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At its I\/O conference last week, Google made it abundantly clear it\u2019s looking to leave behind the Search pages of yore<\/a>, featuring hyperlinks to online content \u2014 and replacing them with a reimagined and AI-powered \u201cintelligent search box.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead of links, Google is looking to push users down an AI chatbot rabbit hole. That\u2019s despite the tech\u2019s glaring shortcomings, which the company has yet to meaningfully address, with the company\u2019s flagship AI Overview feature still suffering from a staggering number of hallucinations<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even something as simple as googling the word \u201cdisregard<\/a>\u201d sent the feature into a spiral, forcing the company to jump in after a wave of mockery.<\/p>\n Given the scale of the ever-growing backlash to AI, it shouldn\u2019t come as a surprise that reactions to the latest news ranged from frustration to anger<\/a>.<\/p>\n And many netizens are seemingly ready to call it quits once and for all, with week over week US installs of search alternative DuckDuckGo soaring 30 percent.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople aren\u2019t just complaining about Google\u2019s AI search overhaul, they\u2019re leaving,\u201d the company\u2019s official X account tweeted<\/a> on Tuesday. \u201cMomentum is growing. It\u2019s time to Fire Google.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGoogle is force-feeding AI with no way to opt out,\u201d DuckDuckGo founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg told tech journalist Paul Thurrott<\/a>. \u201cAs a result, their results are getting worse, not better.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to be the place that puts users in charge and allows them to decide how much or how little AI they want,\u201d he added. \u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re seeing a spike in people coming to DuckDuckGo this week, it\u2019s as simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n Underscoring it all, responses to Google\u2019s latest announcement were predominantly negative.<\/p>\n \u201cNobody asked you to change the box we asked you to fix the results,\u201d one Reddit user wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cChange how people use the Internet, by making them switch to Duck Duck Go,\u201d another user joked<\/a>.<\/p>\n The development highlights a growing surge in AI backlash, ranging from rural American towns revolting<\/a> against plans for AI data centers to students jeering at the mere mention of AI<\/a> during commencement speeches.<\/p>\n That backlash has become particularly apparent in the software world<\/a>, with Microsoft finding out the hard way that its all-in approach to AI has become immensely unpopular<\/a>.<\/p>\n Technically speaking, DuckDuckGo does offer its own AI product, called Duck.AI, as TechCrunch points out<\/a>. However, the company appears to have grown wise to the backlash, offering a specifically AI-free search page<\/a> \u2014 which has also seen traffic surge as of late.<\/p>\n