{"id":20757,"date":"2026-06-01T16:11:05","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T16:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/01\/googles-i-o-ai-conference-might-have-an-unexpected-winner-duckduckgo-notebookcheck\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T16:11:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T16:11:05","slug":"googles-i-o-ai-conference-might-have-an-unexpected-winner-duckduckgo-notebookcheck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/01\/googles-i-o-ai-conference-might-have-an-unexpected-winner-duckduckgo-notebookcheck\/","title":{"rendered":"Google's I\/O AI conference might have an unexpected winner: DuckDuckGo – Notebookcheck"},"content":{"rendered":"

Privacy-oriented alternative search engine DuckDuckGo\u2019s search page traffic has tripled since Google rolled out its biggest yet most controversial update in recent years. The Mountain View-based company revealed on May 19 that it was delving deeper into AI for search engine results at its I\/O developer conference. The unasked-for result? DuckDuckGo\u2019s traffic has spiked significantly.
DuckDuckGo has embraced AI in its search results to a similar extent as Google, but it still offers users the option to turn off AI-generated summaries or exclude AI-generated images via no-ai.duckduckgo.com<\/a>. This means no more AI chat features and to-the-point search results without the extra AI enhancements.
Visitors to DuckDuckGo\u2019s No AI search engine tripled on May 28 and are still climbing, averaging around 84% above the normal traffic since Google\u2019s controversial I\/O conference. The backlash stems from the fact that many users simply want an AI-free search experience, with direct results rather than being fed a pushy AI experience on the world\u2019s most-used search engine.
Considering the commotion, DuckDuckGo\u2019s founder and CEO, Gabriel Weinberg, stepped forward with his two cents and said, \u201cGoogle is force-feeding AI with no way to opt out. 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.\u201d
The chief communications and policy officer at DuckDuckGo, Kamyl BazBaz, summed it up in a single sentence: \u201cPeople just want a choice.\u201d 
Many users are currently switching to DuckDuckGo (via TechCrunch<\/a>), with an estimated 30% spike in the search engine\u2019s mobile app downloads and an even sharper increase on iOS. Analytics firm Apptopia cited a 29% increase in daily app downloads in the U.S. in late May.
Google, on the other hand, has transformed its once-simple search box into something more \u201cintelligent\u201d and conversational. Its AI mode now offers longer answers to search queries and pulls in personal context from Gmail or even your Photos when deemed relevant.
While AI Overviews were being tested in recent years, AI mode now sits at the top and is pretty much hard to skip for most users, sometimes churning out inaccurate or hallucinated AI answers and thereby forcing people to look for alternatives elsewhere.
No AI \u2013 DuckDuckGo<\/a>, TechCrunch<\/a> <\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Privacy-oriented alternative search engine DuckDuckGo\u2019s search page traffic has tripled since Google rolled out its biggest yet most controversial update in recent years. The Mountain View-based company revealed on May 19 that it was delving deeper into AI for search engine results at its I\/O developer conference. The unasked-for result? DuckDuckGo\u2019s traffic has spiked significantly. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20758,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}