Brave Search Beta is now available publicly

Martin Brinkmann
Jun 22, 2021
Brave
|
94

Brave Search, a new search engine by the makers of Brave Browser, is now available publicly. Brave revealed some time ago that it was working on an independent search engine that would make use of its own index and not be dependent on Google, Bing or other search engines.

A private beta launched some time ago and today marks the end of that private beta period. Anyone may open Brave Search to use the search engine  It is a beta product right now, but should work fine in many cases.

brave search beta

To better understand what Brave Search offers, one has to go back to March 2021. Brave announced that it acquired Tailcat, an open search engine developed by "by the team formerly responsible for the privacy search and browser products at Cliqz.

Tailcat uses its own independent index, and that sets its apart from third-party solutions such as DuckDuckGo or Startpage, which rely on the products of Big Tech companies such as Bing or Google.

Brave promises that its Search engine will provide users with quality results, but without compromising user security. The search engine does not record user IP addresses or will use personally identifiable information to change the search results.

Brave Search is developed using the same principles as the Brave browser:

  • Private: does not track or profile users.
  • User-First: Users come first, not advertising or data industries.
  • Choice: Private ads will come to search, similarly to how they are handled in Brave Browser. An ad-free paid search option will also become available.
  • Independent: Brave Search will use anonymized contributions to improve and refine Brave Search.
  • Transparent: Secret methods or algorithms won't be used to bias results.
  • Seamless: integration with the Brave Browser.
  • Open: Other search engines may use Brave Search.

Brave Search works like other search engines when you open it. You may type a search query, get suggestions, and will get results once you start the search.

The search results page resembles that of other search engines as well. You find options to switch from the "all" results listing to images, news or videos, and may filter results by country, safe search or time.

One interesting feature of Brave Search is that it may fill the results using data from third-party search engines, if its own set of data is not sufficient.

Select the cogwheel icon on the search results page to display the number of results that come from Brave's own index (in percent).

brave search settings

Another interesting feature of Brave Search is the option to set a location manually. Brave uses what it calls anonymous local results by default where necessary. Some queries work only if the location is known, e.g. when you search for restaurants near me, a location needs to be known as results would not make sense otherwise.  Brave uses the IP but won't share it or store it.

You can turn this off in the settings or set a location manually that you want to be used as your location.

Still in the settings, you may disable the collection of anonymous usage metrics, and Google fallback mixing. The latter won't mix Google results in the search results if Brave's own index fails to deliver enough results on its own.

Brave Search uses an anonymous cookie to save preferences (when you make changes in the settings). A help page provides details on that.

Brave Search has no ads currently. Search results are displayed in blocks, and each block is clearly distinguishable from one another.

Some queries may display an option to display local results only, others may display widgets, e.g. the chart of a stock.

brave search finance

Closing Words

Brave Search is a beta product. I had the chance to use the search engine for several weeks on one device, and found it to return good results often. The fact that Brave maintains its own index is a plus, as it has full control over the results and since Brave claims that it will provide search results that are not biased, may soon become a go-to search engine for users who prefer that approach.

The Brave approach is interesting, especially since it may establish another source of revenue for the company in the long run. Not everyone is ready to pay for an ad-free search engine, but if you'd get unfiltered and unbiased results, it could certainly attract some users who are fed up with how the major search engines are run (especially in regards to bias and advertising).

Now You: have you tried Brave Search?

Summary
Brave Search Beta is now available publicly
Article Name
Brave Search Beta is now available publicly
Description
Brave Search, a new search engine by the makers of Brave Browser, is now available publicly.
Author
Publisher
Ghacks Technology News
Logo
Advertisement

Previous Post: «
Next Post: «

Comments

  1. owl said on June 30, 2021 at 10:04 am
    Reply

    Off-topic,
    Neeva Announces Public Availability of its Ads Free, Private Search Engine – Neeva
    https://neeva.com/blog/neeva-announces-public-availability
    Former top Google executives take on Google Search with new startup Neeva – SiliconANGLE
    https://siliconangle.com/2021/06/29/former-top-google-executives-take-google-search-new-startup-neeva/
    Neeva is an ad-free search alternative from ex-Googlers
    https://www.fastcompany.com/90650719/neeva-search-engine-google-alternative-privacy-sridhar-ramaswamy-tech

    1. Tom Hawack said on July 1, 2021 at 12:10 am
      Reply

      @owl, not totally off-topic. Neeva, the concept, at least triggers curiosity. Google’s talent minus tracking and ads for less than 5 bucks a month … I’m off to give the free trial a try. Basically paying for Web search is not conceivable here but, again, curiosity is often my guide (not to say my master).

      1. owl said on July 1, 2021 at 12:00 pm
        Reply

        Neeva’s search engine is initially available in the United States. Users who sign up receive free access to the search engine for three months to help them decide whether they wish to buy the $4.95 monthly subscription.
        https://neeva.com/blog/neeva-announces-public-availability

  2. Ray said on June 23, 2021 at 11:12 pm
    Reply

    Thansk to ryuk for the LibreTechTips review of Brave Search. Was quite useful, so I decided to test out Brave Search.

    One interesting thing I discovered is if Brave doesn’t have enough matches in its index, it can forward your query to Google. See search.brave.com/help/google-fallback for more info. This feature works like Searx as it forwards your query to Google anonymously and returns their results. You can turn this off if you choose to by setting the “fallback” cookie value to 0. I believe Brave only forwards the search query, but the Google Fallback Mixing page doesn’t specify what exactly is being forwarded.

  3. stuff that matters said on June 23, 2021 at 9:50 pm
    Reply

    With the Brave Search results, if you highlight/select a URL with the left mouse button, and then right-click it to copy the text, that won’t work, as it takes you to that site with that right-click. Links should never take you to a site with a right-click like that. This is deceptive web page design, that should never be the norm.

    Startpage used this trick for a time, until enough users complained and then they changed it back proper.

    That said, the way around this issue with Brave Search, is to highlight/select the URL, and then Ctrl>C. Yet for me, the way around this is to not use Brave Search, at least for now.

  4. Braving said on June 23, 2021 at 9:35 pm
    Reply

    Another proxy of Bing…. When they grow up they will make their own engine and become evil lol.

  5. Matti said on June 23, 2021 at 4:12 pm
    Reply

    Never been a fan of the browser, but from the short time I’ve been trying out Brave Search (two days) the results have been somewhat decent. It handles localized/regional searches better than DDG, for me at least.

    Still, a forum I frequent just set up its own Whoogle instance, and the results are even better. Pretty much on par with Google, but without the IP tracking or cookies.

  6. ULBoom said on June 23, 2021 at 4:08 pm
    Reply

    Well, it works.
    From the Brave Search page:
    “…we are progressing towards complete independence.”
    Good, keep going.

