Brave is launching its own search engine with the help of ex-Cliqz devs and tech

https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/03/brave-is-launching-its-own-search-engine-with-the-help-of-ex-cliqz-devs-and-tech/

by quick_brown_fox • 5 years ago

173 46 5 years ago

techcrunch.com

etr71115• 5 years ago

Here's the official blog post:

https://brave.com/brave-search/

rasengan3• 5 years ago

That’s pretty cool. I like Brave, and Brendan and his team are doing great things over there. Brave is absolutely faster than Chrome, and I believe everyone here on HN considers Brendan a hero once they discover what he’s created.

The search space absolutely needs more participants which will only help the experience for all internet users worldwide. This is very exciting for the search space.

I’m also involved in this space so I wanted to let the Brave team know - if you’re interested in collaborating in any way with Private Search [1] I would love to chat.

[1] https://private.sh

caslon5• 5 years ago

He created a terrible programming language and a browser that's slower than Safari and risks the privacy of its users with half-considered Tor implementations; he also made Mozilla, which has been doing more harm than good since long before he left it.

What exactly is legendary about Eich?

rasengan3• 5 years ago

JavaScript is spectacular and has reshaped our world for the better. I'm sure there will be improvements, but he pioneered this movement. This deserves respect.

Brave is a new browser and will continue to improve. Take a step back and look at history - when has there ever been something awesome that simply was always awesome without bumps along the way?

Finally, while some of Mozilla's more recent decisions have been brought to light on HN, during Brendan Eich's tenure, I assure you we all loved it.

I salute the little guy taking on the big guy. Now, that's Brave.

Zhyl• 5 years ago

For those who missed it, Cliqz did a very in-depth series of blog posts on their tech [0]. Basically, it was "word2vec: The Search Engine".

It was actually very impressive in terms of semantic understanding, but the index was pretty awful. I either got exactly what I was looking for, or no hits at all. I can imagine that they'd get massive value by focusing on more information-rich natural language sources and de-prioritising images or structured/knowledge queries for the time being. Some good partnerships to provide instant answers a-la Duckduckgo's goodies would be excellent.

I also can't express how much better the Brave brand will be for them - even 'Tailcat' is a much better name. Cliqz sounds too much like an off-brand, gutter ad seller to ever have credibility, and I say that as someone who was fairly impressed with their tech.

I am worried that they're currently pitching this as a general purpose search engine at the moment when it will be a while before it can even pretend to compete with Google. I would advise for them to find a niche where they can whip Google into next week, and then expand on scope from there.

[0] https://www.0x65.dev/

jarcane• 5 years ago

"Cliqz sounds too much like an off-brand, gutter ad seller to ever have credibility, and I say that as someone who was fairly impressed with their tech."

That's because they were. The parent company was in adtech and they even had another subsidiary that was hawking browser toolbars.

Frankly though, the Brave brand has no better reputation with me however, so it still means seeing whatever promise the tech might've had consigned to the same headspace as the rest of the scamweb.

api• 5 years ago

hawking browser toolbars.

Ahh yes, the lowest circle of adtech hell. I didn't know that kind of annoyware was even still a thing.

caslon5• 5 years ago

The Brave brand is nearly worthless. I'm not sure how to feel about that. They're releasing their new search engine as free software, which is nice, but their long history of messing even the simplest of things up still leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I wonder if they'll ever work themselves out of the "le shill lion" moniker. Probably not. Though with this new search engine attempt, they might finally give up on cryptocurrency, which would be nice.

themolecularman• 5 years ago

Frankly though, the Brave brand has no better reputation with me however, so it still means seeing whatever promise the tech might've had consigned to the same headspace as the rest of the scamweb.

Can I ask why? I've been de-googling my life and recently switched from Chrome to Brave.

abhinavsharma2• 5 years ago

I think the most interesting idea here is that of Goggles, filters like

- trusted product reviews - left biased media/right biased media - my cooking sites.

This is something we've been doing for a while in Insight (YC W19) (https://insightbrowser.com/) and our users really like creating and sharing them. They work on top of Google, DDG or whatever your search engine is. We suggest useful filters as well.

It's cool to see that idea proliferate — it could be a part of every search/browsing experience soon. All modern search engines try and guess intent that that's an increasingly difficult guess to get right.

joshgoldman• 5 years ago

Can we trust Brave?

sammorrowdrums4• 5 years ago

There are numerous accusations of dubious activity such as:

  - Inserting affiliate links[1]
  - They tried blocking ads, but then injecting their own[2]
  - Taking tips for people without consent[3]
  - Including Tor, but Leaking DNS[4] which is now fixed but a false sense of security is a dangerous thing

edit apparently [2] is not actually accurate, this seems to shed some more light: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18744481

Not to say I don't have some respect for what they are doing, and for Brendan Eich's work, but I wouldn't say 100% blindly trust Brave either. It's had a sort of complex relationship with many people.

