31 ms·

Brave buys a search engine, promises no tracking, no profiling

931 points by samizdis 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
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samizdis 6y ago
> Brave Search's index there will be informed the activities of participating Brave users, in terms of the URLs they search for or click on, and adjacent web resources that don't require extensive crawling. > Brave also envisions users taking a more active role in their search results through a filtering mechanism. "It allows different groups to run their own sort of Turing complete filter rules, sort of like ad blocking rules in the search service and not in the browser, to have a community moderated view of the global index," he [Brendan Eich, Brave founder] explained. "It's called 'Goggles.'"
- topspin 6y ago
  I'd love to be able to filter out, for instance, pinterest. I'd actually pay nominal amounts of money for a search service that had my interests in mind; as opposed to advertisers and thought police.
  - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
    > and thought police Copyright interests pay large cash to make sure you know is truly best for you. You could show a little gratitude.
    - topspin 6y ago
      Indeed. I'll keep that in mind.
  - samizdis 6y ago
    I was pretty sure that it could be done in Google with operators in the search box (going back a few years), but I don't use Google any more and one reason I stopped was that it kept incrementally degrading the ability to refine individual searches manually. Anyhow, I just did a DDG search and came across this [1], which looks interesting for your use case (although that Pinterest is mentioned is a coincidence). I've not tried it out, so I can't recommend, comment or anything. [1] https://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-remove-pinterest-and-other-sites-google-search.htm https://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-remove-pinteres...
  - ceh123 6y ago
    Shameless plug, but I've been working on a project [0] that does exactly this. Currently it just has a few filters I've created for myself and only supports web search (and a few !bang like re-directs), but I'm working on implementing user accounts that will be able to create their own filters. [0] https://hadal.io https://hadal.io
    - chriscyber 6y ago
      Pretty cool. It filters by URL?
      - ceh123 6y ago
        Yup, that's exactly it. I've found that there are certain websites that I have basically no interest in seeing. Eventually I might incorporate more granularity to get sub-domains or something like that, but for now it's just whole websites based on URL.
  - depingus 6y ago
    You can just add -site:pinterest.com in DuckDuckGo. I think you can do the same in Google.
    - topspin 6y ago
      I'm well aware of the various search flags. I can also think of at least 10 domains I'd like to permanently obviate from every search. Adding flags for all of these every time is unwieldy. I have toyed with browser extensions to achieve this, but I quickly learned that using many of these flags will compromise search results. A good solution will require a search engine that anticipates this use case.
  - BrendanEich 6y ago
    Me too — most image searches need a "-pinterest" term added.
    - ffpip 6y ago
      google.*##.g:has(a[href*=".pinterest."]) google.*##a[href*=".pinterest."]:nth-ancestor(1) Add to uBlock Origin 'My Filters' Section :)
- BrendanEich 6y ago
  Turing incomplete. Thanks, will get a correction to the reporter.
  - BrendanEich 6y ago
    Fixed. Thanks again.
m1117 6y ago
Why are people so hesitant of sharing their browsing information? I think it's physiological. I'm happy that there're algorithms that analyze my behavior. Google doesn't identify me personally, it just sees me as a behavioral pattern. But it's nice to have alternative approaches.
simplecto 6y ago
Anyone building (or in this case, buying) a search engine takes a fight they cannot meaningfully make impact. 1. Privacy is a feature, not a platform. If the search engine cannot deliver better results than google or bing (a tall order) then there is no reason to use it no matter how private. 2. Google has a 20+ year head start and billions invested. You will not catch up playing the same game (eg - broad search). Google, for all its faults, is amazing technology. If you try to be a general search engine and compete I do not see a win. 3. Find another strategy, like BETTER search results within a niche. Curated by subject matter experts and enthusiasts. 4. Source your search results from trustworthy data sources. SEO has ruined search. Google setup the rules and the Black/Grey/Whitehat practitioners out-smartted them every step of the way. It is full of crappy data sources. 5. Curation, not scale is the key here. I don't see a win for Brave.
- rel2thr 6y ago
  You said it yourself that SEO has ruined search. That’s a HUGE advantage for a smaller search engine. The seo people aren’t going to spend their time targeting a small search engine. And they definitely won’t target it at the risk of hurting their Google rankings
  - simplecto 6y ago
    Exactly -- SEO is a non-starter if I get to curate what goes into the index in the first place. And for transparency-sake I would want to see what sites are indexed, as well as if any of them are "boosted" in rankings.
kuu 6y ago
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26328872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26328872 (I'm not sure if even duplicated)
ErikVandeWater 6y ago
I don't know much about Brave - What is their position on censorship (other than instances when it is legally required)?
- samizdis 6y ago
  The Register article mentions it in passing, pointing to the "Goggles" paper [1] that Brave has published. But the Brave paper actually gives no more information than that quoted in the article; it seems not to address its stance on censorship, but merely to pass the buck in the Goggles use case: There will be Goggles created by creationists, anti-vaccination sup- porters or flat-earthers. However, the biases will be explicit, and therefore, the choice is a conscious one. We do not anticipate any need for censorship in the context of Goggles. Clearly illegal and sensitive content like child pornography or extreme violence should already be filtered out by the host search engine at the index layer. Consequently, such content should not be surfaced by any Goggle. [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-B3ZvHpbnxsT2OdnUH8vS3-tvTv8OyQI/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-B3ZvHpbnxsT2OdnUH8vS3-tvTv...
- dazc 6y ago
  Likely the same as Google, no policy on censorship until they feel like censoring something.
tharne 6y ago
Glad to see more interest in privacy focused search, but why not just not contribute to something like duckduckgo that's already doing good work in that space?
- lumost 6y ago
  Duck duck go simply proxies other search engines. While they have been gaining traffic, they will never be as good as google/bing etc. Good privacy focused search requires novel innovations and a solid attempt to "solve" the problem rather than simply wrapping some other engine.
  - tachyonbeam 6y ago
    They should have some small team working on their own search engine. A handful of skilled programmers can accomplish a lot over a couple of years.
    - guerrilla 6y ago
      Do we know that they don't?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- coldtea 6y ago
  Because DDG merely uses Google and so under the covers. Plus, we don't know DDG respects privacy, it's just some generic statement they make.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    I believe it's a legally binding statement. Which is not as good as a mathematical proof, but better than nothing.
  - jhoechtl 6y ago
    Afaik it's Bing?
pcdoodle 6y ago
I hope it will be able to find relevant results like google did last decade.
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
For the love of BOb, we desperately need a search engine that obeys booleans (DDG doesn't) and isn't Google. Please let this be it.
mberning 6y ago
I wish them the best of luck. DuckDuckGo is my go to, but it leaves a lot to be desired.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  > DuckDuckGo is my go to, but it leaves a lot to be desired I have a fantasy where a lone basement nerd storms DDG HQ and teaches them about quotes at gunpoint.
  - Semaphor 6y ago
    They won’t be alone, I’m coming with them :(
- tumetab1 6y ago
  That also my reaction when reading the title. More than a privacy focus search engine I want a equally good search engine as Google. Google has some defects but it's by far better than the competition.
cute_boi 6y ago
can we trust brave? They have become too shady in my opinion like inserting referral etc?
- willis936 6y ago
  I tried brave a year ago because I heard good things. I stopped using it within a month. The cryptocurrency and referral stuff told me all I needed to know: their motives are not aligned with the user. If you let your monetization strategy alienate your users then you won’t be getting far. Early adopters need clear messages of trust. When the messaging is “we’re desperate for money” and I don’t trust you, why would I expect you to value my privacy? I won’t be trying brave again until they at least try to address this.
  - prionassembly 6y ago
    What is the referral stuff? The crypto is optional.
    - Daho0n 6y ago
      They got caught with the fingers in the cookie jar and quickly backtracked: "Brave Software's co-founder and CEO, Brendan Eich, said on Twitter that he didn't believe there was anything wrong with injecting affiliate codes into web addresses. However, it seems the backlash worked, as Brave's developers are introducing a toggle for the suggestions, and the functionality will be disabled by default starting with the next stable release." https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/07/brave-browser-caught-adding-its-own-referral-codes-to-some-cryptcurrency-trading-sites/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/07/brave-browser-caugh...
      - BrendanEich 6y ago
        We fix bugs we didn't know about as soon as they're reported. To assert malice not stupidity needs more evidence, or else it's just based on your ill will. ICYMI, thread: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1367161348166017024 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1367161348166017024
jerf 6y ago
"The service will, eventually, be available as a paid option..." How my viewpoint has shifted over the years. 10-20 years ago this would have instantly turned me off, but now this is the most exciting line in the entire thing to me. As long as we all expect free, we can't expect privacy. @Brave team, who I rather expect will be reading this, I can't believe that Cliqz doing tracking on me to improve its results for free will be in my interests if it's free. But if I'm a paying customer, you might be able to convince me that you're doing some semi-invasive tracking but not actually selling it to anyone, because it wouldn't be worth losing me as a customer. I'm actually excited about the idea of a search engine that I pay for. Been waiting for DDG to do it but last I knew there's still no option there.
- jhoechtl 6y ago
  There is a cost in order to be free(ed). Would be a nice study to determine the monthly rate one is willing to pay in order not to the be the service.
  - Terretta 6y ago