    I don’t see anything wrong with Brave, what they’re attempting or their search engine. They’ve progressed much further than similar endeavors, a very ambitious undertaking.

    I bookmarked their search, mainly to see how it grows up and will use it. It’s simple to argue the benefits of various search engines but they all have good and bad aspects depending on your needs.

    What I can’t deal with in the browser and the search engine has the same issues, is the scattershot organization and lack of customization. Gigantic fonts are super annoying, for one thing.

    I’ll keep watching and trying; Brave went nowhere for years and now is getting some serious development. If the current legal action against google goes anywhere, maybe there will be an opening for them to take the privacy market.

  7. ChromeFan said on June 23, 2021 at 2:40 pm
    Reply

    Because this site does not have a edit option, Brave Search uses Bing, the same API that DDG uses. There are only 2 search engines that exist (Google and Bing).

    1. Sha Lin said on June 23, 2021 at 11:37 pm
      Reply

      @ChromeFan
      LOL yeah, they lied from day one about being “independent” and private” you must have some internal information that nobody does?

      If you want to lie, at least say “oh they have some toggle so people can “mix” searches with google, it is optin but they are not being real about being truly intendent”. you know, something closer to reality.

      I don’t know where people like you get your information, but it shows you are clueless or dishonest, because Bing has no mention in the whole Brave Search.

      Brave Search mission is to fight BIG TECH about the censorship and manipulation of results, do you even understand that? just like Gigablast also has their own indexer and don’t censor (which you clearly had no idea about by saying only Bing and Google exist), but the problem with Gigablast is their results are really not good most of the time when you want to find specific stuff.

      Please, stop talking nonsense it gets old… you know, research and stop talking complete made up crap you cleary don’t know about.
      You didn’t even read the Goggles Brave pdf document, you just talk out of your butt and nothing else.

    2. ULBoom said on June 23, 2021 at 4:52 pm
      Reply

      What?

      Even if that were true, both Bing and Google are privacy neutral.

      But privacy, at least to the point that browsing works at all, is easy to get.

      Now go find out how.
      :)

    3. owl said on June 23, 2021 at 3:57 pm
      Reply

      @ChromeFan,
      > Brave Search uses Bing, the same API that DDG uses. There are only 2 search engines that exist (Google and Bing).

      How silly!

      Brave Search.
      Brave is a March 2021 acquisition of the open source search engine “Tailcat”, which uses “multiple community-curated open ranking models”.
      It has an independent search index, independent of other (Google, Bing, Yandex, Baidu) providers, and is completely proprietary.
      https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/goggles.pdf
      https://brave.com/brave-search/

      Which rely on the Bing API,
      DuckDuckGo, Qwant and Ecosia, are limited to whatever the API offers.

    4. Tom Hawack said on June 23, 2021 at 3:06 pm
      Reply

      @ChromeFan, always a pleasure to have a pseudonym in accordance with the comment; it would have been ‘ChromeAware’ that I would have felt puzzled.

      I am nevertheless puzzled, but for another reason : your straightforward assertion that only 2 search engines exist (Google and Bing). I’d love to be sure this is sarcastic. If you mean that all search engines rely on either Google’s or Bing’s API to collect their results then you are mistaking.

      Many search engines do rely on Bing (Microsoft offers its API with a smile given it participates to diminishing Google search) but fewer on Google given the latter is powerful and thinks twice accordingly. Some search engines have a crawler of their own, Mojeek for instance.

      Meta search engines, the wisest and most efficient approach IMO, will call upon several search engines to deliver theirs.

      Last but not least : even if a search engine gets its data from Google and/or Bing, they at least offer privacy, at least most of them do, not all and of course we notice a myriad of new search engines, AMO for instance is relevant with new engines regularly appearing most of which are Bing based, indeed.

      The fan attitude will always amaze me.

  8. ChromeFan said on June 23, 2021 at 2:33 pm
    Reply

    Why use this when Google exists? Google is as private as Brave Search by the way.

    1. Klaas Vaak said on June 23, 2021 at 2:52 pm
      Reply

      @ChromeFan: what makes you say that?

  9. Tom Hawack said on June 23, 2021 at 2:29 pm
    Reply

    Brave Search cookies :

    Theme
    Light = theme:light
    Dark = theme:dark

    Units of measure
    US-based = units:us
    Metric = units:metric

    Open links in new tab
    Open external results in new tabs/windows ON = olnt:1
    Open external results in new tabs/windows OFF = none

    Anonymous local results
    ON = useLocation:1
    OFF = useLocation:1

    Anonymous usage metrics
    User’s choice is not stored in a cookie but in his Firefox’s profile localStorage : for users who clean their localStorage at Firefox exit the choice will be erased and set to default which is ON. Default should be OFF and set by opt-in, not opt-out. This is sneaky and doesn’t enforce confidence. I don’t care if it’s anonymous or not, it has to be opt-in or at least included in a cookie, not in the localStorage which is a way of proceeding unhealthy sites use to bypass cookies given more users are aware of cookies than localStorage. Qwant Search engine used to proceed this way, no longer do, which is why I’m using again Qwant. I think Brave Search should reconsider their Anonymous usage metrics accordingly.

    1. Tom Hawack said on June 23, 2021 at 2:48 pm
      Reply

      Anonymous local results
      ON = useLocation:1
      OFF = useLocation:0 of course, not ‘1’

  10. Tom Hawack said on June 23, 2021 at 1:06 pm
    Reply

    Trying out ‘Brave Search’ …

    – Only one page of results? Tell me I’m dreaming.

    – As many other search engines, results don’t take advantage of the screen’s width. Of course if that width is tremendous then narrowing it is welcomed but otherwise forces to scroll when wider results would be far more conveient : CSS corrected here, once again.

    – Video search is narrowed, why not full-width as Image Search? CSS corrected.

    – The Google Web Search syndrome : ‘People also ask’, images, news, videos carousels in Web Search when these topics are available seperetely is, IMO, a pain. 1- I don’t care what ‘people ask for’ as i don’t care what people vote for, what people look at or like … this is a modern plague, i.e. not asking what you like but what you think other people like. 2- if I want to search for images, news, videos I click on these search topics, no reason for them to bother me if I’m searching for Web results hence pages, articles and not images, news, videos specifically.

    Added ‘Brave Search’ to my bookmarks but not integrated into Search. What the heck can be the pertinence of a Web search engine with only 1 (one, uno) page of results? Beta it is.

    1. Klaas Vaak said on June 23, 2021 at 2:51 pm
      Reply

      @Tom Hawack: I rarely go beyond 1 page. If I don’t find it on that 1st page I refine/amed/alter my search query.

