DuckDuckGo reported that U.S. app installs rose an average of 18.1% week-over-week during May 20–25, compared to the prior week, sustaining that growth for six consecutive days and peaking at 30.5% on May 25. On iOS specifically, the average week-over-week install growth hit 33%, peaking at 69.9%. Visits to the company’s AI-free search page, noai.duckduckgo.com — which disables AI-assisted answers and AI-generated images by default — averaged 22.7% week-over-week growth, peaking at 27.7% on May 24. The company noted the trend was particularly strong in the U.S. and held through the Memorial Day weekend, when it typically sees a traffic dip. The spike follows Google’s announcement at I/O 2026 that it is replacing its traditional list of blue links with an AI agent that answers queries, executes tasks, and runs background monitoring — a change CEO Gabriel Weinberg characterized as “force-feeding AI with no way to opt out.”
DuckDuckGo currently holds roughly 2% of the U.S. search market. Weinberg argued Tuesday that Google’s overhaul is making results worse and positioned DuckDuckGo as the alternative that “puts users in charge.” The privacy-focused search engine does operate its own optional AI product, Duck.ai, which provides access to models including Claude 4.5 Haiku, Meta’s Llama 4 Scout, Mistral Small 3 24B, and GPT-5 mini — all without storing search histories or using chats for training. Chief communications officer Kamyl Bazbaz attributed the install spike not to anti-AI sentiment per se, but to user demand for optionality: “People just want a choice.”