    Perhaps the going rate could be established in "units of text editor subscription". How much time do you spend in search bar and results versus one of several non-coding text editors that you subscribe to? Price accordingly.
- ohduran 6y ago
  100% this. There is a glass ceiling to the quality of a search engine if it's free; it starts with G. The paid option hasn't been explored yet, and for good reason I think: in principle, you need training data for it to be any good. And, again in principle, the only way to amass user data is for the service to be free, leveraging that to sharpen the tool. So in principle, I reckon this is doomed to fail. But I might be wrong. I HOPE I'm wrong. And that's enough.
  - gtirloni 6y ago
    What kind of training are the users providing that makes G better? I thought their secret was that they have better infrastructure to crawl and organize information? I don't see how a paid search engine has a disadvantage here.
Kaze404 6y ago
Excited to see how long it takes for them to be outed on yet another controversy, say it was "accidental" and rollback on this new service. Their MO is pretty clear at this point.
kmos 6y ago
I am good with ecosia.org ;-)
ThePhysicist 6y ago
In my understanding what Cliqz did, at least in the beginning, was to buy clickstream data and then build an index on top of that. So in a sense they just scraped Googles' search index, as almost all users rely on Google for finding stuff on the web. The clickstream data gives you both the search query and the website(s) users visit after searching, so it's pretty easy to build a search index from that, at least for popular searches (it might be more difficult for the long tail of search queries). A lot of the clickstream data you can buy comes from browser extensions btw, and often gets collected without users knowing about it (looking at you, "Web of Trust"). I think their reliance on such data was the reason Cliqz acquired Ghostery, which also collects a copious amount of "anonymous" data from its users. On one hand it's a neat idea since you're basically standing on Googles' shoulders, on the other hand it's at least questionable for a "privacy-first" company as the generation of the search index is based on personal data mined from (often unwitting) users. That said I don't know how their system evolved, so maybe today they have another way to build their index.
- sytse 6y ago
  Bing might have also done this to improve their index https://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-our-search-results-62914 https://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying...
  - pastrami_panda 6y ago
    That's one side of it. The ironic thing is they probably used exactly the same tactic as the search engine in the article: https://www.quora.com/Did-Bing-intentionally-copy-Googles-search-results https://www.quora.com/Did-Bing-intentionally-copy-Googles-se...
    - BrendanEich 6y ago
      No, Brave Search won't copy search results that users do not click on. You own your queries and clicks. Only users who opt into anonymous logging to help Brave Search send unlinkable records up, and those records are not scraped from unclicked links in SERPs.
atombender 6y ago
Cliqz seemed like a very promising search engine [1], so I'm glad that they've found a new home where they can try again. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200501194956/https://cliqz.com/en/magazine/our-journey-towards-building-an-independent-search-engine https://web.archive.org/web/20200501194956/https://cliqz.com...
- onli 6y ago
  It really worked quite well, especially when compared against ddg. Fantastic that it will survive in some form and that the work was not for nothing.
imwillofficial 6y ago
Brave has earned the trust and respect of the community by fixing several high profile bugs. They have also dinged themselves by pushing their crypto ad system. How will this pan out? "We'll see" said the zen master.
- smaryjerry 6y ago
  The crypto ad system is their best feature. You get browser ads instead of website specific ads and so any website can get money simply from users using brave. Also you can choose which websites get some of your specific ad money. It feels more like the money being made off of you is also being spent by you. Taking power away from big tech.
  - imwillofficial 6y ago
    I feel that ads are a terrible way to pay for stuff. I think the future is paying for stuff I use, directly.
    - smaryjerry 6y ago
      I mean who does like ads but if you do get ads, wouldn’t you prefer you choose who profits from them
      - imwillofficial 6y ago
        I see the industry moving away from ad based services. We’ve known for awhile it’s a terrible transfer of value.
    - _-david-_ 6y ago
      I think one issue with this is you would probably have to identify yourself. Many companies would only offer credit card / paypal to pay for the stuff you use. With BAT (or an alternative) you can pay without identifying yourself (more than say IP).
imwillofficial 6y ago
"The service will, eventually, be available as a paid option..." This is the future of services on the internet. The 'cult of free' should die off as people realize they don't want to be bought and sold like digital cattle.
- fullstop 6y ago
  I wonder if payment in BAT will be an option?
  - elwell 6y ago
    Probably, but you'll probably have to KYC as well...
  - mozey 6y ago
    > payment in BAT payment in Basic Attention Token... isn't that exactly how the Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc advertising business models work. BAT is basically a reward for watching adds right? I like the idea of paying my content producers directly better, see for example https://coil.com https://coil.com. Cut out the middleman
    - fullstop 6y ago
      It's an optional reward, and that is the key difference in my opinion.
- pier25 6y ago
  The SaaS project I'm working on won't have a free tier. We think it's unfair to make paying customers support free customers.
  - ketamine__ 6y ago
    Does the customer on the $40 plan think it unfair he pays for more resources than the customer on the $20 plan?
deleted 6y ago
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fouc 6y ago
The Brave browser already has tracking itself, so even if the search engine doesn't..
- jonathansampson 6y ago
  The browser does not track users. What have you seen to suggest otherwise? Any data? It's fairly trivial to examine the network activity of a browser, as Leith has done at https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf, and determine to what degree (if at all) it is tracking a user.
mind_half_full 6y ago
+1
sadfev 6y ago
Brendan Eich is doing some very important work. I hope this succeeds!
Imnimo 6y ago
Goggles sounds cool at first, but it's very hard for me to imagine goggles that I'd be interested in actually using. Maybe clever people will come up with something awesome, but the fact that I can't come up with an example that I would want is a bit of an alarm bell.
- pkamb 6y ago
  Remove Pinterest results, remove Quora, remove blogspam...
joubert 6y ago
Love the audacity of building back better multiple dimensions of our internet experience. However: > end the debate about search engine bias by turning search result output over to a community-run filtering system called Goggles Not sure why something "community-run" would automatically/necessarily solve bias... So looking forward to deeper thinking by the Brave team.
nige123 6y ago
A way to compete with Google is to leverage user's search trails in the browser - by recording the click paths on Google (and other search engines). Recording and intersecting search trails is covered by this patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2005069161A1 https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2005069161A1 The rationale is here: https://www.jinfo.com/go/blog/2505 https://www.jinfo.com/go/blog/2505
pmurt7 6y ago
There was this wonderful podcast featuring Eich a few days ago: "Brendan Eich: JavaScript, Firefox, Mozilla, and Brave" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krB0enBeSiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krB0enBeSiE
- not_knuth 6y ago
  There was quite a discussion on HN about the podcast joined by Brendan Eich himself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26131043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26131043
ignoramous 6y ago
Excited that Brave is playing a pioneering role here with leveraging cryptocurrencies and distributed tech (including Web3) who's time, it looks like, will come. It helps that a Browser is close to a perfect environment from which to challenge the incumbents heavily dependent on ad revenues. > Brave Search's index there will be informed the activities of participating Brave users, in terms of the URLs they search for or click on, and adjacent web resources that don't require extensive crawling. This is quite similar to Amazon's now-defunct A9.com which, iirc, had some form of hybrid search engine that was built on search / ad results from Google and the data Amazon collected via the Alexa toolbar. > The Brave Search team has written a paper explaining its use of the term, titled "GOGGLES: Democracy dies in darkness, and so does the Web." The browser upstart aims to replace the tyranny of Google's inscrutable, authoritative index with a multiverse of indices defined by anyone with the inclination to do so. Again, very similar to WAIS. Has Eich been speaking to Brewster Kahle? :) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A9.com#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A9.com#History [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_information_server https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_information_server
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  It's very exciting. So far Brave is not so popular in the cryptocurrency space compared to its peers. That will change I'm sure.
  - KirillPanov 6y ago
    > Brave is not so popular in the cryptocurrency space compared to its peers. KYC-hostage demands from a company that claims to be "privacy focused"... https://twitter.com/fluffypony/status/1065594144796610560 https://twitter.com/fluffypony/status/1065594144796610560
    - Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
      You do understand it's based on regulation, right? That there is no way to do what they are doing legally without KYC for withdrawals? What exactly does your implying use of the word "hostage" mean? That you don't like the laws of the countries Brave is operating in?
kapsteur 6y ago
The Cliqz Tech blog : https://0x65.dev https://0x65.dev contains many informations about how their constructed their private search engine
mrvenkman 6y ago
Competing with Google is going to be difficult. I have a question: What is the consensus on forwarding any search "terms" to Google and then "scraping" the results back into the user - sort of a "proxy" search. I mean - Google built their business on searching the internet, why can't there be a business that starts by searching Google?
- npteljes 6y ago
  You mean like Startpage?
- ehsankia 6y ago
  Forget Google, how are they gonna compete with DDG who has the "privacy conscious" market niche pretty well covered. That seems to be their main competitor here. Having a semi-popular browser where they can set the default search engine would normally help, but if it's not free, I don't see why anyone would pay when, again, DDG does the same thing for free. Let alone the rumors of Apple wanting to make its own search engine...