      1. Tom Hawack said on June 23, 2021 at 5:16 pm
        Reply

        @Klaas Vaak, I have no idea of a majority’s behavior when it comes to search engines’ results : some adopt the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ attitude, others scroll, scroll and scroll page after page to find the the result’s description closest to what they have in mind. Also depends on the number of results per page, ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred … Finally, when it comes to inquisitive/tracking search engines which consider the user’s history (not to mention the Big data they’ve gathered about him) to order the search results, no doubt these, by their biased ranking, do disservice to the the user… unless to consider we favor results in accordance with what we’d like to find, which is the very purpose of tracking search engines. IMO surfing with the wave is nice only on the oceans, elsewhere it participates to lower one’s independence of thoughts. Personally I scroll page after page most of the time unless I’m only searching for a given site’s url.

  11. ryuk said on June 23, 2021 at 12:32 pm
    Reply
  12. walker said on June 23, 2021 at 9:05 am
    Reply

    I will try it. searx still remains my preferite though

  13. Karl said on June 23, 2021 at 8:12 am
    Reply

    LOL. The people in this thread are going about it as sometimes happens in this comments section when it comes to Brave. Same arguments same answers. Locked in their positions. A little entertaining reading through these 5 pages. A bit bizarre too since some manage to contradict themselfs.
    https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/brave-search-now-available-in-beta-as-privacy-protecting-search-engine-alternative-to-google.2301880/

  14. nealis said on June 23, 2021 at 7:57 am
    Reply

    Using it as my primary search engine in Brave just b/c Duckduckgo search is frankly horrid, reminds me of the early search engines of the internet. All the other alternatives either use Google or Bing indexes so I see no point in using them instead of Google itself. Hopefully Brave search is actually good.

    1. Sebas said on June 23, 2021 at 3:58 pm
      Reply

      I do not understand the fuss about DDG. It is a very mediocre engine, it censors results and I don’t trust Gabriel for one second, has been discussed here before.

      Brave search engine looks promising, one more reason to stay with Brave hopefully.

      1. Klaas Vaak said on June 23, 2021 at 5:09 pm
        Reply

        @Sebas: ?

      2. Klaas Vaak said on June 24, 2021 at 7:24 am
        Reply

        @Sebas: ?, thumb up.

  15. Karl said on June 23, 2021 at 7:51 am
    Reply

    “From I’m feeling lucky to I’m feeling Brave: Browser maker erects web search engine beta
    ..[..]..
    Asked how Brave intends to deal with efforts manipulate its search results – a persistent issue for Google – Josep Pujol, chief of Search at Brave, told The Register in an email that abuse hasn’t been a problem yet.

    “But we do expect bad actors to try to alter rankings, from SEO game players to censors,” he said. “We do have some tech in the pipeline based on prior work at Cliqz to prevent data pollution [PDF]. Also, it is worth noting that Brave is already solving this kind of problem effectively in the form of anti-fraud for our private ad ecosystem.”

    Pujol, however, did acknowledge that Brave has to deal with index pollution, just like everyone else.

    “We try to have the cleanest index possible, where only Web content that people engage with is indexed,” he said. “However, objectionable content is also present in our index, including child sexual abuse material. For such problematic content, we scrub at query-time via filters, and we are working hard to strengthen them.”

    At this point, it’s still too early to tell how Brave Search will be received, but Pujol promised there will be queries per month (QPM) statistics added to Brave’s transparency page in the future.

    “Right now we are in the first day of public beta and in heavy building mode, but we were pleased to see over 100,000 people join our waitlist for the preview release and testing phase leading up to the beta,” he said.”
    https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/22/brave_search_engine/

    What does bold mean exactly?

    1. Karl said on June 25, 2021 at 12:18 pm
      Reply

      Hm, the section I wanted to bold didn’t work out as planned, what I wonderred about was this:

      “where only Web content that people engage with is indexed,”

  16. owl said on June 23, 2021 at 6:38 am
    Reply

    Postscript:
    Make Brave Search default in Firefox
    https://search.brave.com/default
    All Settings
    https://search.brave.com/settings

  17. Karl said on June 23, 2021 at 6:07 am
    Reply

    Great write about it, Martin. It seems good based on what you write and your own experience using it for a while, I will try to use it more and more to get my own experience, and as long as the results provided will be of high quality it will probably gain popularity over time, great to see a smaller player trying to make the search engine segment better for everyone, as in hopefully pushing the search giants in a similar direction in how they operate. I wish Brave good luck with it.

    As of the latest release of the Brave browser (22 June), it is now possible to select Brave Search beta in the browsers settings panel too:

    “Added Brave Search beta to the list of available search engines.”
    https://brave.com/latest/

  18. haha said on June 23, 2021 at 5:59 am
    Reply

    “Poor” search results as other non-Gxxxgle engines.

    1. Iron Heart said on June 23, 2021 at 12:38 pm
      Reply

      There’s StartPage, which proxies your requests to Google. You can use this and still get the Google search results, instead of handing over your search history to Google. Cheers.

  19. Tom Ri Lee said on June 23, 2021 at 5:32 am
    Reply

    Yes, amazing news. I have been using it for a while it it works great, and I will keep using it because it is the only one that will be good enough and at the same time fight the censorship big tech and silicon valley are imposing on people, telling people what they can search and what they can’t search only because they don’t want you to.

    The the other one we could call “independent” is Gigablast but the results were usually bad, sadly, but it also didn’t censor as much, for example, go search for Stormfront and Gigablast will show it first result with a badge “popular”, think whatever you want about stormfront but Gigablast didn’t discriminate against it and manipulated the result. Do the same on other search engines, you will not find it, you will not find it on google, bing and anything that use them as indexer, not even the conartist DuckDuckgo that use bing but also have their own indexer, but they censor their results too, just like others.
    Now Gigablast is first and Brave Search is not first, but it is there on first page. That’s all you need to know and that’s why I will keep using Brave, because Brave is already better than Gigablast for many searches and while I liked supporting Gigablast, I had to usually click on “startpage” to get a good result.

    Whatever wants to protect our choice to decide what we want to search and believe, it’s fine by me. I expect some people to start calling Brave Search some bogeyman alt-right platform because they aren’t “censoring enough” would say Mozilla, but that’s why I will support them. Brave Goggle document already mentioned it anyway, how they should not control what people can search or not and it was nice for Brenda Eich to say it better on twitter.

    Is that bad? nah, and this is just the beginning Brave Search will become better and have the features and we all have to hope they keep their promise and don’t censor like others do.

  20. Plants said on June 23, 2021 at 1:22 am
    Reply

    How do I save preferences if I clear cookies on exit? Both DuckDuckGo and Startpage offer Settings URLs that contain all the preferences. I’m not gonna go out of my way and come up with a strategy to whitelist stuff just for the sake of switching to some search engine.