- [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-aff...

- [2] https://www.wired.com/2016/04/brave-software-publishers-resp...

- [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999

- [4] https://www.coindesk.com/brave-browser-leak-exposed-user-dom...

justfortechnews2• 5 years ago

You seem fairly biased, and have included those links and accusations without any counter or responses from Brave.

#2, for example, is just false. Brave doesn't block ads and then inject their own; they block 3rd-party ads, and have an opt-in ad network. Doesn't replace or inject anything.

#1 gets brought up a lot on HN it seems, but sounds like it was an oversight and was fixed quickly. Same with #4. Every product has its issues, and as long as they're fixed quickly, it's understandable in my opinion.

justfortechnews2• 5 years ago

There's a good overview of Brave's search engine focus from their team (the former Cliqz team) found in https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/03/brave_buys_a_search_e...

Paper on the search engine: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-B3ZvHpbnxsT2OdnUH8vS3-tvTv...

BitwiseFool2• 5 years ago

Can someome please make a search engine that doesn't use Natural Language Processing? I just want to enter keywords and get results. No fixating on certain terms in the query and no attempts to specialize or localize my results based on my data. I want an old-school search engine, not a digital assistant/answers machine.

gbmatt2• 5 years ago

I made this search engine: https://www.gigablast.com/ that seems to fit that bill. As I am really the only programmer on it, my budget is essentially non-existent, therefore not allowing for many of the fancy additions you mentioned. The two biggest problems are 1) small index (need more servers) and 2) synonyms. The synonyms get pretty wonky sometimes, and often I miss good synonyms that I should be getting. But I don't have query logs like Google to use for synonym generation.

Also, I probably should have quit developing this years ago, I know, but it is an obsession. :)

thestepafter• 5 years ago

I have to say that I tried this out and really loved it. A simple search for monitor arms shows sites that aren’t click bait with links back to Amazon. I was able to see Herman Miller and Humanscale on the front page. Nice job with this. If you ever lose interest in doing this let me know, I have been considering building a search engine myself for awhile now.

BitwiseFool2• 5 years ago

I'm really intruiged about the idea of topic/directory based searches. Usually when I'm searching for something I'm not looking to scan through the entirety of what the internet has to offer, I'm looking for something in a specific domain of knowledge.

I would much rather have a more detailed index for a specific topic than a generalized index covering everything. Looking forward to trying this out more.

powersnail• 5 years ago

I just tried it, too, and it works pretty well.

Interestingly, it works even better than DDG on a recent query of mine: "carving a violin bridge".

Your search engine found the exact article (from triangle strings) I was looking for. DDG seems to have not indexed the page at all.

rstuart4133• 5 years ago

I made this search engine: https://www.gigablast.com/

Ye gods. It's actually a useful search engine. So useful I'm going to try it as a default for a while.

And it is a lone horse effort? My hat off to you sir.

chris_f2• 5 years ago

https://www.runnaroo.com/blog/the-search-engine-hacker-news-...

Uses Google index for organic search, but respects quotes unlike Google, Bing, or DDG. I'm the creator.

Gigablast also mentioned here is very cool as well.

schmorptron• 5 years ago

Super interesting how this will play out. Does anyone have any experience with cliqz? I saw it at a friends place once but never tried it myself. Is it any different from using firefox and duckduckgo?

gidam• 5 years 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.

doublerabbit• 5 years ago

Rebranded chrome with cryptocurrency / blockchain tech is all I see of it when someone mentions Brave.

abhinavsharma2• 5 years ago

I think the most interesting idea here is that of Goggles, filters like

- trusted product reviews - left biased media/right biased media - my cooking sites.

wittyreference• 5 years ago

Installing this browser for a look-see as we speak.

So, as a "privacy focused" browser, what's your revenue model?

riston• 5 years ago

I hope to see some more alternatives to Google as the search results provided by Google last six months contain in most of the case some phishing/scam sites.

Not sure why these pages aren't removed from the result lists?

snug• 5 years ago

Some how Google + Chrome is bad

But Brave + Cliqz is good?

I thought the whole argument was a browser shouldn't be owned by the same company that runs a search engine, or for-profit organization

Brave is launching its own search engine with the help of ex-Cliqz devs and tech

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