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Every web search result in Brave Search is now served by our own index
- DeathArrow 3y agoI wonder how will they monetize Brave Search. It's good that there are sensible alternatives to Google, and I would like them to succeed and be able to provide the service in the future.
- Anders_A 3y agoIsn't Brave the browser that pretended you could donate to any creator and then kept the money for themselves? Have we forgiven them now?
- interesting_att 3y agoBrave is great -- but just objectively they aren't growing. Their MAU was literally larger a year ago. Compare last month's stats to last May's stats: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1643104574532894721 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1643104574532894721 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1532100051966697472 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1532100051966697472 Weird how a company can experience NEGATIVE growth for something like browsers and search
- DoItToMe81 3y agoBrave's search has always been pretty lacking, at least for me. I've found myself having to use Yandex to fill the gaps, especially whenever I search for something old.
- RadixDLT 3y agothis is a lie, just click on the Images tab, you will be redirected to google/search index and if you happen to be using tor in brave browser, you will get "I'm not a robot" reCAPTCHA
- throw2awaymay 3y ago[dead]
- apple4ever 3y agoDoes it avoid the repeating results that google and bing have???
- jacooper 3y ago> Announcing the Brave Search API > In continuing our mission to offer alternatives to Big Tech, Brave is planning to release the Brave Search API. Through it, developers and companies will be able to build search experiences that compete on quality with Big Tech. Those interested should stay tuned for more details, or contact us at bizdev@brave.com. That's going to be very important for search engines like phind which rely on the bing index service.
- vinc 3y agoPerfect timing with Bing API increasing its pricing prohibitively!
- riku_iki 3y agothey have 200 employees on linkedin, many of whom are not engineers. How they can carry two such major and complicated projects(browser and search) with such headcount?
- slig 3y agoMeanwhile, Twitter had 7500 and Dropbox, 3000.
- jraph 3y agoCan't say for search (it seems like massive work indeed - or maybe you can actually build a decent and comprehensive search engine with few people but with a massive amount of money), but for the browser they really provide a browser UI (and I'd guess most of it is actually built by Google too). It requires work, but it's not massive like a browser. There are many browsers out there, maintained by a few devs, sometimes in their free time. Konqueror, Gnome Web, qutebrowser, WebPositive... Whatever the SerinityOS is doing, reimplementing a browser engine from scratch for their browser Ladybird [1], is vastly more impressive. [1] https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Ladybird https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Ladybird
- eitland 3y agosearch.marginalia.nu consisted of 1 Swedish engineer and 1 server last I heard and still managed to outclass DDG in a number of query types relevant to me. In fact, back when I used DDG I think I fell back to marginalia more often than I fell back to Google, partly because of my dislike for Google and partly because Google doesn't respect my queries - which of course is a contributing reason for my dislike for them. Let's say 100 of the Brave employees are engineers and 50 of them work on the Chromium skin, that still leaves 50 to work on search and related efforts. If 5 of them are as good as the marginalia guy and they are allowed to work with equally clear direction, lack of interruptions and more funding, I think that could almost explain a working search engine. Remember: In the first 20 years of Google existence (or in any 20 years of the semiconductor age until recently) Moores law had over 13 cycles. A lot of what used to be hard problems before isn't anynore.
- pachico 3y agoJust the fastest and most ergonomic browser I've tried. I wish Firefox was like Brave, to be honest. Until that happens, I'll stick to Brave for both mobile and desktop.
- jraph 3y agoThis submission is about a search engine, not a browser. What's to be like the Brave browser for you? You don't say much.
- caycep 3y agoI use both. Brave is better for the "chromium only" wonky websites/webapps. But the whole altruistic privacy thing is kind of undercut, at least optics-wise, by all the crypto/gamification upsell present by default. Not good when your supposedly privacy-focused browser requires extensive fiddling in the settings to shut everything off on initial install a-la Windows 11...
- jacooper 3y agoHonestly its very easy to ignore all the crypto crap. And its much better for your average user, since he/she will be private by just using brave, without any tinkering.