    1. owl said on June 24, 2021 at 12:29 am
      Reply

      In the current beta specification, it seems that “preferences” cannot be saved.
      We are limited to three choices: whitelisting, setting preferences each time, or using the default settings. Naturally, this will be improved when the stable version is released.

      In my trial experience, using the default setting just doesn’t allow me to select “Teema, Open links in new tab”. This is not a problem for me.
      Rather, the performance of the search, which clearly outperforms Bing search and is comparable to Google search, is attractive.
      I’ve decided to use “Brave Search” as my default search engine in Firefox, even though it is a beta version.

    2. ULBoom said on June 23, 2021 at 4:45 pm
      Reply

      IDK, that’s a big issue. Cookies being the only way to save settings is a deal killer here; I never save them.

      1. Iron Heart said on June 23, 2021 at 5:36 pm
        Reply

        @ULBoom

        Realistically, how else would they save them, if not with a cookie? You have no user account there, so this option is out. They could fingerprint you to restore the settings to you server-side or they could read out your MAC address if they used IPv6, and then restore your settings server-side. None of this would be superior to a cookie.

      2. Plants said on June 23, 2021 at 8:11 pm
        Reply

        Iron Heart,

        Did you read my comment? Settings URLs are a thing, are implemented in many search engines and require no cookies, fingerprinting or user accounts.

      3. aXXo said on June 23, 2021 at 10:21 pm
        Reply

        @Plants

        That’s 100% correct.

        With both Startpage and DDG you can save your settings with a URL, without any cookie.

        Funny how some folks pretend to know-it-all, as they overlook the facts.

        That’s why I don’t bother with commenting here much, as much of the community here likes to quibble over the same superfluous dogma, with their half-truths and extreme claims.

      4. Yash said on June 24, 2021 at 7:15 am
        Reply

        “Funny how some folks pretend to know-it-all, as they overlook the facts.”

        That’s actually true. Just read these lines – “They could fingerprint you to restore the settings to you server-side or they could read out your MAC address if they used IPv6, and then restore your settings server-side. None of this would be superior to a cookie.”

        Seriously fingerprinting the user so as to restore settings, that in itself is laughable, I thought that restoring part was a theoritical concept and it is different from Device fingerprinting anyway coz it involves IP address tracking as well as cookies – in other words all three trinities. And read out MAC address if they used IPV6 – I didn’t knew reading out MAC address is possible by IPV6 address. I thought only router can see MAC address. Well we learn new stuff everyday.

      5. aXXo said on June 25, 2021 at 9:37 pm
        Reply

        @Yash

        Being you leveraged my quote, I feel obliged to clarify what I meant with that.

        I wasn’t singling out Iron Heart there, nor do I explicitly endorse what you said in reply, as I don’t know enough about such things.

        Beyond that, as for what is possible with reading out MAC address, I reckon that may be hinged with Wi-Fi, involving some closer connections and deeper pokes. At least that’s what a hacker once told me, but IDK.. I’m an industrial psychologist, not a geek.

        I would same more, but “they” are watching me. ?

      6. Yash said on June 26, 2021 at 8:11 am
        Reply

        @aXXo
        IPV6 addresses are unique and they remain the same way whether its cellular connection or broadband, only IPV4 changes.
        Yes they are derived from MAC address but so far in any of my devices, I haven’t been able to read out MAC from IPV6 in the way Iron Heart link says. When connected to WiFi an additional address does appear in WiFi settings in case of Androids in which reading MAC is possible but in ipleak.net or in IPV6 test sites, it doesn’t appear. The only address which shows its face is the one which will be same regardless of connection and MAC reading is not possible.

        But that doesn’t matter coz IPV6 are unique, derived from MAC, so just log it.

        MAC address however are visible at router level which can be useful for MAC address filtering, however some new devices even randomize that.

        That’s all I know so far, though if a new link appears which says otherwise I’m all for it.

      7. Iron Heart said on June 24, 2021 at 8:05 am
        Reply

        @Plants & aXXo

        DuckDuckGo saves settings in cookies, including the selection of light / dark mode or the limitation of searches to your country. Not sure if you have ever used DDG.

        @Yash

        It’s you again, you seem to never tire with your BS. Please, give it a rest.

        > Seriously fingerprinting the user so as to restore settings, that in itself is laughable, I thought that restoring part was a theoritical concept and it is different from Device fingerprinting anyway coz it involves IP address tracking as well as cookies – in other words all three trinities.

        No, your fingerprint information can be stored on their server without them having to set a cookie (they still can do that, but don’t have to). Why do you think fingerprinting falls under “cookie-less” tracking? And no, your IP address has no influence on your fingerprint. *facepalm*

        And yes, the browser fingerprint is a valid login or identification mechanism and some websites actually use this.

        > And read out MAC address if they used IPV6 – I didn’t knew reading out MAC address is possible by IPV6 address. I thought only router can see MAC address. Well we learn new stuff everyday.

        Yes, MAC addresses leak via IPv6…

        https://superuser.com/questions/243669/how-to-avoid-exposing-my-mac-address-when-using-ipv6

        …and no, you don’t learn something new everyday. You in particular, you never learn anything. Ever. At least not in my experience.

      8. Plants said on July 22, 2021 at 10:17 pm
        Reply

        Iron Heart,

        Nope. **You** haven’t used DDG. Go to Settings, change whatever you want, click on Show Bookmarklet and Settings Data. There’s your settings URL. Similar procedure with Startpage. They even let you obfuscate it. Do your research before spreading false information next time.

      9. aXXo said on June 25, 2021 at 8:39 pm
        Reply

        Iron Heart

        > “DuckDuckGo saves settings in cookies, including the selection of light / dark mode or the limitation of searches to your country. Not sure if you have ever used DDG.”

        And why are you not sure? Hmm.

        As for you trying to teach me about DDG and cookies, I already knew all that. Seems rather moot for you to point that out, but I guess that was just some sort of argumentative tactic on your part?

        Regardless, I didn’t know about saving DDG’s settings via a URL, as I don’t use DDG much. But thanks to Plants, I got curious and hence checked it out for myself.

        Thus in little time, I indeed confirmed his claim about that to be true. Here’s an example of such a URL:

        https://duckduckgo.com/?kae=d&kc=-1&k1=-1&kk=-1&kz=-1&kp=-2&k7=ff0000&kl=be-fr&kad=cs_CZ

        That said, I reckon this settings option in DDG isn’t easy to find for many users, as it’s somewhat hidden. Yet I found it with no issue—but to fair, I’m a super genius.

