Search traffic, not press releases, is giving the sharpest verdict on Google’s AI-heavy push. DuckDuckGo says U.S. usage has climbed and stayed higher since Google I/O, with a pronounced spike in iPhone app installs that began almost immediately after the keynote wrapped.
The surprise is not that a privacy-branded engine gains, but that the inflection arrives the moment Google fuses more generative models into its core results page. DuckDuckGo reports a notable and persistent rise in daily search queries from U.S. users, paired with what it describes as a sharp jump in new iOS installs and higher retention, suggesting users are not just sampling but switching default search on Apple devices.
Underlying the shift is a simple bet by users that attention is about to be more heavily mined. Google’s expanded use of large language models to answer queries directly has revived worries about data collection, behavioral profiling, and ad targeting, while DuckDuckGo continues to market its lack of personalized tracking and its encrypted query handling as a clean alternative for people uneasy with AI-generated summaries sitting between them and the open web.