  - guerrilla 6y ago
    Even if it turns out to be better, my question is how are they practically going to onboard users like me (and the people I know.) Like I might try it out of curiosity because I saw it here on HN but I really doubt a lot of people care. DDG works fine for them.
    - mrvenkman 6y ago
      Good point. It’s the DOS (Windows) vs Unix/Linux argument in a way.
  - lrae 6y ago
    Their own browser's users would probably just end up paying in their BAT tokens or be able to use it for free, as long as they have ad rewards program enabled in the browser.
- deleted 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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kibwen 6y ago
It's good to see more competition in the search space, but I have to wonder: is Search really still the golden goose at Google? Between Android, Chrome, and YouTube, Google seems to have all the profiling data and all the eyeballs it could ever ask for. How wrong am I?
- rank0 6y ago
  Yes I believe search produces the lion's share of revenue for the company still. But yeah, all of their products/services work together to build a comprehensive dataset about the user.
izacus 6y ago
It's worth mentioning that Brave is also a browser which was silently replacing links in webpages for their affilate links to make a profit: https://decrypt.co/31522/crypto-brave-browser-redirect https://decrypt.co/31522/crypto-brave-browser-redirect I don't trust their promises.
- f430 6y ago
  The fact that they raised money through ICO and issued coins on a dubious blockchain just compounds to the suspicion. I am using Firefox and I trust Mozilla more than I trust Bravo.
  - christophergs 6y ago
    Eich (Brave CEO) co-founded Mozilla, FYI
    - SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
      Sure, but it's probably a good thing he's not at Mozilla now, because he would have also pulled Firefox down the same path Brave has gone with micropayments using BATs, which isn't exactly uncontroversial. See the Tom Scott and BAT incident. Kinda shady how it was handled.
      - meibo 6y ago
        Mind that there also is a reason why Brendan Eich is no longer at Mozilla. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26868536 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26868536
      - mminer237 6y ago
        It might be controversial, but I still think Mozilla would be in a better place today if Eich was still in charge.
        knz_ 6y ago
agumonkey 6y ago
Do you think the BAT idea will turn out to be a better system in the end ? in a socially good way, people who want to contribute to society will have better data/incentives and users will have a less crowded time online.
jansan 6y ago
What I want to see in a search engine is this: An array of customizable buttons that you can select to hint at the type of search that you are doing. News, Technical, Shopping. Especially one to filter out all shopping related results. For example, if I want to learn about a country, I do not want any travel related stuff in my search results. On the other hand, if I am looking for ideas for my next holidays, throw all the flight, hotel, beach infos about that country at me that you have. Or give me a button that limits my search result to stackoverflow and stackexchange. Their own search engine sucks ass, so i have to rely on google (using "site:stackoverflow.com"). Give me this and a decent search results, and you have a paying customer.
deleted 6y ago
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penguin_booze 6y ago
Looks like Brendan is, in a sense, in the process of cloning Google, only in reverse order: browser, ads, and now search!
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  Dismantling the shit one turd at a time.
azinman2 6y ago
> The Brave Search team acknowledges that not all filters will show results that are agreeable to everyone. "There will be Goggles created by creationists, anti-vaccination supporters or flat-earthers," the paper says. "However, the biases will be explicit, and therefore, the choice is a conscious one." What could possibly go wrong?
desireco42 6y ago
I am really impressed with Brave team work, they are spearheading work that pushes web forward, kind of what Mozilla was supposed to do. I really love ipfs work they did and completely ready that not everything will pan out.
the__alchemist 6y ago
Matching the accuracy of Google results will be a challenge. It's remarkable how (at least for the topics I tend to search for) good the results are compared to every alternative (Bing, DDG etc). I made a search tool that filters, modifies, resorts, and adds to results from Bing's API. I no longer use it, because the base Bing results (This applies to everything else I've tried too) aren't on the same level as Google's.
- marshmallow_12 6y ago
  i find that google drive me towards certain websites. This ruins my user experience. They also omit many websites.
- kiwijamo 6y ago
  That's interesting cos on the few occassions I've accidentally used Google (e.g. when searching on someone else's device) I've been surprised by how bad Google is nowdays. I have the same experience when I set up a new device for myself. I'll be like "Wow these results are unusually bad... Oh wait this is Google, let's change the default search engine to DDG now. Let's try again, ah that's much better!" Pretty much the only Google property I still fall back onto every now and then is Maps but even there OSM is improving all the time.
qwertox 6y ago
I don't feel that good about this. The thing is that Cliqz was "majority-owned by Hubert Burda Media" [1], and that "The deal, terms undisclosed, makes Cliqz owner Hubert Burda Media a Brave shareholder." [2] Doesn't Hubert Burda Media have a interest in removing ad-blocking technologies from the web? Couldn't partnering with Brave get them into a privileged position where they are capable of displaying ads and build user profiles? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliqz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliqz [2] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/03/brave_buys_a_search_engine/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/03/brave_buys_a_search_e...
- hellotomyrars 6y ago
  If so that makes sense as Brave is happy to show you "ethical ads” instead of the ads already on a page if you so choose and reward you and the original content creator(maybe) with their very own funny money.
  - mminer237 6y ago
    When you sign up as a BAT publisher, you choose what currency to get paid in. It's just as easy to pick USD, and then it will auto-convert the BAT to dollars, and you would hardly even know it involves crypto. It's not some ponzi scheme.
    - PufPufPuf 6y ago
      But the amount of USD you get varies by BAT-USD exchange rate, e.g. you actually get paid in BAT, correct? I must admit that I find this business model genius: replace website ads with your ads, pocket the revenue, and "pay" users in a self-issued cryptocurrency. Stealing ad revenue from websites while simultaneously doing an ICO.
      - mminer237 6y ago
        That's correct. But advertisers bid in BAT too, so if the value drops, they would pay more nominally, and it would all balance out. As a user, I prefer Brave's ads though. They're not actually on websites. And calling adblocking "stealing" seems like a bit of an exaggeration. Brave still pays out a larger share of their revenue to publishers than Google does. As a publisher, Brave's scheme seems fair to me too. The only one really hurt is Google.
MikusR 6y ago
Mozilla was sending your browser history to Cliqz in Germany. https://www.zdnet.com/article/firefox-tests-cliqz-engine-which-slurps-user-browsing-data/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/firefox-tests-cliqz-engine-whi...
- solso 6y ago
  Mozilla never did such a thing. The browsing history was never sent in any shape or form. As the journalistic article you quote states, Mozilla put in place the HumanWeb[1,2,3], which was a privacy preserving data collection which ensured record-unlinkability, hence no session or history. Anonymity was guaranteed and the framework was extensively tested by privacy researchers from both Cliqz and Mozilla. Disclaimer: I worked at Cliqz. [1]https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-02/is-data-collection-evil.html https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-02/is-data-collection-evil.htm... [2]https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-03/human-web-collecting-data-in-a-socially-responsible-manner.html https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-03/human-web-collecting-data-i... [3]https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-04/human-web-proxy-network-hpn.html https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-04/human-web-proxy-network-hpn...
  - a254613e 6y ago
    https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-in-firefox/ https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-i... > Users who receive a version of Firefox with Cliqz will have their browsing activity sent to Cliqz servers, including the URLs of pages they visit.
    - solso 6y ago
      The chosen excerpt omits the fact that it is predicated on the HumanWeb. In the technical papers above there is a more precise description on what and how was collected. There was no user tracking, session or history being sent as all data points are anonymous and record-unlinkable by the receiver. The vague language, required for a general audience journal, certainly does not help.
- a254613e 6y ago
jcpham2 6y ago
I still don’t understand basic attention token, but I know people that do understand it and I support them!
- mminer237 6y ago
  Instead of showing ads on websites, Brave blocks them and has an option to show you ads from the browser itself. If you elect to see these ads, it will pay the revenue from the ads to the websites you use or designate. It uses a cryptocurrency called BAT as the medium of transferring funds.
samstave 6y ago
I use BRave exclusively on both my machines and my mobile devices. I have one request within brave: I want "Use Profiles" a switchable profile that states what I am using Brave for - and session states. So let me explain: 1. I am using brave to do personal browsing at home and thus my 30 open tabs are related to my personal browsing etc. A cool way of implementing this would be instead of CTRL+SHIFT+N would be CTRL+SHIFT+N[1-9] to shift to VIEW and would take me to that tab-stack... and there would be a page that would allow me to manage each tab-stack around [TOPIC] - Meta Book marks... 2. Educational tabs (bookmarks) associated with learning something - so I want tab grouping/session grouping around the resources I read for learning a topic 3. Work topics - so a group of resources related to work. 4. To sum up the above, basically VIEWS that I can dictate what bookmarks, sites, resources, etc relate to which view. Kind of like multiple desktops - I want sep viewing environs that allow me to group, classify and segment knowledge tunnels... and overlap them as desired. Love Brave.
- digitalbase 6y ago
  I use 1tab for this. works in Brave and Chrome
pkamb 6y ago
I would love a search engine that searched mainly only Stack Overflow, Stack Exchange, Twitter, Flickr, and Reddit. Google results are currently awful, full of blogspam and Pinterest-mirrored images. I don't remember when this changed.
- samstave 6y ago