      10. Yash said on June 24, 2021 at 12:48 pm
        Reply

        @Iron Heart

        “No, your fingerprint information can be stored on their server without them having to set a cookie (they still can do that, but don’t have to). Why do you think fingerprinting falls under “cookie-less” tracking? And no, your IP address has no influence on your fingerprint. *facepalm*”
        Thanks for telling this, I guess you read my comment properly earlier in another article in which I said same things, so good job. Though I do remember you mix MAC address along with WebGL, fonts and what not in case of browser fingerprinting. I can dig that up if you want or in a sensible way, leave this topic here.

        “And yes, the browser fingerprint is a valid login or identification mechanism and some websites actually use this.”

        Now about the original quote, I said login or restoring setting through BFP is theoritical coz in most cases login part or restoring part involves cookies along with main BFP values, in few cases it involves IP address(prominent in some sites which block Tor or have location restrictions). Either these three trinities or some sort of URL restore setting or login. It doesn’t happen through BFP alone – is it possible? Yeah that’s why I said theoritical concept but in reality no site(literally) does that – feel free to mention some names.

        Thanks for mentioning that link, it does says Macs leak MAC address and measures have been taken, I use Linux and Windows and it didn’t happen there so that’s why I said that.

      11. Iron Heart said on June 24, 2021 at 2:37 pm
        Reply

        @Yash

        Let’s keep this short, I have no time to waste here.

        > Though I do remember you mix MAC address along with WebGL, fonts and what not in case of browser fingerprinting.

        No. Not at all. MAC addresses are one way to uniquely identify someone, fingerprinting would be another. The two are unrelated identification mechanisms.

        > (blah blah nonsense)

        No comment.

        > I use Linux and Windows and it didn’t happen there so that’s why I said that.

        It leaks there, too.

        Leave me alone with your lack of knowledge.

      12. Yash said on June 24, 2021 at 11:33 pm
        Reply

        @Iron Heart

        Okay enough fooling around.

        “No. Not at all. MAC addresses are one way to uniquely identify someone, fingerprinting would be another. The two are unrelated identification mechanisms.”
        I initially thought of copy paste your words from another article but decided against it, its not worth it.

        “And read out MAC address if they used IPV6 – I didn’t knew reading out MAC address is possible by IPV6 address. I thought only router can see MAC address. Well we learn new stuff everyday.”
        That part was meant as a sarcasm. IPV6 addresses are unique because they are derived from MAC addresses, but that thing is already known for years. That’s why the line – we learn new stuff everyday ;-)

        Restoring part in *simple* words means logins. And that involves all three trinities – IP address, Cookies and BFP, so your line – not superior than cookie is laughable coz at the very least, every restoring part involves cookies. It can’t happen without cookies unless it involves URLs which is what Plants mentioned. Feel free to mention some websites which *restores* without cookies. Restoring settings through reading out IPV6, seriously do you have any idea what you said?

        About MAC address, since you shared that link, yes reading MAC is possible but that link has something more – read again all comments in that will ya? as it mentioned some words about measures taken against.
        I have two phones and a laptop, and only in my old phone(Android 5) I was able to read MAC from IPV6(which had two IPV6 addresses by the way, I hope you know what that means). In other devices that was not possible but that doesn’t matter coz IPV6 are already unique.
        Yeah to do that I had to enable IPV6 in my router but I did checked that before writing a comment ;-)

    3. Karl said on June 23, 2021 at 6:50 am
      Reply

      Hmm. If that is not possible than we got one area of improvement right here. I clear all cookies at browser shut down and got no plan on changing that.

  21. owl said on June 23, 2021 at 1:10 am
    Reply

    I added it to the search engine in my regular browser, Firefox.
    about:preferences#home
    Homepage and new windows
    Custom URLs…
    https://search.brave.com/
    Its search performance is quite good.

    1. owl said on June 23, 2021 at 6:40 am
      Reply

      Postscript:
      Make Brave Search default in Firefox
      https://search.brave.com/default
      All Settings
      https://search.brave.com/settings

      1. Azharuddin said on June 23, 2021 at 1:26 pm
        Reply

        Google fallback mixing is not available for other browsers…only showing in brave under all settings

      2. owl said on June 23, 2021 at 3:22 pm
        Reply

        @Azharuddin,
        > Google fallback mixing is not available for other browsers…
        only showing in brave under all settings

        So what’s up with that?
        Brave Search is not limited to the Brave browser, it can be added to other browsers and was developed as a viable alternative to other search engines such as Google and Bing.
        https://brave.com/brave-search/
        And my comment is only about adding “Brave Search” to Firefox and describing the default search engine and how to configure it. I didn’t mention anything more than that, and it’s currently too early to mention those things.

  22. Anonymous said on June 23, 2021 at 12:46 am
    Reply

    I have an interest in kayaks and always use that word to test a search engine.
    Brave produces and ad at the top for the dotcom company that lies about giving you cheap rates. Next comes a Twitter link (I never use Twitter). Then news, another ad., videos, youtube, wikipedia (finally something potentially useful), another ad. After that we get to kayak retailers. Wholesalers miss page 1 altogether. Those results were USA-centric. I live elsewhere in the world (fortunately).

    I probably should rewind and say I chose to enter the one word rather than choose from Brave’s ‘helpful’ suggestions.

    Needs far more work and a way to kill advertising. There is no option to do that in settings
    https://search.brave.com/settings

    No thanks

    1. ULBoom said on June 23, 2021 at 4:43 pm
      Reply

      No ads for me, AdGuard system version. Lots of extraneous junk I’d never use, though, which can be removed with the element blocker.

      Give it time. They’re trying.

    2. Klaas Vaak said on June 23, 2021 at 11:43 am
      Reply

      @Anonymous:
      1. I don’t see any ads in Brave Search, perhaps because i am using uBlock Origin?
      2. Brave Search is still in beta, so is still being worked on. To treat it as if it is a full release is pointless.

  23. Anonymous said on June 23, 2021 at 12:34 am
    Reply

    Stand by for the Brave management conspiracy theorists?

  24. Brad said on June 23, 2021 at 12:30 am
    Reply

    They may claim they use their own index, however it looks like yet another search engine that’s just a front for Bing. The problem is Bing search results are not very good when going beyond just basic searches; any search engine that uses Bing (I.E. DuckDuckGo) suffers from the same shortcomings – and Brave search just coincidentally has the same problem.

    For example:

    1) Search for the following

    site:arstechnica.com “duckduckgo”

    2) Select a custom date range from 01 January 2021 onwards

    3) The first result is from 2020. The second result is from 2015. The third result is from 2012. Complete waste of time if you need to go to Google anyway.

    Also:

    1) Search for the following

    site:bleepingcomputer.com “duckduckgo”

    2) There are no article dates in the search results, so it’s not possible to tell whether the article was written last week, or last decade.

    As it is, Brave search offers nothing new. For a privacy-based search engine, better off sticking with Startpage – which gives better general results than the Bing clones do.

