Brave acquires search engine to offer the first private alternative to Google

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

by twapi • 5 years ago

85 42 5 years ago

brave.com

kuu• 5 years ago

fsflover3• 5 years ago

Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26328758

vertis4• 5 years ago

This is just false though. There are several privacy preserving search engines out there. The fact that they're not owned by a browser vendor is irrelevant.

It's also annoying suggesting that it's even necessary for the search engine to be owned by the browser vendor.

This may well be part of Brave's plan with regard to BAT (basic attention token), or some other form of monetization but it does little for the end consumer.

malthejorgensen• 5 years ago

Headline is a bit rich, since duckduckgo exists (and Bing/Microsoft if you really stretch it).

I get the point though -- duckduckgo doesn't provide a browser. But I'm guessing Brave doesn't provide hosted email service (Gmail), file and document hosting (Google Drive and Docs) so the analogy breaks down either way.

That snark being said, I do want more privacy on the web -- so yay Brave!

vertis4• 5 years ago

This was my first response as well (and posted a sibling that said the same).

mikepurvis3• 5 years ago

Do we know if DDG passes through every query on demand, or does it have a caching layer or something where popular queries only hit Microsoft once a day?

ffpip• 5 years ago

Bing search API terms of use do not allow caching [0].

"You must use results you obtain through the Services only in Internet Search Experiences (as defined in the use and display requirements) and must not cache or copy results. "

But they may have a special agreement in place due to the number of searches happening on DDG (100 million + daily [1]). They're larger than Bing in many countries.

[0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/apis/legal

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/traffic

ehsankia2• 5 years ago

Does it matter? If it's proxied through a single API "user", Microsoft can't track individual DDG users, right?

katsura• 5 years ago

duckduckgo doesn't provide a browser

That's not entirely true. They do have a browser for Android and iOS[0]. When I search they frequently show a small pop-up to install it.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/duckduckgo-privacy-browser/id6...

elnygren• 5 years ago

Current title "Brave acquires search engine to offer the first private alternative to Google" seems quite misleading since there are plenty of private alternatives to Google (search engine) already ?

Especially for english speaking programming and news etc. searches, https://duckduckgo.com is really good.

blocked_again• 5 years ago

DuckDuckGo uses bing for search.

yammajr• 5 years ago

From what I understand, DDG uses bing as a primary source, but they also pull data from numerous other sources, including their own crawler.

https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...

electrondood• 5 years ago

You can choose what DuckDuckGo uses for search, including anonymous proxying of search queries to Google.

vertis4• 5 years ago

startpage.com as well.

Daho0n4• 5 years ago

Now owned by an advertisement / tracking company. No thanks.

rasengan2• 5 years ago

Private Search [1] works well too. </shameless>. That said, Brave is an awesome company headed by someone I look up to greatly. I'm definitely optimistic about their search product.

[1] https://private.sh/

tlackemann2• 5 years ago

I disagree with the decisions of Brave. I recently uninstalled the browser on my phone when it kept prompting me to enable crypto wallets and other things I don't care about. I just want a better alternative to Chrome.

Brave's obsession with crypto will be the death of them.

loceng2• 5 years ago

So do you look up to their misleading claims, you believe someone promoting lies is something to look up to greatly?

loceng2• 5 years ago

Brave multiple times has promoted PR with headlines like this, claiming they're the first for something.

They reek of gimmick and that tactic is gross, unauthentic.

NelsonMinar• 5 years ago

most aspects of Brave are gross. Their very foundational tech is unethical.

WalterSear• 5 years ago

Fwiw, over the many years of trying it, I have never experienced Duck Duck Go search results to be anything but unusably poor quality unless I specify the google search engine, which, IMHO, is quixotic.

imwillofficial2• 5 years ago

It's about time google had some competition that might just pull off a great competing service.

imwillofficial2• 5 years ago

Define "private"

vertis4• 5 years ago

Definite "alternative" as well :)

Pretty sure Brave is built on Chromium which might not have Google embedded, but it's still Google owned.

alangibson• 5 years ago

The much more specific full title of the post is less wrong.

"Brave acquires search engine to offer the first private alternative to Google Search and Google Chrome on both mobile and desktop"

Daho0n4• 5 years ago

Less wrong but still false.

yjftsjthsd-h• 5 years ago

That's technically probably true but not a lot better. DuckDuckGo is a private alternative search engine and they already have a mobile browser, so literally the only part that makes it work is "and alternative to Chrome on desktop". You can claim that DDG doesn't count because it uses bing for some of its backend (not exclusively, they do run their own crawler plus other sources IIRC), but then I get to throw out the Brave browser since it's a Blink ... actually, more than just using blink, isn't it outright a Chromium fork even for the frontend?

nealdotpy• 5 years ago

I use Brave and DuckDuckGo (bing) as my primary coupled search engine.

However, sometimes when I am trying to find resources on a particular issue/library/framework, I have to invoke :g (google search) in order to find those results; otherwise, thy're absent from the DDG searches.

Until this is addressed, the search really won't be that competitive, unless this is some weird niche thing that I think is more widespread than it is?

Daho0n4• 5 years ago

What a clickbait and clearly false headline. Sadly this is very like Brave to claim things that are on the wrong side of the truth. It's like there's some kind of inferiority complex at Brave that shows it face from time to time.

kapsteur• 5 years ago

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

NVHacker• 5 years ago

That's very brave, isn't it ?

Brave acquires search engine to offer the first private alternative to Google

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