- ThunderSizzle 3y agoIt's a little odd to be concerned about privacy focus on a post-Windows 10 os.
- Jorengarenar 3y agoThey said Brave behaves like W11...
- timbit42 3y agoWhy did you enable the crypto features if you don't want them? Oh. You didn't? Then what are you complaining about?
- slig 3y agoUsing Brave Search feels like the Google Search from mid 2000s. Anyone tired of Google should give it a try.
- natoliniak 3y agoi tried, but I was immediately put off by the inability to search for an exact string. To me, that makes a search engine useless. Am i missing something? I tried using quotes etc, but the results always force up approximate matches.
- 5amdotis 3y agoSame... even DuckDuckGo (also tested on Google, Yandex, Bing, and Baidu) returned expected results.
- IceWreck 3y agoHow is it that Brave managed to build an indexer and remove dependence on Bing in less than two years but DuckDuckGo hasn't been able to do it in a decade.
- soundnote 3y agoIt's not two years. Brave Search is based on Tailcat, Cliqz's search engine technology that they kept building after Cliqz proper was shut down. Brave acquired the team and technology 2-3 years ago.
- potatofrenzy 3y agoDDG probably doesn't want to? On the time horizons they're thinking about, it's probably more expensive to develop competitive tech and keep it working than it is to pay for API access.
- jakear 3y agoThe economics of scare tactics in mass advertising campaigns cant compete with those of writing actually good software.
- nugget 3y agoThe search index is relatively easy, the ad marketplace is hard. DDG is likely hooked on tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in Bing revenue which is a tough habit to kick.
- ummonk 3y agoThat shouldn’t stop DDG from using their own index instead of the Bing search API for organic search results though right?
- nugget 3y agoOnce you’re hooked on Google or Bing search ads for revenue, they can control everything you are allowed to do within a product via compliance requirements. It’s a clever and effective form of regulatory capture.
- Flimm 3y agoI've set Brave Search to be my default search engine for private windows (incognito mode). I've grown annoyed by the cookie consent dialogs and captchas that are presented to me by Google when I open Google's search engine in a private window. Brave Search doesn't have those annoyances.
- TigeriusKirk 3y agoIt's been my default search for months. I go to Google for images and maps, but Brave search serves most of my needs quite well. But throwing a monkey wrench into the whole thing is my increasing use of Bing Chat. It's not really a general purpose search replacement, but it does do a more efficient job of answering basic questions succinctly.
- artificial 3y agoHave you tried Yandex for image search? It supports searching by specific sizes like the Google search of yore.
- rarafael 3y agoYandex image search is irrationally good, I've yet to find an image search engine that works as well as it does. I have no idea why
- EMM_386 3y agoIn Brave Browser, it does that automatically when you switch to the private mode. It lands you on Brave Search instead of what you have set for your regular sessions. Fine by me.
- Flimm 3y agoThis is about the Brave Search engine, which you can use in any browser: https://search.brave.com/ https://search.brave.com/
- enpojames 3y agoStoked for the independent Search API. Google and Bings are pricey. I anticipate it having a quicker adoption path compared to than the UI.
- nocommandline 3y agoRead the announcement and it looks like there isn't an option to submit a site for crawling. If that's true, how do they discover new sites? My understanding of the 'the Web Discovery project' is that they're indexing your search and the results you click, anonymously but you won't see new sites in your search results which in turn means the new site won't be indexed by them
- Flimm 3y agoIf you turn on "the Web Discovery Project" in the Brave browser, then a fraction of the web addresses you visit will be sent to Brave, even if the web pages weren't from a Brave Search SERP. Source: https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409406835469-What-is-the-Web-Discovery-Project- https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409406835469-Wh... > If you opt-in to the Web Discovery Project, your browser will process the following data on your device, and securely send it to Brave’s servers: > - A fraction of the addresses (URLs) of the web pages visited in the Brave Browser, along with engagement metrics (how much time is spent on the page) > - [...]
