These numbers exclude Ecosia, Brave, Qwant and all the other search engines that have seen a surge in sign-ups over the last few days.
You are also seeing people take the opportunity to switch browsers. Vivaldi specifically has reported substantial growth recently.
Article talking about DuckDuckGo: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/26/duckduckgo-installs-are-up-30-as-users-reject-being-force-fed-googles-ai-search/
A website to help you start your own journey: https://purchasewithpurpose.io/
Keep it up and spread the word. No better time to make an impact.
48 Comments
favoredponcho@lemmy.zip · 69 pts · 115d
FallenWalnut@lemmy.world · 27 pts · 115d
There is no central database, so we have to infer from what is available.
Kagi is the only paid service and so will have a fraction of the free options. The fact that their growth rate increased by 3X with 2k new users in a week is impressive.
DDG has 100m users and saw a 30% increase in their growth. Then you also have:
It starts adding up...
Google is not going to lose its monopoly overnight. It is also particularly damaging when they burn through billions and lose market share.
BennyTheExplorer@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 115d
Not really, because our modern financial system is mostly made up bullshit, that is detached from reality. Do you think investors care, that no one likes Google looses billions of dollars a year chasing AI? No, because it's just a speculative investment vehicle. The stock market is just gambling for rich people and the belief that it helps anyone or reflects reality in any meaningful way is a fundamental pillar of the propaganda that keeps our financial system afloat.
It's still nice, that more people are escaping big tech though.
tempest@lemmy.ca · 13 pts · 115d
I don't use Google but the second I read this headline and thought critically for a second or was more ' wow DDG doesn't have many users does it'
zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 114d
Yeah, that shady Y-axis is doing some heavy lifting here.
grue@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 115d
Who the fuck "installs" DuckDuckGo? It's a website!
::: spoiler spoiler
(To everybody about to tell me they have a browser app thing too: that's just stupid, IDGAF, shut up. DuckDuckGo is a place you use your real browser, i.e. Firefox, to navigate to.) :::
mattyroses@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 115d
Setting it as default search
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de · 7 pts · 114d
i just installed this reply to your comment!
ryannathans@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 98d
To everyone who says I'm wrong, you're stupid, IDGAF!
SHBI7368@sh.itjust.works · 15 pts · 115d
whats a kagi
dadGPT@lemmy.world · 41 pts · 115d
google it
Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe · 17 pts · 115d
Hahaha, enjoy my upvote
frank@sopuli.xyz · 5 pts · 115d
Your username is fantastic
TragicNotCute@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 115d
It’s a paid search engine and it’s quite excellent.
Jhex@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 115d
I have heard it is super good; however, when I tried it I felt it was about the same as Qwant or Starpage. Having said that, I acknowledge I did not really performed a good test, just browsed around a bit.
I do have a question, with all the corporate ghouls sucking up all our private data to resell later; how do we know Kagi is not just hoarding to enshitify? I honestly think if I paid another service just to wind up with them selling my data anyway I am going to have a rage stroke
bort@sopuli.xyz · 11 pts · 115d
"if you are not the customer, you are the product". Or to phrase it differently: they have a strong incentive not to enshittify, as that would lose them lots of paying customers.
That being said, there is no guarantee that they will not turn shitty later. There never is and never will be, with any service you dont host yourself.
Jhex@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 115d
Sorry bud but that's just naive; literally all the big corpos we hate now were beloved when they started. Kagi already dropped their first paid tier from 500 to 300 searches per month. I am not saying that they will necessarily enshittify but I would certainly not assume they won't just because they are selling something (look at Plex for a very recent case)
I think you missed a "no" before "guarantee" but I understand the point. There are not guarantees but this one doesn't even look like a good candidate to stay clean IMO (plus as a Canadian, I would not subscribe to an American company for the time being, I just saw their wiki to find out where they are based)
Thanks for your reply
bort@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 111d
yes. thanks.
atopi@piefed.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 115d
windows 11 is paid. So is netflix
bort@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 111d
windows itself is not the main source of income for microsoft.
