatives to Google, and they do advocate privacy. This, in itself, is a good thing and should be promoted.
The problem is that Google’s monopoly on web search is so large that using Google is the de facto standard for the vast majority of people. Getting them to acknowledge that there are alternatives to Google benefits privacy on the internet more than DDG having contracts with MS harms it.
Switching from Google to MS/Bing isnt really much of a privacy win.
Switching from a search engine that heavily tracks you to a search engine that doesn’t is a privacy win.
Think microslop doesn’t track you? Think again.
I’m not sure if I correctly get your point: DDG provides search results based on Bing and has advertisment contracts with MS but DDG in itself doesn’t track you:
From DDGs FAQ:
We partner with many different information sources to deliver DuckDuckGo Search (e.g., Microsoft for ads, Apple for maps, etc.). When you view search results (including ads), your searches cannot be tied back to you, either by us or our partners. How this works technically is we do not store any personal identifiers (e.g., IP address) with your search terms, and we also proxy all requests to partners through us.
Rule of thumb is to not take their word as gospel. All social media also present themselves as being concerned about your privacy when they are anything but.
Search engine ad set-ups include trackers typically.
Okay, I get it. So do you propose that we simply don’t trust any company, or do you especially mistrust DDG? If you specifically mistrust DDG, do you have a good alternative?
If you mistrust companies in general: I get where you’re coming from, but I also think it’s highly impractical to distrust basically everyone on the Internet because you have to use their services at some point.
I wouldn’t use DDG’s Android app, though, because it doesn’t block Microsoft trackers. Now we can debate whether this means the app doesn’t block MS trackers on MS websites or if it allows tracking on its own website (which would contradict the claim I cited above).
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Those who enable and finance the pedophiles are international… they won’t disappear when Trump dies, they have old money and are multigenerational. Trump is just a stooge for international interests, like Epstein was.
See Deutsch Bank, for example… they financed Trump with billions of dollars, and broke the law to do so. Without them, Trump would not be President today.
Also, look at the funders of organizations like The Heritage Foundation; coincidentally, many members are shared between them and the Council on Foreign Relations. All of this will remain when Trump is gone.
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Ok…
DDG still features AI enshittification, but at least one can opt-out… For now.
This was my thought when I briefly reinstalled the browser, the AI mode seems very similar to what google announced at their I/0 con