- nocommandline 3y ago> then a fraction of the web addresses you visit will be sent to Brave I get that but if it's a new site, the number of people visiting will be extremely small if not non-existent. The possibilities that I see are a) The new website is first noted on something like social media and you found it from there and then accessed it via Brave browser b) You use Google search or Bing within Brave browser and you find the site (because it was submitted to Google or Bing)
- IMSAI8080 3y agoProbably watching for new DNS entries gets you most of the way there. When you fire up any new website you usually get a pile of visits from mysterious cloud boxes in the first 24 hours before you are listed on any search engine. I assume that's how they find you.
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- bmarquez 3y agoBrave search is surprisingly good. In the past I've often clicked the "fallback to Google Search" option but these days I rarely do that. It could be that Brave is getting better, or Google search is getting worse, or both.
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- dang 3y agoWanting to avoid tedious repetitive flamewars, of the sort that destroy an internet forum, is hardly to favor Hitler. Internet forums have a strong default tendency to burn themselves to a crisp. The idea of HN, for 15+ years now, has been to try to stave that outcome off as long as possible. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=stave%20off%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- cactusplant7374 3y agoAs if every product you use isn't run/developed/maintained by legions of people you disagree with on at least one political issue. This is brought up every time there is a post on Brave. It's rather tiresome.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
- GCA10 3y agoJust started testing Brave Search, and it scored a rare 100 on the first test: If you type in the name of a favorite boutique hotel, will you get that hotel's true website -- or the usual hairball of third-party intermediaries? (For anyone who's ever tried to modify a reservation, the difference is astonishing. If you're booked with the hotel, all kinds of adjustments are at least possible. If you're booked with Booking, Travelocity, Expedia, etc., it's somewhere between hard and hopeless.) Brave gets it right. Bing, Google and even DuckDuckGo do not.
- account42 3y ago> even DuckDuckGo Why "even" when it's basically BingBingGo.
- kokanee 3y agoI totally agree that this is a great sign. I'm a bit more pessimistic though - a search engine's willingness to actually let you click through to an organic search result is a function of A) how dominant in the search market they are, and therefore how much they can afford to jerk users around, and B) how mature they are economically, since growth is more difficult later in the life of the company. This is to say that I don't trust Brave to keep doing things right as their incentives evolve. Trust is a finicky thing, but from the outset they strike me as an organization with lofty commercial intentions. And, I admit, I don't think I can trust anything Brendan Eich does.
- cyanydeez 3y agoIn reality, search should be a government service as a utility.
- matt-attack 3y agoI’m pretty sure that’s how, say, Expedia makes their money. Traditional hotel reservation permit very late cancellation (24hrs typically). Hotels are willing to offer a reduced rate if you promise to not cancel. So Expedia is just a front for that other class of bookings that are non-cancellable and they skim a profit from that. Hotels save face as they can just fingerpoint if someone complains yet they gain by getting the non-cancelable bookings.
- jcadam 3y agoI use chromium for work/dev. Brave for personal stuff (including on my phone). It's actually been a while since I've used Firefox.
- chad1n 3y agoWhile they did some shady stuff with their browser in the past, the search engine is surprisingly good and their relation with the community is pretty decent, I wish more search providers start providing their own results instead of using Bing API.
- alx__ 3y agoGlad there are more options for search tools. Seems pretty good! But still very happy with how Kagi works
- moint 3y ago[flagged]
- ementally 3y agoI actually find their Goggles [0] feature really interesting. [0] https://search.brave.com/help/goggles https://search.brave.com/help/goggles
- DavideNL 3y ago> “ However, note that if a Goggle is used only by one, or a very small number of people, the Goggle URL could serve as an identifier, and enable the creation of a profile of the user’s queries while using that particular Goggle.” That’s a bit of a shame… :’(
- topspin 3y ago"Goggles enable any individual—or community of people—to alter the ranking of Brave Search by using a set of instructions (rules and filters). Anyone can create, apply, or extend a Goggle. Essentially Goggles act as a custom re-ranking on top of the Brave search index." Wow.
- sundarurfriend 3y agoI'd love to hear from someone who has used it, about how effective and easy to use it is.