  25. Herman Cost said on June 23, 2021 at 12:05 am
    Reply

    I just installed it as my default search engine on Firefox. The instructions Brave gives you to set it as the default search engine on Firefox did not work (it wants you to click the three lines in the URL bar but they were not there), but with a little tinkering (including having to install an extension called New Tab Override to allow a Brave search bar to show up when I opened a new tab) I was able to get it done. It seems to work fine on the limited searches I have done so far.

    I disliked the Brave browser (it did not allow me to have a number of things that I prefer like a visible menu bar with text headings) and I therefore deleted it, but I very much hope this is the answer to search. If it is, I am now almost Google free except for Google Maps (I tried Here WeGo maps at the suggestion of a couple of helpful gHacks users, but based on a short parallel run it is simply not near as good at rerouting based on changing traffic patterns – I live in the NYC area and that is very important here). Time will tell, but I’ll give this time as I am sure it will improve going forward

    1. Iron Heart said on June 23, 2021 at 4:22 pm
      Reply

      @Herman Cost

      As an alternative to Here Maps, Magic Earth and OsmAnd are worth a look, too.

    2. ShintoPlasm said on June 23, 2021 at 9:35 am
      Reply

      @Herman Cost:

      Their Firefox instructions are probably out of date following FF’s UI revamp in version 89, which removed those three dots/lines in the address bar.

      1. owl said on June 23, 2021 at 1:00 pm
        Reply

        For Firefox “89”+,
        you can add “Brave Search” as a search engine to Firefox by right-clicking in the address bar (URL bar), and set it as the default search engine.

      2. owl said on June 23, 2021 at 2:50 pm
        Reply
  26. ddk said on June 22, 2021 at 9:01 pm
    Reply

    Is Brave becoming what Firefox claims to be now, a browser built around users & privacy?

    Braves business model seems kind of sketchy, they might be using the MS blueprint of slowly pushing various revenue streams on users with a slow but increasingly aggressive approach.

    For me and this is IMHO, Ungoggled Chromium is the best way to go for now.

    1. ULBoom said on June 23, 2021 at 4:38 pm
      Reply

      Ungoogled Chromium is just a few steps away from using a CLI browser; it’s miserable without extensions, which bring the Store back into play.

      Try one of the woolyss Chromia (Ungoogled is there…), there are some more private versions that work well. I use the blue one on windows, with extensions and external ad blocker.

      The problem with any Chromium is WebRTC; Ungoogled, too. It can only be disabled externally since 2018.

      https://chromium.woolyss.com/

      1. Iron Heart said on June 23, 2021 at 5:33 pm
        Reply

        @ULBoom

        > The problem with any Chromium is WebRTC; Ungoogled, too. It can only be disabled externally since 2018.

        That’s not correct. You can totally disable WebRTC in Chromium via this extension:

        https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/webrtc-control/fjkmabmdepjfammlpliljpnbhleegehm

        Use this testing website to confirm that it’s disabled:

        https://browserleaks.com/webrtc

        That being said, for most it will suffice to disable the WebRTC IP address leak, which can be done in Brave under brave://settings/privacy or in other Chromium-based browsers via uBlock Origin.

      2. ddk said on June 23, 2021 at 7:56 pm
        Reply

        @ULBoom, Yes, I’m using UG from Woolyss. Portable version and has something called chrlauncher developed by Henry ++ which updates the browser.

        @Iron Heart, uBlock Origin has a disable WebRTC setting also.

    2. ddk said on June 23, 2021 at 6:56 am
      Reply

      Meant “Ungoogled Chromium”

      1. Klaas Vaak said on June 23, 2021 at 11:40 am
        Reply

        @ddk: Ungoogled Chromium is not a search engine, it’s a browser. So, even if you use UC, you’ll still need a search engine to find what you are looking for on internet.

      2. ddk said on June 23, 2021 at 7:51 pm
        Reply

        @ Klaas. You are correct this being about search engines, off topic sorry.
        Having checked Brave search vs DDG I imputed a site called “Vanguard News Network” (VNN) a notorious anti-semetic and racist baiting site just to check censorship in action.

        Both showed results for that site, Brave search had two results above the intended one, a Wikipedia site and another site from the Southern Poverty Law Center. IOW, VNN was the 3rd result on the list.
        VNN was the very first result on DDG.
        Don’t know if that’s really significant or means anything about censorship policy though.

  27. Dean said on June 22, 2021 at 8:13 pm
    Reply

    When they say they do not track they’re lying. Search engines depend on tracking. so yeah, just another search engine making money of internet users.

    1. ULBoom said on June 23, 2021 at 4:28 pm
      Reply

      A search engine has to know who is requesting a search but tracking/logging whatever term, isn’t essential to operation or funding.

      Even a VPN has to know where to return data.

      Yup, there’s a degree of trust involved. Services that clearly state they steal everything and sell it leave no doubt they can be trusted to do that. :)

    2. Klaas Vaak said on June 23, 2021 at 10:34 am
      Reply

      @Dean: so, you don’t use any search engine?

  28. Yash said on June 22, 2021 at 7:58 pm
    Reply

    This is the first time I used it, gotta say, I like it. Good job Brave team.

    1. Yash said on June 23, 2021 at 7:15 am
      Reply

      Not saying it would be default option for me as I only bookmarked the homepage, but hopefully another useful alternative in the long run.

  29. Dumbledalf said on June 22, 2021 at 7:56 pm
    Reply

    Everything feels like using DuckDuckGo.

  30. Iron Heart said on June 22, 2021 at 7:40 pm
    Reply

    Although I am a user of the Brave Browser, I find this to be a pointless endeavor. There are already similar search engines, e.g. DuckDuckGo or StartPage. I don’t see what this new search engine brings to the table for me as a user, yet I understand that it might generate revenue for Brave Software.

    I am not interested at all and would have preferred a partnership with DuckDuckGo.

    1. Doyle said on July 4, 2021 at 11:32 am
      Reply

      @Iron Heart
      You should go on the privacy subs on reddit. The amount of misinformation about Brave from the cult of firefox is insane.

      1. Iron Heart said on July 5, 2021 at 10:21 am
        Reply

        @Doyle

        I am already acutely aware of subreddits like r/privacy or r/privacytoolsIO and the straight up lies posted about Brave there. These subreddits are populated by people that can only be described as Firefox fanboys.

