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Google announced at its recent developer conference that it plans to fully artificial intelligence (AI) upgrade its search engine. However, this attempt to replace the traditional "blue link list" with AI agents has sparked strong backlash among users, with many American users taking practical actions to express their protest.
According to the latest data released by competitor DuckDuckGo, within just a few days after Google's update announcement, its application installation volume in the U.S. market saw a surge. The performance on the iOS platform was particularly impressive, with an average weekly increase of 33%, and peak growth even approached 70%.
Users Want to Regain Control
Regarding Google's radical update, many industry opinions point out that forcing the AI overview often provides inaccurate answers and takes away users' autonomy. This behavior of complicating what used to be a simple search process has made many users who are accustomed to traditional search feel unable to accept it.
In contrast, the "clean version" of DuckDuckGo, which defaults to turning off all AI features, has seen a significant increase in traffic. The platform's representative stated that although they also offer a rich array of AI products, the most popular feature right now is returning the initiative of "how much AI to use" back to the users.
A New Opportunity to Break the Monopoly
For a long time, Google has maintained a dominant share of the U.S. market through exclusive default search contracts in major browsers. In comparison, DuckDuckGo's market share is only around 2%. Google's decision to "force feed AI without allowing exit" undoubtedly presents a great opportunity for competitors to break through the barriers.
DuckDuckGo's CEO publicly criticized Google's mandatory measures, stating that they have made search results worse rather than better. With a large number of users continuously flowing in during typically low-traffic holiday periods, this "exodus" triggered by the AI update is becoming a new signal of changes in the search engine market landscape.