TragicNotCute@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 115d
I tried both when I was originally planning to switch off Google and Startpage was my favorite of the bunch, but there’s were key queries it would fumble hard and I’d miss something I needed that Google (and later Kagi) found.
zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 114d
I also didn't come away impressed enough my from Kagi demo to begin paying for it. If they weren't leaning so hard into AI stuff I may have paid for a bit just to support the idea of a search engine that "you weren't the product" as the saying goes.
KiwiTB@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 115d
You might want to check who owns it and which country's war it is currently benefiting.
000@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 8 pts · 115d
I can't seem to find anything particularly damnning, can you give me a link or just a lede about this?
I pay for Kagi but would happily and eagerly stop if it's funding israel or something
KiwiTB@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 114d
Russia, is that close enough
000@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 114d
All I can find is that some 2% of their budget goes to Yandex licensing. Which is definitely a shame, but not worth a full on boycott for me. If it was a higher number, sure.
almost1337@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 115d
I... fail to see the problem?
Maxxie@piefed.blahaj.zone · 8 pts · 115d
They do use yandex services(russian state cloud provider) among others. That's not that damning -- its one of the few 'independent' (as in, not google or microsoft) search indexes.
That's the only connection I know of, other than CEO named Vladimir.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 115d
Yandex is nice to use when I want to do a search that doesn't give a fuck about DMCA shit.
IDew@lemmy.zip · 12 pts · 115d
Search engine :)
Cybersec@piefed.social · 5 pts · 115d
Paid search engine with no tracking, no ads, great features. Am a very happy user of it.
TheGoldenV@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 115d
It’s a health exercise?
Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip · 4 pts · 115d
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/company/meaning.html
It means "key" in Japanese.
HeyJoe@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 115d
I still use Firefox, but i made the switch to duckduckgo a few years ago and stopped using google. I also work on people's PC's and have always setup my defaults on them so they also now use duckduckgo instead of google. It may be small, but at least i feel like i am doing my part. I am also working on having our company set its default to ddg as well which would change about 4k over. They are to big and gotta go...
Beacon@fedia.io · 12 pts · 115d
Qwant is great
razen@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 115d
The growth is like an ant for the sheer amount of Google users. I mean almost every phone on earth is using Google by default.
godsammitdam@lemmy.zip · 9 pts · 115d
What about SearXNG?
Also, for browsers, Zen, my beloved.
Freakazoid@lemmy.ml · 7 pts · 115d
Do you guys find DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, or Qwant to be better?
Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 7 pts · 115d
I find them to be not Google. Which has become so bad anyway that even if they are slightly worse, I don't really notice. For example I often resort to Google when I get frustrated with ddg's results and it rarely fares better.
baguettefish@discuss.tchncs.de · 5 pts · 115d
ecosia and qwant are at least not american, but all three really enjoy AI which I don't like. I personally use ecosia.
SethTaylor@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 115d
DuckDuck and Qwant for me
I seem to not be able to disable AI stuff on Ecosia anymore
Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip · 2 pts · 114d
They all primarily use Bing, so the results are pretty similar.
If French or German happens to be your first language, Ecosia & Qwant have been collaborating on an EU-centric search index to deliver better localized results, starting with those two markets.
Otherwise, it's kindof a wash.
tyler@programming.dev · 6 pts · 115d
Why the past few days?
altphoto@lemmy.today · 17 pts · 115d
Cuz fucgol went all AI now.
can@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 115d
Maybe still from the EU browser choice screen?
Grass@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 114d
I install my search. My operating system is internet explorer.
themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 114d
I honestly tried duckduckgo and it is awful. Doesn't give me correct result, any alternatives other than Kagi?
FallenWalnut@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 113d
Qwant and Ecosia would be the next two on the list.
Brave also, but people (rightly) have issues with their owner. He is a huge advocate against gay rights.
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 115d
A while back there was a user on Lemmy that would not stop pushing Kagi in every freaking comment they made and they were in so many threads to the point that they are the main reason I have never tried it.