- p-e-w 3y agoMind blown. If this works anything like advertised, this is easily the biggest innovation in the history of web search.
- komali2 3y agoThat is really cool. It reminds me of I think it was in "Fall, or Dodge in Hell," by Neal Stephenson. The internet had been polluted with spam and fake information, and the future handled this by subscribing to "edit streams," or if they were rich enough having their own personal editor, who would tailor whatever content was out there to the person's tastes (and desire for truthiness, or, based on who they trusted as authoritative).
- penjelly 3y agoas a brave user on my personal devices its nice to see that theyre continually working towards independence. brave browser with brave search has worked fine for me, i barely notice the difference having switched from chrome/google.
- ddtaylor 3y agoSadly it failed my test. When I search for "Python str split" it includes trash results and midway down the first page of results is the python API documentation after some YouTube videos, W3Schools and "GeeksForGeeks" spam garbage. DuckDuckGo at least has the results correct for this case and an infocard on the side that understands it's a Python related API question with relevant examples and links.
- freediver 3y agoHow is this? https://kagi.com/search?q=Python+str+split&r=us&sh=gJnPl4gj52szAy4onMZYdA https://kagi.com/search?q=Python+str+split&r=us&sh=gJnPl4gj5...
- nextmove 3y agoI love how on mobile Brave browser you can add YouTube videos to your Brave playlist and then play them while your screen is locked. Also I switched from StartPage to Brave search, but I do wish Brave search had a translator feature. Like on StartPage I just search "translate" and get an input box. I find it better than most other browsers' translators.
- kashkhan 3y agousing Brave on an iphone for Youtube is a godsend. Almost as good as desktop experience. Youtube app, Safari and Chrome suck enough to be unusable
- wkat4242 3y agoIf you're on Android NewPipe is also amazing, especially the sponsorblock fork which the original devs unfortunately refuse to integrate.
- bazmattaz 3y agoCan I ask what’s so good about YT on Brave? I use the iOS app but could change. Does it block ads?
- nostromo 3y agoYes. If you browse YouTube on mobile via the Brave browser it blocks all YouTube ads. I haven't used the YouTube app in a year...
- gaurang_tandon 3y agoUnrelated but you can also block ads with the FF mobile browser using ublock origin. I understand playing videos with screen locked is a big plus for brave though.
- wazzer 3y agosame here, couldn’t live without it. btw: it’s also possible to go to fullscreen mode, then go directly to the home screen so that the pop-over player is activated, then the video keeps playing while the screen is looked, with controls working from the lockscreen.
- guerrilla 3y agoGood because I've about had it with DuckDuckGo. Bing has downmodded a ton of Wikipedia (probably to trick people into using their stupid AI). Feeling trapped with both Google and Bing being terrible. What's the business plan though?
- thefourthchime 3y agoMy standard test for a search engine: "California style burrito in Austin" I got mixed results. The "BraveAI" result was halfway decent, recommending a place I've never heard of, but not listing any of the other top ones I know of. On the sidebar map, it listed a restaurant in New Hampshire. Hilarious, but not what I was looking for.
- KomoD 3y agoI tried it, and honestly it sucks, all the rankings are terrible, I searched stackoverflow and I got seo spam as one of the top results, the title or meta didn't even include "stackoverflow". I also hate how it's not full width.
- pythux 3y agoHi, Brave engineer here, We're always on the look-out to improve our search ranking. Would you be able to share some of the queries you made that did not return satisfying results? (or use in-page feedback to report them automatically to us). It would be very useful. Thanks!
- moremetadata 3y ago[dead]
- aacid 3y agoI would really like to move away from google search, but unfortunately every other engine I tried sucks for localized searching... I get it that I come from small central europe country which is not that interesting market wise but it looks like google is able to provide relevant results while any other engine does not. For example I tried brave to search for watch I'm currently considering buying. When using site:sk it gives me 3 results... Same google search returns thousands results...
- slig 3y agoSuggestion: use Brave Search as default, and g! for localized queries. I did that with DDG and for a while with Brave Search, but now it's surprisingly good enough even for my country.
