DuckDuckGo ships browser extensions to lock in AI-free search as traffic surges
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DuckDuckGo makes its 'no-AI' search engine easier to access as its traffic booms
Hacker News →DuckDuckGo released Chrome and Firefox extensions that set noai.duckduckgo.com as the default search engine, stripping out AI-generated answers, chat prompts, and most AI-generated images from results. The company plans to extend the same AI-toggle controls to its existing Privacy Essentials extensions on Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera. Users on DuckDuckGo’s own browser already have these preferences preserved across history clears.
The push is timed to a measurable backlash against Google’s May redesign, which pushes AI Overviews and an AI Mode chat experience above the traditional ten blue links. DuckDuckGo reports its no-AI page traffic tripled on May 28 and is sustaining roughly 84% above baseline, with U.S. iOS installs spiking nearly 70% week-over-week. Kagi and other alternatives are seeing similar lift.
DuckDuckGo isn’t positioning itself as anti-AI overall — it still sells a subscription with chatbot access, a VPN, and identity protection — but it’s betting that a meaningful slice of users want search that stays out of the generative-AI lane, and it’s making that choice stickier before Google’s defaults harden.
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