        The thing is, none of the things “criticized” about Brave there have exceeded the nonsense level yet. Out of all the ruminated BS, my favorite is the “Brave hijacked links” accusation, implying that Brave is somehow not trustworthy, despite the fact that the affiliate link in question could not have been used for tracking, and despite the fact that it’s common industry practice (Brave and Binance are officially partners, too), with Firefox doing the same thing for every single Google search a user performs (hypocritically overlooked). However, what is almost never mentioned is Mozilla actually having been caught exfiltrating user data via remotely installed spyware (Cliqz incident), or their CEO’s recent calls for even heavier censorship of the web (but remember: free & open web accessible for everyone). Nah, that’s totally OK for them to do, let’s look for the next mountain out of a molehill for Brave Software… Not under my watch, LOL. The usual suspects are pissed beyond measure that the usual anti-Brave propaganda spread to save an imploding product (Firefox) isn’t working here, but you know what? I don’t give a damn.

    2. Sha Lin said on June 23, 2021 at 11:30 pm
      Reply

      No they are not, I am sorry but you as others should stop talking complete nonsense to the “crap” level.

      Startpage uses google, google censors and manipulate search results, they prioritize what will give them more money through advertisement and remove any search results they don’t “agree with”, do you even think your searches are true private when they send data to google that can track back at you?

      DuckDuckGo, uses Bing, and yes they supposedly have their own indexer too, but with Bing results you get Microsoft censorship and for DDG indexer they also censors and manipulate the searches. They also have to give information to Microsoft that Microsoft keeps for weeks and weeks… oh so private! DDG was made by antiprivacy guy that had a project that actually grabbed and sold people’s information in 2006.

      Brave Search is going to fight Big Tech censorship and wants to give good results without your data shared to Google or Bing or anybody else, they don’t even grab your information unless you optin to their metrics and mix results and give feedback, so it is up to you, of course in Beta, the metrics are opted out, but that’s obvious since it is not a final product yet.

      If you don’t care about this and don’t want to use it and you feel so safe and private and great with Startpage and DuckDuckgo even if they will give you results that were censored by big tech, manipulated by big tech and in the case of ddg, they also are doing their big tech like manipulation… then fine, you don’t need to use it.
      And if you complain about “the cost” well, not your money, and I am 100% sure the people building the Browser are not the same building the Search engine.

      It’s a Brendan Eich company, he is here to make money and bring a business based on privacy, it’s not like some random dude that nobody knows anything about or did scammy stuff like Gabriel Weinberg that used to sell people’s information and make money out of what supposedly he is fighting, and getting magically the duck domain and all that.

      And I am sorry but it shows you are clueless about Brave, since, Brave has a partnership with DuckDuckGo or why do you think Brave has “search with DDG” in inprivate windows and on tor your only search engine is DDG?…………….. But you are the ones who believe ddg… so I doubt you have much idea about the reality in tech industry and you just bought the supposedly pro privacy propaganda from Duckduckgo but never read about Weinberg or the many privacy issues that ddg has gone in their short history, I hope at least you are aware they manipulate and censors the searches, if not well… not much to do.

      1. Iron Heart said on June 24, 2021 at 7:50 am
        Reply

        @Sha Lin

        Your reply makes no sense to me. At all.

        – I have already conceded that I oversaw the fact that Brave Search uses its own search index in my reply to @Honorius.
        – No, that doesn’t mean that Brave will never censor anything. I have already hinted at the peer pressure issue they might face.
        – I have never said that they are currently censoring results. In fact, I have repeated multiple times that I appreciate the current lack of censorship on their part. Learn to read.
        – I never said that the results of Google or Bing aren’t censored. That those two censor is public knowledge, by extension, this is also true for any search engine that relies on either index.
        – You are accusing DuckDuckGo of being dishonest, in violation of their privacy policy, without providing any proof. Many products of DuckDuckGo are provably pro-privacy, e.g. the DuckDuckGo Tracker Radar or the DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials. Those are open source / public / auditable. Please provide some kind of proof for a 180° turn on their part when it comes to their search engine, which is supposedly anti-privacy. If that were true, many reputable pro-privacy projects who have endorsed them, including the Tor project, were dead wrong. OK, a tall order to make…
        – The search royalties that Brave gets from DuckDuckGo for setting it as the default search engine in some countries doesn’t mean that there is a substantial partnership involving joint projects and shared R&D, which is would have preferred.

        > And I am sorry but it shows you are clueless about Brave

        LOL, you haven’t been around here for long and it shows.

    3. ULBoom said on June 23, 2021 at 4:12 pm
      Reply

      They are definitely spread thin. Lack of focus kills lots of projects. We’ll see if they can manage all this stuff.

      Everyone has big ideas, making them happen is the hard part.

      1. Klaas Vaak said on June 23, 2021 at 5:04 pm
        Reply

        @ULBoom: even making them happen is not really the hard part, it is maintaining and improving that is the really hard part. It is like when someone saves money, then buys a fancy car thinking that is the end of costs, apart from gasoline. In practice the purchase was ‘nothing’, coping with the running costs to keep it on the road it the hard part.

    4. Honorius said on June 23, 2021 at 2:41 pm
      Reply

      I’m a very long-time DDG user (even before it became a little more on the radar) and it’s been my primary search engine for years, but I would definitely disagree here:
      it’s good to have a new search engine on the market _that uses its own index_ rather than relying on someone else’s (like DDG or Startpage).
      Just the absence of full-fledged own indexes I consider the main disadvantage of DDG (in fact, their own indexes are not completely absent – they have a limited set of their own indexes, but nevertheless DDG mostly works relying on other’s indexes).

      1. Iron Heart said on June 23, 2021 at 3:51 pm
        Reply

        @Honorius

        OK, fair enough. You are raising a good point, it is indeed a good thing that there are search indexes outside of Google and Bing, and this is certainly something that sets Brave Search apart from its competitors. My thinking was too limited here, too focused on the privacy aspect of it all (in which respect, I don’t believe Brave Search is any better than DDG), when the aspect of independence should also have been relevant.

    5. Karl said on June 23, 2021 at 7:03 am
      Reply

      Hm, in one way I agree in one way I do not agree. The way Brave are doing it now they got control over their own project. If they would have partnered with some of the other smaller guys, and at some point in the future, the partner, e.g DDG, would have made some changes that Brave would not have liked and not what Brave had in plans for their search engine, they would have no choice but to follow with the partners road map as the search engine was not their own. But doing it like it, they can change, improve and take this project whereever they want to. And that is one thing I like. So IMO the Pros shine over the Cons. But of course, it won’t take off if things don’t go as planned, if people don’t like it and absolutely not if the quality of the results are not up to standard. And I also hope that this project won’t “steal” necessary dev resources that otherwise would have been focused on the Brave browser.