  A search funnel would be an interesting thing (does this exist?) whereby you whitelist "only give me results from these resources" - and where 'resources' can include the whitelists of others that you trust or have subscribed to. Basically you could have a search engine that only replies with information from whom are also of the same interest as you - or people you congenially follow etc... So you could say " show me everything about X" and the results are only from those who are actually connected to X in some way - based on the interest subscription graph as opposed to a keyword graph... I may be a moron on this subject - but I do recog that there is room for improvement... I added the following to a previous comment: *"A cool way of implementing this would be instead of CTRL+SHIFT+N would be CTRL+SHIFT+N[1-9] to shift to VIEW and would take me to that tab-stack... and there would be a page that would allow me to manage each tab-stack around [TOPIC] - Meta Book marks..."*
- mminer237 6y ago
  I mean, you can search only those sites with Google. Just add: (site:stackoverflow.com OR site:superuser.com OR site:serverfault.com OR site:stackexchange.com OR site:twitter.com OR site:flickr.com OR site:reddit.com) You could make your browser do that automatically. https://www.google.com/search?q=(site%3Astackoverflow.com+OR+site%3Asuperuser.com+OR+site%3Aserverfault.com+OR+site%3Astackexchange.com+OR+site%3Atwitter.com+OR+site%3Aflickr.com+OR+site%3Areddit.com)+brave+search+engine https://www.google.com/search?q=(site%3Astackoverflow.com+OR... https://www.google.com/search?q=(site%3Astackoverflow.com+OR+site%3Asuperuser.com+OR+site%3Aserverfault.com+OR+site%3Astackexchange.com+OR+site%3Atwitter.com+OR+site%3Aflickr.com+OR+site%3Areddit.com)+linux+gpu https://www.google.com/search?q=(site%3Astackoverflow.com+OR... https://www.google.com/search?q=(site%3Astackoverflow.com+OR+site%3Asuperuser.com+OR+site%3Aserverfault.com+OR+site%3Astackexchange.com+OR+site%3Atwitter.com+OR+site%3Aflickr.com+OR+site%3Areddit.com)+native+trees https://www.google.com/search?q=(site%3Astackoverflow.com+OR...
gidam 6y ago
Brave has a long way to go to build real trust. Too many reckless stuff: hijacking links, suspicious url-rewriting, crypto-token stunts, forgetting to communicate with users about serious privacy leaks with their faulty TOR window... also it looks like they care about privacy only in their PR brochures.
- lrae 6y ago
  Also zero transparency for users and publishers. On one browser installation I stopped getting payouts, reached out to them via reddit (like they asked for) and provided all the information they asked for: ghosted. I'm also a publisher, for weeks now I can't login and it seems like I'm not getting payouts anymore either. Never got any mail about it. Sent them an email about it February 23rd, no answer so far. If I'd have to guess, the one client somehow got blacklisted maybe because I used too many Brave installations and they think they're fraudulent? (Though I only used like 5, Brave & Brave Beta each on a desktop & laptop, then on another desktop just one installation. Also, I still get payouts for the other installations.) Or it's just another one of the bugs that eats payouts and users' BATs. Publisher account I even have less of an idea, it's totally fine, teen-rated gaming websites with a couple of thousand organic (search traffic) uniques/month. I did sent BAT from my unconnected Browsers (you only can connect a maximum of 4 browsers to a wallet, ever) to my site to tip myself. As far as I know that isn't against the TOS either (even makes them more money because they douple dip). But, even if they don't suspend you without any notice, it's completely non-transparent as a publisher too. You get zero statistics, just a bundled payout each month. I'd never use them like this as a publisher for bigger sites, pretty sure I mailed them about that too in the past and also did not get any reply.
- junon 6y ago
  Also the fact that they boast "we blocked X many ads" directly above a Brave-owned embedded avertisement directly in the browser itself. Scummy stuff.
  - smbullet 6y ago
    That's a feature, not a bug. The point of the Brave ad blocker is to (optionally) replace unethical ads with ethical ones so you can compensate the content creators you browse. How is this scummy?
mancerayder 6y ago
Coincidence? https://seekingalpha.com/news/3668882-google-wont-sell-ads-based-on-user-web-browsing https://seekingalpha.com/news/3668882-google-wont-sell-ads-b...
bluecalm 6y ago
Using brave for more than a year now on my phone I sometimes forget how terrible mobile browsing is for most people. The only thing that reminds me is when I sometimes open a website in Chrome. If the trend of paid search engines or browsers start I am buying. Ads and tracking are cancer of modern life. It's literally offering free stuff to make your life worse in exchange. It's "I will give you this item if you let me punch you in the face" kind of deal. I can't wait to support a company that collects money for their software and uses part of it to fight the cancer.
crorella 6y ago
“What if we could give customers a button. They’d press it at the end of the year and it would automagically file their taxes for them.” This is exactly how it works in Chile, you pretty much check the numbers and make sure they match with your figures and done. For free.
- kiwijamo 6y ago
  Are you posting in the right thread?
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chanmad29 6y ago
Are there any brave users out there? no pun. I use ff with DDG on PC and safari with DDG on ios. Never understood the reason for a move. The ad rewards was just too much information for me, from brave.
- BrendanEich 6y ago
  See https://brave.com/transparency https://brave.com/transparency for our growth to date and other stats. The ad system is off by default, AKA opt-in. Did you hear otherwise?
- CodeGlitch 6y ago
  I've recently moved to Brave because of their addition of IPS (which I see as an interesting technology). I've been really happy with Brave - especially on Mobile which feel way snappier. Also not having to install a 3rd pary ad blocker (uBlock Origin) makes me feel more comfortable. Firefox should ship with a good ad blocker - it does not. I've not played around with BAT yet - it's on my TODO list. Brave seems to be pushing the boundaries more than other browsers, and it'll be interesting to watch where things go.
  - CodeGlitch 6y ago
    Obv meant IPFS
- pier25 6y ago
  Switched to Brave about 6 months ago on macOS, iOS, Android, and Windows. Very happy with it.
desmap 6y ago
@Brendan, well done! There's some way to go but I like the direction you took, in particular the concept of "goggles". When will you release the first beta?
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e-clinton 6y ago
Headline two years from now: “Brave apologizes for breaking their promise on search and tracking users anyways. Promises to do better.”
layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
Cliqz? Wasn’t that the company behind that Firefox scandal with the Mr. Robot ads?
noobquestion81 6y ago
Glad someone is pursuing this model. I am doing well enough that its absolutely worth it to me to pay my way out of the “proliferation of personal data” game. Thinking on it I had an amusing thought: I wonder if there will ever be a google premium :) All tracking, no ads.
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inthewoods 6y ago
I keep waiting for Apple to introduce their own search engine. They are already pushing on the privacy angle, so it would seem to make logical sense to dump Google and have their own search engine. I think switching the iPhone/Safari search engine to their own search would be devastating to Google. Basically, they would be doing a similar strategy that Microsoft used against Netscape. As I remember it, in the MSFT/Netscape case, they gave away IE and the web server, crippling Netscape's ability to make money. MSFT didn't have to make money off either as they made money off the OS. In this case, ads are the core of Google revenue. Apple, however, doesn't need to care about that (yes, it would be a loss in revenue). So they dump Google and Google loses a major source of revenue and data. Obviously there would be some anti-trust issues - I assume that's what is holding them back.
- sidibe 6y ago
  If making a search engine like Google was easy to do Apple, Microsoft or Amazon would have done it long ago. Of any of these Apple is the worst position to do it since they don't have the same scale of infrastructure as the others.
  - shruthibadri 6y ago
    Doesn't Microsoft already have Bing?
  - logicchains 6y ago
    >If making a search engine like Google was easy to do Apple, Microsoft or Amazon would have done it long ago. Microsoft did: https://www.bing.com/ https://www.bing.com/.
jakequade 6y ago
Brave is still based on Chromium, and Google is the opposite of "no tracking, no profiling". I'll stick to Firefox + DDG, thanks.
- BrendanEich 6y ago
  Are you worried about tracking in the Chromium code? If so please see https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-(features-we-disable-or-remove) https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-.... Otherwise if you are worried about engine monoculture, please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26337402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26337402. If neither of these is the issue, what is?
forlorn 6y ago
And hence no profit?
rognjen 6y ago
I think without profiling search results would be worse. Searching for "cucumber" means something very different to me and my dad for instance. Without profiling both of us get worse results.
unnouinceput 6y ago
Quote: " If you don't market it, you can lose to somebody who just puts privacy perfume on a pig and tells you it smells great and tastes delicious." Well, pigs are tasty in the first place. Secondly, this plays on the assumption that pigs are filthy animals, which is very wrong. They like water, they like to get wet precisely because they like to be clean from parasites on skin. The fact that they do this in mud is because how humans are raising them in small filthy enclave. Given the choice, pigs will go and bathe in clean water, not mud. Or go ask any hunter to tell if they saw wild boars that are full of mud instead of actually being clean.
proxyforce 6y ago
After a long period of relative dominance by a single provider, there’s recently been a lot of interesting things happening in the search space. Specifically around privacy, there are multiple projects and companies working to offer us control how (and whether) our search activity is captured and monetized. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch — companies providing search services need to monetize SOMEHOW, and I think that’s the key thing to pay attention to when evaluating new services. Brave’s approach seems to be to straddle the line a bit between free and paid — the article says there will be an option to pay for a completely ad-free version of the Brave Search service, while also having a free option that is ad supported (albeit via the unique BAT model). It’s exciting to see these types of services starting to become available. Competition and user choice in search is a good thing for everyone involved. Disclaimer: I work at Neeva[1], a subscription based never-any-ads search engine. These opinions are my own. [1] https://www.neeva.com https://www.neeva.com
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

