Is Bing search minus AI better than Google? DuckDuckGo lets us test the theory

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If you’re tired of artificial intelligence influencing your online searches, DuckDuckGo now offers a way to search the web without AI. They’ve recently launched a simple option to use an AI-free version of their search engine.

For many years, Google has been the leading search engine. Recent data from December 2025 shows Google controls about 90.82% of the search market. Bing is a distant second with 4.03%, while DuckDuckGo has a much smaller share at 0.78%.

Google is still the dominant search engine, and it’s unlikely to be overtaken soon. However, more and more people are starting to explore alternatives because they want to search the web without being overwhelmed by AI-generated summaries and results.

DuckDuckGo now offers a quick way to search the web without using artificial intelligence. You can reach this AI-free version of their search engine by visiting https://noai.duckduckgo.com/ in your web browser.

DuckDuckGo is a search engine that prioritizes user privacy. While it powers its search results mostly using Microsoft’s Bing, Bing itself is a strong competitor to Google and now includes artificial intelligence features.

Bing often gets a bad reputation, but I think it’s actually a surprisingly good Microsoft product. For my searches, it often finds results that are as good as, or even better than, Google. While it has some drawbacks compared to Google, Bing is more competitive than many people realize, considering the jokes you see online.

Like many companies, Microsoft is working to add AI features to Bing. While Bing’s AI-powered summaries are generally well-made, they don’t appeal to all users.

If you prefer a search engine powered by Bing but without the added AI features, DuckDuckGo is a great option.

Just to clarify, DuckDuckGo isn’t simply a rebranded version of Bing. It gathers results from many different sources, including its own web crawler. Plus, DuckDuckGo offers several privacy features that set it apart.

However, DuckDuckGo relies quite a bit on Bing for its search results. As the company explains on its website:

DuckDuckGo search results often include Instant Answers, which provide quick information on various topics. We gather this information from a wide range of sources, including specialized data providers like Sportradar, community-edited sites like Wikipedia, and our own web crawler (DuckDuckBot) along with our own indexes. We also display traditional web links and images, primarily sourced from Bing. Ultimately, we aim to combine all these sources to deliver the best possible search experience.

From what I’ve seen, DuckDuckGo’s ‘No AI’ page works almost exactly the same as turning off DuckDuckGo’s AI features and hiding AI images yourself.

The No AI page simplifies things by automatically blocking AI features, so you don’t have to adjust any settings. It’s a subtle change, but it makes the No AI page a bit different from the standard DuckDuckGo search experience.

It’ll be fascinating to see if people embrace a search engine without any AI features in 2026. Although there’s a lot of negativity towards AI online and in the news, many people actually depend on it in their daily lives.

AI summaries have become very popular because they quickly collect information from across the internet and present it in an easy-to-understand format.

While AI summaries and search results aren’t always perfect, you can usually verify their accuracy by following the provided links and checking the original sources. However, if you’re already taking the time to do that fact-checking, you might find it easier to simply research the topic yourself.

I was already thinking about switching search engines, so I’m going to test out DuckDuckGo’s new page that doesn’t use AI. I’ll share what I think in a few weeks after I’ve had a chance to compare it to Google and Bing.

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2026-01-26 19:40