      1. Karl said on June 23, 2021 at 7:46 am
        Reply

        Here’s what Brave writes about the launch:

        “Brave Search beta now available in Brave browser, offering users the first independent privacy search/browser alternative to big tech”
        https://brave.com/brave-search-beta/

      2. Iron Heart said on June 23, 2021 at 1:31 pm
        Reply

        @Klaas Vaak @Karl

        I didn’t say that I am against this project, I am just indifferent to it. I am a user of the Brave Browser and I am convinced that it has its place in the market (browser using the most popular engine – Blink – that also respects user privacy), but the company is starting so many new projects as of late, projects I don’t care about, e.g. Brave Search, Brave News, Brave Together etc.

        Maybe Brave Search will have its place, if the results it yields are significantly(!) superior to DuckDuckGo – I did some searches and don’t find this to be the case, but I will do more extensive testing going forward.

        What @Karl says is a good point, perhaps if DuckDuckGo develops into a direction Brave is not supportive of, or vice versa, such a partnership would break apart. However, I think this would require either company to deviate from its commitment to user privacy, more or less. Maybe Brave Software also doesn’t want to share revenue with DuckDuckGo, but then I wonder, if it took DuckDuckGo 10+ years to reach 2% market share (which, mind you, is respectable, considering that it mainly spreads via word of mouth)…

        https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgrowing/

        …then I have to wonder whether or not Brave Software was ill-advised to begin such a project, considering that DuckDuckGo does largely the same thing, has a big head start now, and considering that they are now competing with them for the attention of the minority of the privacy-aware. I don’t say that one shouldn’t try something new, I am just saying that the way is rocky and doesn’t seem promising, unless they (Brave Software) are really much better than the competition.

        @Klaas Vaak, respectfully and sincerely, since you are mentioning censorship: I wouldn’t get my hopes up. You know, there is so much social, political, and economical pressure on companies who DON’T censor, there is so much peer pressure, that I wouldn’t hold my breath. See, if you don’t censor these days, you will be accused of belonging to or supporting the far-right, or something along those lines (which is not true, if an entity doesn’t censor, it just means that it doesn’t censor, the entity in question has not declared any political allegiance for itself = perfect example of neutrality)… No company can have that, especially if you are not the market leader. If Google has 95%++ of the search market under its belt and does censor results, then it is easy to frame comparatively irrelevant competitors as niche providers catering exclusively to the far-right. If there is monopolistic power and peer pressure involved, things aren’t looking too good. Again, Brave Software doesn’t have to declare any political allegiance themselves, for them to be framed as bad, it’s enough if they don’t intervene, because intervention has become the norm.

        I appreciate that Brave Software keeps politics out of its products so far, although I am not interested politically in the results that typically get censored, I myself being a classical liberal. I am in favor of free speech, and I think that tools that have been neutral so far, e.g. browsers, should also stay neutral. I don’t support efforts to introduce censorship anywhere. However, I am not politically in favor of the people that typically get censored. But they have the same rights to free speech as anyone does, so I am defending this principle more than I am defending the people in question. I hope the products of Brave Software stay politically neutral, but realistically, in a world that is moving in the opposite direction, I don’t have much hope.

      3. Karl said on June 25, 2021 at 1:05 pm
        Reply

        @Iron Heart

        I understand. Yes indeed, DDG have for a long time been growing almost only by “spread by word”, and perhaps a few articles here and there in the tech press, which unfortunately for the most part are read by people that probably already had heard of it. And the more that has been written about it, articles, blog posts etc, the more has gotten indexed and probably showed up in searches over the years.

        I guess, one difference is the Brave browser, DDG started from zero and then building up, DDG had no browser or any kind of users base. And no articles written about them before their launch, unlike Brave and their browser. Brave started with the Brave browser and has since attracted some millon users due to the browser, and these users has probably followed the side projects that Brave got going on. So maybe in one way Braves starting point is rather different to the point where DDG started from. So hopefully the growth (and improvements of the search engine) will go much quicker than it has done for DDG.

        > “However, I am not politically in favor of the people that typically get censored. But they have the same rights to free speech as anyone does, so I am defending this principle more than I am defending the people in question.”

        Yes. I will and have always had that stance. Which sadly is not the case for those who rather see people get their accounts deleted and deplatformed. If people lose their income it’s a big plus. I wish they could learn to come with counterarguments instead of starting hateful compaigns to silence people that they don’t agree with. I don’t want the people who do this to others off any platform, I just want them to stop, look in the mirror, listen to what they say that they defend and see if their behavior is compatible with it. It never is.

        > ” I hope the products of Brave Software stay politically neutral, but realistically, in a world that is moving in the opposite direction, I don’t have much hope.”

        Indeed! But as you say, it does not look good for things staying that way.

        Plus I agree with your comment to Klaas. It is absolutely screwed up how seeing how this peer pressure works, IMO online bullying. And then see how easily the target just obey without a fight!

      4. Klaas Vaak said on June 23, 2021 at 2:58 pm
        Reply

        @Iron Heart: you raise a good point. Nevertheless, I do not expect a search engine to be political, I do expect it to provide facts, whether they are politically right or wrong, a fact is a fact. Some people seem to think Brave Search is essentially Bing, which is M$, which means censorship.

        I also expect, perhaps naively, that if a non-MSM site has info related to my query it does not get pushed of the 1 page of info, or, as in the Google case, be pushed to page 10,000 so it does not get found.

      5. Iron Heart said on June 23, 2021 at 3:48 pm
        Reply

        @Klaas Vaak

        Censorship is a political act, when I say that I appreciate that Brave Software keeps its products “politics-free”, I mean the apparent lack of censorship on their part so far. I applaud them for this, but I am not sure how long this can be upheld given the circumstances.

        Your expectation that a search result doesn’t get punished for its political affiliation (censored, or moved down) is reasonable, but not in an age of censorship. It would be a reasonable expectation in better times than the ones we live in. Today, I expect that such websites will be punished instantly for their political affiliation. Do I support this? Nope, not at all, however I am realistic about it.

    6. Klaas Vaak said on June 23, 2021 at 6:53 am
      Reply

      @Iron Heart: I agree with you on most issues, but strongly disagree on this one. DDG’s results are reasonable, but far from good. I regularly find I have to use Google when I know there are results for a query DDG does not return what I am looking for, and sure enough, Google delivers.

      Furthermore, while DDG does not filter political queries as much as Google, it still does to some extent.

      A partnership with DDG would still bring DDG’s shortcomings; StartPage uses Google so SP’s results are filtered by default.

      In my view Brave’s move is a very useful one, provided it can improve on DDG’s drawbacks.

      1. Karl said on June 23, 2021 at 7:34 am
        Reply

        Yes. Good points, Klaas. I agree. You added some more perspectives that I didn’t include in my own comment.

Leave a Reply

Check the box to consent to your data being stored in line with the guidelines set out in our privacy policy

We love comments and welcome thoughtful and civilized discussion. Rudeness and personal attacks will not be tolerated. Please stay on-topic.
Please note that your comment may not appear immediately after you post it.