931 points by samizdis 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

> Brave Search's index there will be informed the activities of participating Brave users, in terms of the URLs they search for or click on, and adjacent web resources that don't require extensive crawling. > Brave also envisions users taking a more active role in their search results through a filtering mechanism. "It allows different groups to run their own sort of Turing complete filter rules, sort of like ad blocking rules in the search service and not in the browser, to have a community moderated view of the global index," he [Brendan Eich, Brave founder] explained. "It's called 'Goggles.'"

topspin 6y ago
I'd love to be able to filter out, for instance, pinterest. I'd actually pay nominal amounts of money for a search service that had my interests in mind; as opposed to advertisers and thought police.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  > and thought police Copyright interests pay large cash to make sure you know is truly best for you. You could show a little gratitude.
  - topspin 6y ago
    Indeed. I'll keep that in mind.
- samizdis 6y ago
  I was pretty sure that it could be done in Google with operators in the search box (going back a few years), but I don't use Google any more and one reason I stopped was that it kept incrementally degrading the ability to refine individual searches manually. Anyhow, I just did a DDG search and came across this [1], which looks interesting for your use case (although that Pinterest is mentioned is a coincidence). I've not tried it out, so I can't recommend, comment or anything. [1] https://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-remove-pinterest-and-other-sites-google-search.htm https://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-remove-pinteres...
- ceh123 6y ago
  Shameless plug, but I've been working on a project [0] that does exactly this. Currently it just has a few filters I've created for myself and only supports web search (and a few !bang like re-directs), but I'm working on implementing user accounts that will be able to create their own filters. [0] https://hadal.io https://hadal.io
  - chriscyber 6y ago
    Pretty cool. It filters by URL?
    - ceh123 6y ago
      Yup, that's exactly it. I've found that there are certain websites that I have basically no interest in seeing. Eventually I might incorporate more granularity to get sub-domains or something like that, but for now it's just whole websites based on URL.
- depingus 6y ago
  You can just add -site:pinterest.com in DuckDuckGo. I think you can do the same in Google.
  - topspin 6y ago
    I'm well aware of the various search flags. I can also think of at least 10 domains I'd like to permanently obviate from every search. Adding flags for all of these every time is unwieldy. I have toyed with browser extensions to achieve this, but I quickly learned that using many of these flags will compromise search results. A good solution will require a search engine that anticipates this use case.
- BrendanEich 6y ago
  Me too — most image searches need a "-pinterest" term added.
  - ffpip 6y ago
    google.*##.g:has(a[href*=".pinterest."]) google.*##a[href*=".pinterest."]:nth-ancestor(1) Add to uBlock Origin 'My Filters' Section :)
BrendanEich 6y ago
Turing incomplete. Thanks, will get a correction to the reporter.
- BrendanEich 6y ago
  Fixed. Thanks again.

m1117 6y ago

Why are people so hesitant of sharing their browsing information? I think it's physiological. I'm happy that there're algorithms that analyze my behavior. Google doesn't identify me personally, it just sees me as a behavioral pattern. But it's nice to have alternative approaches.

simplecto 6y ago

Anyone building (or in this case, buying) a search engine takes a fight they cannot meaningfully make impact. 1. Privacy is a feature, not a platform. If the search engine cannot deliver better results than google or bing (a tall order) then there is no reason to use it no matter how private. 2. Google has a 20+ year head start and billions invested. You will not catch up playing the same game (eg - broad search). Google, for all its faults, is amazing technology. If you try to be a general search engine and compete I do not see a win. 3. Find another strategy, like BETTER search results within a niche. Curated by subject matter experts and enthusiasts. 4. Source your search results from trustworthy data sources. SEO has ruined search. Google setup the rules and the Black/Grey/Whitehat practitioners out-smartted them every step of the way. It is full of crappy data sources. 5. Curation, not scale is the key here. I don't see a win for Brave.

rel2thr 6y ago
You said it yourself that SEO has ruined search. That’s a HUGE advantage for a smaller search engine. The seo people aren’t going to spend their time targeting a small search engine. And they definitely won’t target it at the risk of hurting their Google rankings
- simplecto 6y ago
  Exactly -- SEO is a non-starter if I get to curate what goes into the index in the first place. And for transparency-sake I would want to see what sites are indexed, as well as if any of them are "boosted" in rankings.

kuu 6y ago

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26328872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26328872 (I'm not sure if even duplicated)

ErikVandeWater 6y ago

I don't know much about Brave - What is their position on censorship (other than instances when it is legally required)?

samizdis 6y ago
The Register article mentions it in passing, pointing to the "Goggles" paper [1] that Brave has published. But the Brave paper actually gives no more information than that quoted in the article; it seems not to address its stance on censorship, but merely to pass the buck in the Goggles use case: There will be Goggles created by creationists, anti-vaccination sup- porters or flat-earthers. However, the biases will be explicit, and therefore, the choice is a conscious one. We do not anticipate any need for censorship in the context of Goggles. Clearly illegal and sensitive content like child pornography or extreme violence should already be filtered out by the host search engine at the index layer. Consequently, such content should not be surfaced by any Goggle. [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-B3ZvHpbnxsT2OdnUH8vS3-tvTv8OyQI/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-B3ZvHpbnxsT2OdnUH8vS3-tvTv...
dazc 6y ago
Likely the same as Google, no policy on censorship until they feel like censoring something.

tharne 6y ago

Glad to see more interest in privacy focused search, but why not just not contribute to something like duckduckgo that's already doing good work in that space?

lumost 6y ago
Duck duck go simply proxies other search engines. While they have been gaining traffic, they will never be as good as google/bing etc. Good privacy focused search requires novel innovations and a solid attempt to "solve" the problem rather than simply wrapping some other engine.
- tachyonbeam 6y ago
  They should have some small team working on their own search engine. A handful of skilled programmers can accomplish a lot over a couple of years.
  - guerrilla 6y ago
    Do we know that they don't?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
coldtea 6y ago
Because DDG merely uses Google and so under the covers. Plus, we don't know DDG respects privacy, it's just some generic statement they make.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  I believe it's a legally binding statement. Which is not as good as a mathematical proof, but better than nothing.
- jhoechtl 6y ago
  Afaik it's Bing?

pcdoodle 6y ago

I hope it will be able to find relevant results like google did last decade.

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago

For the love of BOb, we desperately need a search engine that obeys booleans (DDG doesn't) and isn't Google. Please let this be it.

mberning 6y ago

I wish them the best of luck. DuckDuckGo is my go to, but it leaves a lot to be desired.

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
> DuckDuckGo is my go to, but it leaves a lot to be desired I have a fantasy where a lone basement nerd storms DDG HQ and teaches them about quotes at gunpoint.
- Semaphor 6y ago
  They won’t be alone, I’m coming with them :(
tumetab1 6y ago
That also my reaction when reading the title. More than a privacy focus search engine I want a equally good search engine as Google. Google has some defects but it's by far better than the competition.

cute_boi 6y ago

can we trust brave? They have become too shady in my opinion like inserting referral etc?

willis936 6y ago
I tried brave a year ago because I heard good things. I stopped using it within a month. The cryptocurrency and referral stuff told me all I needed to know: their motives are not aligned with the user. If you let your monetization strategy alienate your users then you won’t be getting far. Early adopters need clear messages of trust. When the messaging is “we’re desperate for money” and I don’t trust you, why would I expect you to value my privacy? I won’t be trying brave again until they at least try to address this.
- prionassembly 6y ago
  What is the referral stuff? The crypto is optional.
  - Daho0n 6y ago
    They got caught with the fingers in the cookie jar and quickly backtracked: "Brave Software's co-founder and CEO, Brendan Eich, said on Twitter that he didn't believe there was anything wrong with injecting affiliate codes into web addresses. However, it seems the backlash worked, as Brave's developers are introducing a toggle for the suggestions, and the functionality will be disabled by default starting with the next stable release." https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/07/brave-browser-caught-adding-its-own-referral-codes-to-some-cryptcurrency-trading-sites/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/07/brave-browser-caugh...
    - BrendanEich 6y ago
      We fix bugs we didn't know about as soon as they're reported. To assert malice not stupidity needs more evidence, or else it's just based on your ill will. ICYMI, thread: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1367161348166017024 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1367161348166017024

jerf 6y ago

"The service will, eventually, be available as a paid option..." How my viewpoint has shifted over the years. 10-20 years ago this would have instantly turned me off, but now this is the most exciting line in the entire thing to me. As long as we all expect free, we can't expect privacy. @Brave team, who I rather expect will be reading this, I can't believe that Cliqz doing tracking on me to improve its results for free will be in my interests if it's free. But if I'm a paying customer, you might be able to convince me that you're doing some semi-invasive tracking but not actually selling it to anyone, because it wouldn't be worth losing me as a customer. I'm actually excited about the idea of a search engine that I pay for. Been waiting for DDG to do it but last I knew there's still no option there.

jhoechtl 6y ago
There is a cost in order to be free(ed). Would be a nice study to determine the monthly rate one is willing to pay in order not to the be the service.
- Terretta 6y ago
  Perhaps the going rate could be established in "units of text editor subscription". How much time do you spend in search bar and results versus one of several non-coding text editors that you subscribe to? Price accordingly.
ohduran 6y ago
100% this. There is a glass ceiling to the quality of a search engine if it's free; it starts with G. The paid option hasn't been explored yet, and for good reason I think: in principle, you need training data for it to be any good. And, again in principle, the only way to amass user data is for the service to be free, leveraging that to sharpen the tool. So in principle, I reckon this is doomed to fail. But I might be wrong. I HOPE I'm wrong. And that's enough.
- gtirloni 6y ago
  What kind of training are the users providing that makes G better? I thought their secret was that they have better infrastructure to crawl and organize information? I don't see how a paid search engine has a disadvantage here.