- carlosjobim 3y agoKagi really aces it on local search. Honestly Brave was also fine now when I tried it.
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- asimpletune 3y agoSurprisingly good. I tried "what is a monad" and got reasonable results. Searching my own name resulted in socials instead of my personal website, but that seems reasonable since my personal website isn't super popular. I guess I'll have to try it out for a few days or even weeks to really know, but a completely new search engine would be amazing.
- bogtog 3y agoSadly didn't pass my test, looking up sports info like "UFC Schedule" and getting a custom built interface. For example, Google's: https://www.google.com/search?q=ufc+schedule&rlz=1C1GCEU_en&oq=ufc+sche&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j0i433i512j0i512l3j69i60l2.1067j1j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=ufc+schedule&rlz=1C1GCEU_en&... Bing's (doesn't have UFC Schedules but has "NFL Standings"): https://www.bing.com/search?q=NFL+standings&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&ghc=1&lq=0&pq=nfl+standings&sc=10-13&sk=&cvid=738CD5B3E01F42C08E55BCC9E0A81218&ghsh=0&ghacc=0&ghpl= https://www.bing.com/search?q=NFL+standings&qs=n&form=QBRE&s...
- gregw134 3y agoTo be fair, Google has product teams which has custom built components for different search verticals. I wouldn't expect this of a small search company.
- yamtown 3y agoIs there search independent? They have no page talking about their robot. The Cliqz index they acquired was a database of query url pairs scraped from Google. It is not obvious how true their claims of independence are or how they are building an index beyond further scraping of Google and opaque Brave browser add-ons
- schmorptron 3y agoI've been using brave search since it became public and it was known they bought tailcat. Have been very happy with the search results, and for people who don't like the simpler programming tutorial sites you can even make a custom "goggle" to block those from the results completely.
- k__ 3y agoInteresting timing. Just today, it told me to use Bing or Google for image search. I understand the reasoning, but it felt a bit like "whelp, we give up"
- soundnote 3y agoAPI costs, I guess. Brave's image results were served from Bing previously.
- celdon25 3y agoI guess that explains why the quality in its search results has been trending downward for me.
- gumballindie 3y agoI know brave is basically chrome but i am very pleased with the experience. Works a charm on linux and is good enough at blocking ads that i dont really need pihole. The only thing i miss is syncing between devices, i mess that up and cant get it right. All in all is quite good.
- JohnFen 3y agoOK, I'll have to give Brave search a try now!
- brianbreslin 3y agoHow does Brave monetize this? How do they monetize their app in general? Is there a ppc ad platform they're offering?
- soundnote 3y agoBrowser: Shows sponsored images along with pretty wallpapers on the new tab page (opt-out, one toggle to turn off, can turn off ads and leave Brave-sourced pretty images in). Users can opt in to Brave Rewards which shows them ads as toaster popups (how many is the user's choice), and users get a cut of the ad revenue as BAT. Brave Rewards tipping service: Show users the toaster popups. Brave takes a cut when users tip creators or websites with the built-in tipping system. Brave News: Funded by users having Brave Rewards ads enabled. Brave Talk: Traditional subscription service. Brave Search: Keyword-based ads, a traditional subscription for ad-free search.
- riskycodes 3y agoYeah, but you opt in, and you receive a share of it (in their altcoin) if you do.
- metalliqaz 3y agothey lost me at "altcoin"
- celsoazevedo 3y agoReplace "altcoin" with "foreign currency" and it would be the same thing. You receive a payment, convert it to your local currency, and use it.
- soundnote 3y agoDifferent thing. That's their Brave Rewards thing, which shows you ads (your choice how often) as toaster popups and gets you a part of the revenue as BAT (which can be used to support creators with Brave's tipping service). The search engine itself shows keyword based ads on search results pages, and Brave offers a $3/mo subscription for ad-free search.
