it would seem that the great unwashed, you and me, don't want their silly ai game as a duck tells you here; 

 

DuckDuckGo’s US app installs peaked at 30.5% week-over-week growth on May 25, six days into a sustained surge that the company says followed Google’s announcement at I/O 2026 that it would replace traditional search results with an AI agent. The agent answers queries, runs tasks, and monitors things in the background, all without asking whether users wanted any of it.

Between May 20 and May 25, DuckDuckGo’s US app installs climbed an average of 18.1% week over week, compared to the prior period of May 13 to May 18. On iPhone, growth averaged 33% and peaked at 69.9%. Traffic to noai.duckduckgo.com, a version of DuckDuckGo that disables every AI feature by default, grew 22.7% on average and hit 27.7% on May 24. DuckDuckGo even gained users over Memorial Day weekend, a period when the company says it normally sees traffic drop.

Sensor Tower data backs this up. DuckDuckGo’s iOS app climbed to number 4 in the free Utilities category on the US App Store, from a low of 26th earlier in May. Its Android app hit number 9 in the free Productivity category on Google Play, up from 20th............more...........