Kaze404 6y ago

Excited to see how long it takes for them to be outed on yet another controversy, say it was "accidental" and rollback on this new service. Their MO is pretty clear at this point.

kmos 6y ago

I am good with ecosia.org ;-)

ThePhysicist 6y ago

In my understanding what Cliqz did, at least in the beginning, was to buy clickstream data and then build an index on top of that. So in a sense they just scraped Googles' search index, as almost all users rely on Google for finding stuff on the web. The clickstream data gives you both the search query and the website(s) users visit after searching, so it's pretty easy to build a search index from that, at least for popular searches (it might be more difficult for the long tail of search queries). A lot of the clickstream data you can buy comes from browser extensions btw, and often gets collected without users knowing about it (looking at you, "Web of Trust"). I think their reliance on such data was the reason Cliqz acquired Ghostery, which also collects a copious amount of "anonymous" data from its users. On one hand it's a neat idea since you're basically standing on Googles' shoulders, on the other hand it's at least questionable for a "privacy-first" company as the generation of the search index is based on personal data mined from (often unwitting) users. That said I don't know how their system evolved, so maybe today they have another way to build their index.

sytse 6y ago
Bing might have also done this to improve their index https://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-our-search-results-62914 https://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying...
- pastrami_panda 6y ago
  That's one side of it. The ironic thing is they probably used exactly the same tactic as the search engine in the article: https://www.quora.com/Did-Bing-intentionally-copy-Googles-search-results https://www.quora.com/Did-Bing-intentionally-copy-Googles-se...
  - BrendanEich 6y ago
    No, Brave Search won't copy search results that users do not click on. You own your queries and clicks. Only users who opt into anonymous logging to help Brave Search send unlinkable records up, and those records are not scraped from unclicked links in SERPs.

atombender 6y ago

Cliqz seemed like a very promising search engine [1], so I'm glad that they've found a new home where they can try again. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200501194956/https://cliqz.com/en/magazine/our-journey-towards-building-an-independent-search-engine https://web.archive.org/web/20200501194956/https://cliqz.com...

onli 6y ago
It really worked quite well, especially when compared against ddg. Fantastic that it will survive in some form and that the work was not for nothing.

imwillofficial 6y ago

Brave has earned the trust and respect of the community by fixing several high profile bugs. They have also dinged themselves by pushing their crypto ad system. How will this pan out? "We'll see" said the zen master.

smaryjerry 6y ago
The crypto ad system is their best feature. You get browser ads instead of website specific ads and so any website can get money simply from users using brave. Also you can choose which websites get some of your specific ad money. It feels more like the money being made off of you is also being spent by you. Taking power away from big tech.
- imwillofficial 6y ago
  I feel that ads are a terrible way to pay for stuff. I think the future is paying for stuff I use, directly.
  - smaryjerry 6y ago
    I mean who does like ads but if you do get ads, wouldn’t you prefer you choose who profits from them
    - imwillofficial 6y ago
      I see the industry moving away from ad based services. We’ve known for awhile it’s a terrible transfer of value.
  - _-david-_ 6y ago
    I think one issue with this is you would probably have to identify yourself. Many companies would only offer credit card / paypal to pay for the stuff you use. With BAT (or an alternative) you can pay without identifying yourself (more than say IP).

imwillofficial 6y ago

"The service will, eventually, be available as a paid option..." This is the future of services on the internet. The 'cult of free' should die off as people realize they don't want to be bought and sold like digital cattle.

fullstop 6y ago
I wonder if payment in BAT will be an option?
- elwell 6y ago
  Probably, but you'll probably have to KYC as well...
- mozey 6y ago
  > payment in BAT payment in Basic Attention Token... isn't that exactly how the Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc advertising business models work. BAT is basically a reward for watching adds right? I like the idea of paying my content producers directly better, see for example https://coil.com https://coil.com. Cut out the middleman
  - fullstop 6y ago
    It's an optional reward, and that is the key difference in my opinion.
pier25 6y ago
The SaaS project I'm working on won't have a free tier. We think it's unfair to make paying customers support free customers.
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  Does the customer on the $40 plan think it unfair he pays for more resources than the customer on the $20 plan?

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fouc 6y ago

The Brave browser already has tracking itself, so even if the search engine doesn't..

jonathansampson 6y ago
The browser does not track users. What have you seen to suggest otherwise? Any data? It's fairly trivial to examine the network activity of a browser, as Leith has done at https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf, and determine to what degree (if at all) it is tracking a user.

mind_half_full 6y ago

sadfev 6y ago

Brendan Eich is doing some very important work. I hope this succeeds!

Imnimo 6y ago

Goggles sounds cool at first, but it's very hard for me to imagine goggles that I'd be interested in actually using. Maybe clever people will come up with something awesome, but the fact that I can't come up with an example that I would want is a bit of an alarm bell.

pkamb 6y ago
Remove Pinterest results, remove Quora, remove blogspam...

joubert 6y ago

Love the audacity of building back better multiple dimensions of our internet experience. However: > end the debate about search engine bias by turning search result output over to a community-run filtering system called Goggles Not sure why something "community-run" would automatically/necessarily solve bias... So looking forward to deeper thinking by the Brave team.

nige123 6y ago

A way to compete with Google is to leverage user's search trails in the browser - by recording the click paths on Google (and other search engines). Recording and intersecting search trails is covered by this patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2005069161A1 https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2005069161A1 The rationale is here: https://www.jinfo.com/go/blog/2505 https://www.jinfo.com/go/blog/2505

pmurt7 6y ago

There was this wonderful podcast featuring Eich a few days ago: "Brendan Eich: JavaScript, Firefox, Mozilla, and Brave" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krB0enBeSiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krB0enBeSiE

not_knuth 6y ago
There was quite a discussion on HN about the podcast joined by Brendan Eich himself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26131043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26131043

ignoramous 6y ago

Excited that Brave is playing a pioneering role here with leveraging cryptocurrencies and distributed tech (including Web3) who's time, it looks like, will come. It helps that a Browser is close to a perfect environment from which to challenge the incumbents heavily dependent on ad revenues. > Brave Search's index there will be informed the activities of participating Brave users, in terms of the URLs they search for or click on, and adjacent web resources that don't require extensive crawling. This is quite similar to Amazon's now-defunct A9.com which, iirc, had some form of hybrid search engine that was built on search / ad results from Google and the data Amazon collected via the Alexa toolbar. > The Brave Search team has written a paper explaining its use of the term, titled "GOGGLES: Democracy dies in darkness, and so does the Web." The browser upstart aims to replace the tyranny of Google's inscrutable, authoritative index with a multiverse of indices defined by anyone with the inclination to do so. Again, very similar to WAIS. Has Eich been speaking to Brewster Kahle? :) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A9.com#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A9.com#History [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_information_server https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_information_server

ketamine__ 6y ago
It's very exciting. So far Brave is not so popular in the cryptocurrency space compared to its peers. That will change I'm sure.
- KirillPanov 6y ago
  > Brave is not so popular in the cryptocurrency space compared to its peers. KYC-hostage demands from a company that claims to be "privacy focused"... https://twitter.com/fluffypony/status/1065594144796610560 https://twitter.com/fluffypony/status/1065594144796610560
  - Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
    You do understand it's based on regulation, right? That there is no way to do what they are doing legally without KYC for withdrawals? What exactly does your implying use of the word "hostage" mean? That you don't like the laws of the countries Brave is operating in?

kapsteur 6y ago

The Cliqz Tech blog : https://0x65.dev https://0x65.dev contains many informations about how their constructed their private search engine

mrvenkman 6y ago

Competing with Google is going to be difficult. I have a question: What is the consensus on forwarding any search "terms" to Google and then "scraping" the results back into the user - sort of a "proxy" search. I mean - Google built their business on searching the internet, why can't there be a business that starts by searching Google?

npteljes 6y ago
You mean like Startpage?
ehsankia 6y ago
Forget Google, how are they gonna compete with DDG who has the "privacy conscious" market niche pretty well covered. That seems to be their main competitor here. Having a semi-popular browser where they can set the default search engine would normally help, but if it's not free, I don't see why anyone would pay when, again, DDG does the same thing for free. Let alone the rumors of Apple wanting to make its own search engine...
- guerrilla 6y ago
  Even if it turns out to be better, my question is how are they practically going to onboard users like me (and the people I know.) Like I might try it out of curiosity because I saw it here on HN but I really doubt a lot of people care. DDG works fine for them.
  - mrvenkman 6y ago
    Good point. It’s the DOS (Windows) vs Unix/Linux argument in a way.
- lrae 6y ago
  Their own browser's users would probably just end up paying in their BAT tokens or be able to use it for free, as long as they have ad rewards program enabled in the browser.
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kibwen 6y ago