- ricardo81 3y agoGreat to have alternative entry points into the web. DDG seem to do quite well in that a lot of their users will deem the relevance good enough, perhaps not aware of its 100% reliance on Bing. More often than not new search engine skins with comparable results to Google and Bing do tend to be the actual results of Google and Bing. Apparently the average searcher doesn't know nor care. If everyone 'donated' at least a few searches a day to true alternative engines, it'd help diversify search, surely. The fact that Google has such a high amount of revenue per search has helped them price out competitors e.g. being defaults on browsers and devices. Can see why Brave would launch a browser to assist/complement search.
- devmunchies 3y agoI have brave search as default but always do a google bang “!g”. I do this for every search but figure I’m giving brave some data on all my searches to help improve it. I guess it’s be better if I clicked a link on their results too for reinforcement learning.
- fardo 3y agoOnce you’ve doing this, is there a value-add Brave is providing over just using Google through a VPN? As someone without much familiarity, this alternative seems circuitous if Google results are what you actually want.
- soundnote 3y agoHe wants to show Brave the queries so they can improve their index without suffering worse results while Brave's index is lagging behind for his purposes.
- INeedMoreRam 3y agoThey need to add a Maps tab for easy map viewing on searches Otherwise, I give their index a B+ compared w/ DDG, Bing, and Google
- xarthna 3y agoI have been using Brave Search for a year now. It has been great. It provides relevant results and I love how Brave AI floats a summarizer to the top with cited and hyperlinked material when applicable. Very rarely I will need to hit the Find Elsewhere 'Google' button. This is usually done for niche technical searches where Google prioritizes some forums dedicated to the topic like Reddit or Stack Overflow. I _could_ re-search with the site operator, but after scrolling down with the Google escape hatch there, the flow just seems more natural. Just as an aside, I have also been experimenting with SearX searches. The experience isn't as streamlined as Brave Search, but I can incorporate Brave Search into my results. I find the value proposition interesting for SearX, but implementation still lacking.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago<meta property="og:description" content="Search the web privately ..."> Would be nice if Brave did not require SNI since this is considered a privacy concern by some folks.^1 Anyone sniffing the wire can see all the domain names to which the SNI user is connecting.^3 The other search engines do not require SNI, e.g., Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, GigaBlast, Qwant, etc. 1. One example would be Cloudflare. Because some folks see SNI as a privacy concern, Cloudflare used to offer ESNI which was a way to encrypt SNI. It has since been discontinued while we wait for ECH. Some HN commenters will often try to argue that SNI is irrelevant to users without offering any evidence to support. Watch for it. For example, China found SNI was relevant enough to block ESNI. Apparently, China found it preferable to use SNI than to use only IP addresses, which of course are easy for websites to change. Go figure. https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/Dae-cukKMqfzmTT4Ksh1Bzlx7ws/ https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/Dae-cukKMqfzmTT4Ks... SNI can be used for censorship purposes, among other things. Many search engines work without SNI. But not Brave. NB. As I understand it, these browsers do not allow the user to enable/disable SNI on a per site basis; in some of them it is not even possible to disable SNI at all.^2 TLS might enable the user to hide web pages from the proverbial "MITM", but with SNI enabled it will not allow them to hide web sites. 2. Thus, even when Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, GigaBlast, Qwant, Mojeek, etc., and millions of other websites do not require the user to send SNI in order to return SERPs or other pages, these browsers send it anyway. Brilliant. 3. SNI is different than DNS. DNS lookups can be done at a different time from when a user connects, if the user ever does connect. (Popular browsers are not good for this, of course.) Unlike DNS, SNI proves the user actually connected. Strangely, much effort has gone into encrypting DNS, while SNI, and to some extent TLS prior to version 1.3, leaks these same domain names on the wire, unencrypted.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoTruly, use of AWS is the culprit here since it requires SNI. Perhaps Brave will one day graduate from using a large third party CDN.
- josephcsible 3y agoIf you can choose not to require SNI, doesn't that mean that your domain is the only one being served by the IP it's on, and that the IP address (also visible to anyone sniffing the wire) then reveals the exact same information as SNI would have?