It's good to see more competition in the search space, but I have to wonder: is Search really still the golden goose at Google? Between Android, Chrome, and YouTube, Google seems to have all the profiling data and all the eyeballs it could ever ask for. How wrong am I?

rank0 6y ago
Yes I believe search produces the lion's share of revenue for the company still. But yeah, all of their products/services work together to build a comprehensive dataset about the user.

izacus 6y ago

It's worth mentioning that Brave is also a browser which was silently replacing links in webpages for their affilate links to make a profit: https://decrypt.co/31522/crypto-brave-browser-redirect https://decrypt.co/31522/crypto-brave-browser-redirect I don't trust their promises.

f430 6y ago
The fact that they raised money through ICO and issued coins on a dubious blockchain just compounds to the suspicion. I am using Firefox and I trust Mozilla more than I trust Bravo.
- christophergs 6y ago
  Eich (Brave CEO) co-founded Mozilla, FYI
  - SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
    Sure, but it's probably a good thing he's not at Mozilla now, because he would have also pulled Firefox down the same path Brave has gone with micropayments using BATs, which isn't exactly uncontroversial. See the Tom Scott and BAT incident. Kinda shady how it was handled.
    - meibo 6y ago
      Mind that there also is a reason why Brendan Eich is no longer at Mozilla. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26868536 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26868536
    - mminer237 6y ago
      It might be controversial, but I still think Mozilla would be in a better place today if Eich was still in charge.
      - knz_ 6y ago

agumonkey 6y ago

Do you think the BAT idea will turn out to be a better system in the end ? in a socially good way, people who want to contribute to society will have better data/incentives and users will have a less crowded time online.

jansan 6y ago

What I want to see in a search engine is this: An array of customizable buttons that you can select to hint at the type of search that you are doing. News, Technical, Shopping. Especially one to filter out all shopping related results. For example, if I want to learn about a country, I do not want any travel related stuff in my search results. On the other hand, if I am looking for ideas for my next holidays, throw all the flight, hotel, beach infos about that country at me that you have. Or give me a button that limits my search result to stackoverflow and stackexchange. Their own search engine sucks ass, so i have to rely on google (using "site:stackoverflow.com"). Give me this and a decent search results, and you have a paying customer.

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penguin_booze 6y ago

Looks like Brendan is, in a sense, in the process of cloning Google, only in reverse order: browser, ads, and now search!

ketamine__ 6y ago
Dismantling the shit one turd at a time.

azinman2 6y ago

> The Brave Search team acknowledges that not all filters will show results that are agreeable to everyone. "There will be Goggles created by creationists, anti-vaccination supporters or flat-earthers," the paper says. "However, the biases will be explicit, and therefore, the choice is a conscious one." What could possibly go wrong?

desireco42 6y ago

I am really impressed with Brave team work, they are spearheading work that pushes web forward, kind of what Mozilla was supposed to do. I really love ipfs work they did and completely ready that not everything will pan out.

the__alchemist 6y ago

Matching the accuracy of Google results will be a challenge. It's remarkable how (at least for the topics I tend to search for) good the results are compared to every alternative (Bing, DDG etc). I made a search tool that filters, modifies, resorts, and adds to results from Bing's API. I no longer use it, because the base Bing results (This applies to everything else I've tried too) aren't on the same level as Google's.

marshmallow_12 6y ago
i find that google drive me towards certain websites. This ruins my user experience. They also omit many websites.
kiwijamo 6y ago
That's interesting cos on the few occassions I've accidentally used Google (e.g. when searching on someone else's device) I've been surprised by how bad Google is nowdays. I have the same experience when I set up a new device for myself. I'll be like "Wow these results are unusually bad... Oh wait this is Google, let's change the default search engine to DDG now. Let's try again, ah that's much better!" Pretty much the only Google property I still fall back onto every now and then is Maps but even there OSM is improving all the time.

qwertox 6y ago

I don't feel that good about this. The thing is that Cliqz was "majority-owned by Hubert Burda Media" [1], and that "The deal, terms undisclosed, makes Cliqz owner Hubert Burda Media a Brave shareholder." [2] Doesn't Hubert Burda Media have a interest in removing ad-blocking technologies from the web? Couldn't partnering with Brave get them into a privileged position where they are capable of displaying ads and build user profiles? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliqz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliqz [2] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/03/brave_buys_a_search_engine/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/03/brave_buys_a_search_e...

hellotomyrars 6y ago
If so that makes sense as Brave is happy to show you "ethical ads” instead of the ads already on a page if you so choose and reward you and the original content creator(maybe) with their very own funny money.
- mminer237 6y ago
  When you sign up as a BAT publisher, you choose what currency to get paid in. It's just as easy to pick USD, and then it will auto-convert the BAT to dollars, and you would hardly even know it involves crypto. It's not some ponzi scheme.
  - PufPufPuf 6y ago
    But the amount of USD you get varies by BAT-USD exchange rate, e.g. you actually get paid in BAT, correct? I must admit that I find this business model genius: replace website ads with your ads, pocket the revenue, and "pay" users in a self-issued cryptocurrency. Stealing ad revenue from websites while simultaneously doing an ICO.
    - mminer237 6y ago
      That's correct. But advertisers bid in BAT too, so if the value drops, they would pay more nominally, and it would all balance out. As a user, I prefer Brave's ads though. They're not actually on websites. And calling adblocking "stealing" seems like a bit of an exaggeration. Brave still pays out a larger share of their revenue to publishers than Google does. As a publisher, Brave's scheme seems fair to me too. The only one really hurt is Google.

MikusR 6y ago

Mozilla was sending your browser history to Cliqz in Germany. https://www.zdnet.com/article/firefox-tests-cliqz-engine-which-slurps-user-browsing-data/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/firefox-tests-cliqz-engine-whi...

solso 6y ago
Mozilla never did such a thing. The browsing history was never sent in any shape or form. As the journalistic article you quote states, Mozilla put in place the HumanWeb[1,2,3], which was a privacy preserving data collection which ensured record-unlinkability, hence no session or history. Anonymity was guaranteed and the framework was extensively tested by privacy researchers from both Cliqz and Mozilla. Disclaimer: I worked at Cliqz. [1]https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-02/is-data-collection-evil.html https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-02/is-data-collection-evil.htm... [2]https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-03/human-web-collecting-data-in-a-socially-responsible-manner.html https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-03/human-web-collecting-data-i... [3]https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-04/human-web-proxy-network-hpn.html https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-04/human-web-proxy-network-hpn...
- a254613e 6y ago
  https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-in-firefox/ https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-i... > Users who receive a version of Firefox with Cliqz will have their browsing activity sent to Cliqz servers, including the URLs of pages they visit.
  - solso 6y ago
    The chosen excerpt omits the fact that it is predicated on the HumanWeb. In the technical papers above there is a more precise description on what and how was collected. There was no user tracking, session or history being sent as all data points are anonymous and record-unlinkable by the receiver. The vague language, required for a general audience journal, certainly does not help.
a254613e 6y ago

jcpham2 6y ago

I still don’t understand basic attention token, but I know people that do understand it and I support them!

mminer237 6y ago
Instead of showing ads on websites, Brave blocks them and has an option to show you ads from the browser itself. If you elect to see these ads, it will pay the revenue from the ads to the websites you use or designate. It uses a cryptocurrency called BAT as the medium of transferring funds.

samstave 6y ago

I use BRave exclusively on both my machines and my mobile devices. I have one request within brave: I want "Use Profiles" a switchable profile that states what I am using Brave for - and session states. So let me explain: 1. I am using brave to do personal browsing at home and thus my 30 open tabs are related to my personal browsing etc. A cool way of implementing this would be instead of CTRL+SHIFT+N would be CTRL+SHIFT+N[1-9] to shift to VIEW and would take me to that tab-stack... and there would be a page that would allow me to manage each tab-stack around [TOPIC] - Meta Book marks... 2. Educational tabs (bookmarks) associated with learning something - so I want tab grouping/session grouping around the resources I read for learning a topic 3. Work topics - so a group of resources related to work. 4. To sum up the above, basically VIEWS that I can dictate what bookmarks, sites, resources, etc relate to which view. Kind of like multiple desktops - I want sep viewing environs that allow me to group, classify and segment knowledge tunnels... and overlap them as desired. Love Brave.

digitalbase 6y ago
I use 1tab for this. works in Brave and Chrome

pkamb 6y ago

I would love a search engine that searched mainly only Stack Overflow, Stack Exchange, Twitter, Flickr, and Reddit. Google results are currently awful, full of blogspam and Pinterest-mirrored images. I don't remember when this changed.

samstave 6y ago
A search funnel would be an interesting thing (does this exist?) whereby you whitelist "only give me results from these resources" - and where 'resources' can include the whitelists of others that you trust or have subscribed to. Basically you could have a search engine that only replies with information from whom are also of the same interest as you - or people you congenially follow etc... So you could say " show me everything about X" and the results are only from those who are actually connected to X in some way - based on the interest subscription graph as opposed to a keyword graph... I may be a moron on this subject - but I do recog that there is room for improvement... I added the following to a previous comment: *"A cool way of implementing this would be instead of CTRL+SHIFT+N would be CTRL+SHIFT+N[1-9] to shift to VIEW and would take me to that tab-stack... and there would be a page that would allow me to manage each tab-stack around [TOPIC] - Meta Book marks..."*
mminer237 6y ago
I mean, you can search only those sites with Google. Just add: (site:stackoverflow.com OR site:superuser.com OR site:serverfault.com OR site:stackexchange.com OR site:twitter.com OR site:flickr.com OR site:reddit.com) You could make your browser do that automatically. https://www.google.com/search?q=(site%3Astackoverflow.com+OR+site%3Asuperuser.com+OR+site%3Aserverfault.com+OR+site%3Astackexchange.com+OR+site%3Atwitter.com+OR+site%3Aflickr.com+OR+site%3Areddit.com)+brave+search+engine https://www.google.com/search?q=(site%3Astackoverflow.com+OR... https://www.google.com/search?q=(site%3Astackoverflow.com+OR+site%3Asuperuser.com+OR+site%3Aserverfault.com+OR+site%3Astackexchange.com+OR+site%3Atwitter.com+OR+site%3Aflickr.com+OR+site%3Areddit.com)+linux+gpu https://www.google.com/search?q=(site%3Astackoverflow.com+OR... https://www.google.com/search?q=(site%3Astackoverflow.com+OR+site%3Asuperuser.com+OR+site%3Aserverfault.com+OR+site%3Astackexchange.com+OR+site%3Atwitter.com+OR+site%3Aflickr.com+OR+site%3Areddit.com)+native+trees https://www.google.com/search?q=(site%3Astackoverflow.com+OR...

gidam 6y ago

Brave has a long way to go to build real trust. Too many reckless stuff: hijacking links, suspicious url-rewriting, crypto-token stunts, forgetting to communicate with users about serious privacy leaks with their faulty TOR window... also it looks like they care about privacy only in their PR brochures.

lrae 6y ago
Also zero transparency for users and publishers. On one browser installation I stopped getting payouts, reached out to them via reddit (like they asked for) and provided all the information they asked for: ghosted. I'm also a publisher, for weeks now I can't login and it seems like I'm not getting payouts anymore either. Never got any mail about it. Sent them an email about it February 23rd, no answer so far. If I'd have to guess, the one client somehow got blacklisted maybe because I used too many Brave installations and they think they're fraudulent? (Though I only used like 5, Brave & Brave Beta each on a desktop & laptop, then on another desktop just one installation. Also, I still get payouts for the other installations.) Or it's just another one of the bugs that eats payouts and users' BATs. Publisher account I even have less of an idea, it's totally fine, teen-rated gaming websites with a couple of thousand organic (search traffic) uniques/month. I did sent BAT from my unconnected Browsers (you only can connect a maximum of 4 browsers to a wallet, ever) to my site to tip myself. As far as I know that isn't against the TOS either (even makes them more money because they douple dip). But, even if they don't suspend you without any notice, it's completely non-transparent as a publisher too. You get zero statistics, just a bundled payout each month. I'd never use them like this as a publisher for bigger sites, pretty sure I mailed them about that too in the past and also did not get any reply.
junon 6y ago
Also the fact that they boast "we blocked X many ads" directly above a Brave-owned embedded avertisement directly in the browser itself. Scummy stuff.
- smbullet 6y ago
  That's a feature, not a bug. The point of the Brave ad blocker is to (optionally) replace unethical ads with ethical ones so you can compensate the content creators you browse. How is this scummy?

mancerayder 6y ago

Coincidence? https://seekingalpha.com/news/3668882-google-wont-sell-ads-based-on-user-web-browsing https://seekingalpha.com/news/3668882-google-wont-sell-ads-b...

bluecalm 6y ago

Using brave for more than a year now on my phone I sometimes forget how terrible mobile browsing is for most people. The only thing that reminds me is when I sometimes open a website in Chrome. If the trend of paid search engines or browsers start I am buying. Ads and tracking are cancer of modern life. It's literally offering free stuff to make your life worse in exchange. It's "I will give you this item if you let me punch you in the face" kind of deal. I can't wait to support a company that collects money for their software and uses part of it to fight the cancer.

crorella 6y ago

“What if we could give customers a button. They’d press it at the end of the year and it would automagically file their taxes for them.” This is exactly how it works in Chile, you pretty much check the numbers and make sure they match with your figures and done. For free.

kiwijamo 6y ago
Are you posting in the right thread?

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chanmad29 6y ago

Are there any brave users out there? no pun. I use ff with DDG on PC and safari with DDG on ios. Never understood the reason for a move. The ad rewards was just too much information for me, from brave.

BrendanEich 6y ago
See https://brave.com/transparency https://brave.com/transparency for our growth to date and other stats. The ad system is off by default, AKA opt-in. Did you hear otherwise?
CodeGlitch 6y ago
I've recently moved to Brave because of their addition of IPS (which I see as an interesting technology). I've been really happy with Brave - especially on Mobile which feel way snappier. Also not having to install a 3rd pary ad blocker (uBlock Origin) makes me feel more comfortable. Firefox should ship with a good ad blocker - it does not. I've not played around with BAT yet - it's on my TODO list. Brave seems to be pushing the boundaries more than other browsers, and it'll be interesting to watch where things go.
- CodeGlitch 6y ago
  Obv meant IPFS
pier25 6y ago
Switched to Brave about 6 months ago on macOS, iOS, Android, and Windows. Very happy with it.

desmap 6y ago

@Brendan, well done! There's some way to go but I like the direction you took, in particular the concept of "goggles". When will you release the first beta?

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e-clinton 6y ago

Headline two years from now: “Brave apologizes for breaking their promise on search and tracking users anyways. Promises to do better.”

layoutIfNeeded 6y ago

Cliqz? Wasn’t that the company behind that Firefox scandal with the Mr. Robot ads?

noobquestion81 6y ago

Glad someone is pursuing this model. I am doing well enough that its absolutely worth it to me to pay my way out of the “proliferation of personal data” game. Thinking on it I had an amusing thought: I wonder if there will ever be a google premium :) All tracking, no ads.

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inthewoods 6y ago

I keep waiting for Apple to introduce their own search engine. They are already pushing on the privacy angle, so it would seem to make logical sense to dump Google and have their own search engine. I think switching the iPhone/Safari search engine to their own search would be devastating to Google. Basically, they would be doing a similar strategy that Microsoft used against Netscape. As I remember it, in the MSFT/Netscape case, they gave away IE and the web server, crippling Netscape's ability to make money. MSFT didn't have to make money off either as they made money off the OS. In this case, ads are the core of Google revenue. Apple, however, doesn't need to care about that (yes, it would be a loss in revenue). So they dump Google and Google loses a major source of revenue and data. Obviously there would be some anti-trust issues - I assume that's what is holding them back.

sidibe 6y ago
If making a search engine like Google was easy to do Apple, Microsoft or Amazon would have done it long ago. Of any of these Apple is the worst position to do it since they don't have the same scale of infrastructure as the others.
- shruthibadri 6y ago
  Doesn't Microsoft already have Bing?
- logicchains 6y ago
  >If making a search engine like Google was easy to do Apple, Microsoft or Amazon would have done it long ago. Microsoft did: https://www.bing.com/ https://www.bing.com/.

jakequade 6y ago

Brave is still based on Chromium, and Google is the opposite of "no tracking, no profiling". I'll stick to Firefox + DDG, thanks.

BrendanEich 6y ago
Are you worried about tracking in the Chromium code? If so please see https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-(features-we-disable-or-remove) https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-.... Otherwise if you are worried about engine monoculture, please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26337402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26337402. If neither of these is the issue, what is?

forlorn 6y ago

And hence no profit?

rognjen 6y ago

I think without profiling search results would be worse. Searching for "cucumber" means something very different to me and my dad for instance. Without profiling both of us get worse results.

unnouinceput 6y ago

Quote: " If you don't market it, you can lose to somebody who just puts privacy perfume on a pig and tells you it smells great and tastes delicious." Well, pigs are tasty in the first place. Secondly, this plays on the assumption that pigs are filthy animals, which is very wrong. They like water, they like to get wet precisely because they like to be clean from parasites on skin. The fact that they do this in mud is because how humans are raising them in small filthy enclave. Given the choice, pigs will go and bathe in clean water, not mud. Or go ask any hunter to tell if they saw wild boars that are full of mud instead of actually being clean.

proxyforce 6y ago

After a long period of relative dominance by a single provider, there’s recently been a lot of interesting things happening in the search space. Specifically around privacy, there are multiple projects and companies working to offer us control how (and whether) our search activity is captured and monetized. But there’s no such thing as a free lunch — companies providing search services need to monetize SOMEHOW, and I think that’s the key thing to pay attention to when evaluating new services. Brave’s approach seems to be to straddle the line a bit between free and paid — the article says there will be an option to pay for a completely ad-free version of the Brave Search service, while also having a free option that is ad supported (albeit via the unique BAT model). It’s exciting to see these types of services starting to become available. Competition and user choice in search is a good thing for everyone involved. Disclaimer: I work at Neeva[1], a subscription based never-any-ads search engine. These opinions are my own. [1] https://www.neeva.com https://www.neeva.com

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