- EMM_386 3y agoI first used Firefox when it was Phoenix, back in 2002. You downloaded a zip file, extracted it and ran it. For the next 20 years I used Firefox. But I could feel the performance difference from Chromium browsers. I finally threw in the towel and switched to Brave out of the collection of them now. I hated switching because it meant yet another user lost to one of the remaining handful of unique engines for browsing the web. I like competition and standards, and the more the better with browsing engines. Even if it may bring developers some pain. I've been very happy with it. People gripe about ads, crypto integration, etc. but it can all be avoided and/or turned off. It has the speed of Chromium but with additional features and is privacy-focused. But to get to the point, regarding the search ... I'm happy to see they (somehow!) have been able to build their own search engine now. Obviously that's no simple task, I have no idea what goes into powering that but it has to be a major investment. It seems pretty good. If they can sell API access for cheaper then the others and still return quality results, that seems like it has potential to be a good revenue stream. They are very clear about the Web Discovery Project, what the purpose is, what it collects, etc. And obviously it's opt-in. I really hope they succeed with this. Another example of where competition is definitely good.
- kilroy123 3y agoI'm am exactly the same. I feel bad not using Firefox but yes I also feel the pain of the performance issues. I do feel like brave drains the battery pretty badly on macOS.
- FrontierPsych 3y agoSame. Used Firefox from long ago, but switched about 3 years ago when I just was getting way too many problems with firefox not running SaaS stuff. Couldn't run Salesforce on Firefox. Maybe there was some way that someone knows of here, but I didn't and was not going to spend 200 hours trying to find out. So after extensive decision-making process of looking at everything, I chose Brave.
- lta 3y agoThis story feels a bit weird to me because I went back to Firefox 2-3 years ago for performance reasons, haha. I felt like Chrome was using all my battery and memory on my previous MBP. I gave Firefox a trial run and never came back. I haven't really tried chromium based browser since I came back to Linux
- kaivi 3y agoAre there any details about how they're crawling the web? I've never encountered the BraveBot User-Agent and never heard of such crawler.
- EMM_386 3y agoI'm not sure about the crawler itself, but they do get some of their data from the Web Discovery Project. What percentage of it, I have no idea. https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409406835469-What-is-the-Web-Discovery-Project- https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409406835469-Wh...
- lofaszvanitt 3y agozzzzzzzzzzzzzzz everyone copies everyone
- i-use-nixos-btw 3y agoI have a love-hate relationship with Brave search. I love the browser, but the first thing I do (after disabling the crypto stuff) is change the search to Google. I’m tempted to change it to ChatGPT. For searching every day things, brave search is great. For searching technical things, such as scientific articles or programming errors, the results are not just badly ordered - they’re often missing entirely. At least, that’s how it was the last time I used it, which was admittedly about a year ago. If things have changed, let me know.
- NayamAmarshe 3y agoYou could use `!g` shortcut for any special queries.
- NayamAmarshe 3y agoI've been using Brave Search for almost 2 years now, and it still surprises me how good it is compared to Google! When I was on DDG, I often had to use `!g` to find better search results. That is extremely rare with Brave Search. The results are accurate, the UI is polished, and the widgets are extremely helpful. It keeps getting better with time too!
- Thorentis 3y agoEverything I've seen come out of Brave has been fantastic. This is another great milestone.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoOriginal title before it was changed: "Brave Search removes last remnant of Bing from search results page (brave.com)"
- neom 3y agoI love brave browser and have been using it for over a year now, but I find brave search to be visually unappealing. It seems very squished up to the left and small, I wish they would let it breath a little more.
- vrglvrglvrgl 3y ago[dead]
- franczesko 3y agoVery good search engine. Default on all my devices. Better than Bing (and DDG which runs on it). Results were so decent, that I was suspecting that they were scraping Google.
- pkulak 3y agoI hope Kagi is hard at wie doing the save thing…
- cristiioan 3y agoI'm not sure if I will add it to my searx instance. The problem is that Brave gets more shady over time(shady BAT "donations" to creators, Brave VPN, ads on the homepage, and the let's not forget the crypto). I get that they need to pay employees.
- newswasboring 3y agoHow is any of this shady? I understand calling it unnecessary and they should probably remove the crypto parts asap. But shady?