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Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

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Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#11

Post by sph »

eloisius wrote: post #7

I’ve been using Brave search for several months now. I switched the day that it was announced. The quality is fairly good, but I’m having troubling telling whether it’s just my own halo effect or if the initial quality that experienced has started to slip a little as it indexes more widely or something. At first I was impressed with how little spam ended up in top results, but lately exact queries for Python function…

DDG is awful for spam on most searches which can't be easily resolved with a Wikipedia info box. The 3rd result onward is very fishy, content spammy results of very low quality. It's like their algo isn't good enough to separate the wheat from the chaff yet.

Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#12

Post by sholladay »

TheEnder8 wrote: post #4

This seems more like trying to capture money. If this was about privacy, they could have just gone with duckduckgo.

Have you spent much time with Brave Search? I use Firefox and currently have DDD as the default search on my laptop, but I often use the !g operator since the DDD results are routinely not as good as Google. I’ve had a significantly better experience with Brave Search, though. I’ll probably switch my default soon, once I learn the operators that Brave supports.

Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#13

Post by 1123581321 »

whoisjuan wrote: post #8

Honest question. I have used DuckDuckGo and Brave Search and although they seem to do the job for generic searches they really suck for very specific searches. How likely is for one of these search engines to catch-up technologically to Google's sophistication? I really can't see a clear trajectory for them to compete with Google's quality.

They will never catch up because Google is the only one dedicating enough engineering to match the growing amount of information, and their level of effort sets the pace of increasingly high user expectations for search results.

Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#14

Post by eloisius »

TheEnder8 wrote: post #4

This seems more like trying to capture money. If this was about privacy, they could have just gone with duckduckgo.

For all the love DDG gets on this site, it’s not really an independent search engine. It relies heavily on the Bing index, despite spinning it as using it as one of many signals. Brave has its own index and that puts it in another class. In my experience the results have been higher quality, too.

Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#15

Post by dd444fgdfg »

whoisjuan wrote: post #8

Honest question. I have used DuckDuckGo and Brave Search and although they seem to do the job for generic searches they really suck for very specific searches. How likely is for one of these search engines to catch-up technologically to Google's sophistication? I really can't see a clear trajectory for them to compete with Google's quality.

on the contrary. for what it's worth, I think google search is finally open to disruption. the tech required to compete with them is finally commoditized enough that it's financially doable, plus, and most importantly, they've screwed up their search results so much now that google search is just not that good anymore.

I also think that they're "too" clever with their search to their detriment. We tend to think in terms of text search and are looking for results that match what we want. I'd prefer not to have a machine assume I actually intended something else. Just give me great text search where I can perform various inclusions/exclusions and you'll win the market

Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#16

Post by m0zg »

1123581321 wrote: post #13
whoisjuan wrote: post #8

Honest question. I have used DuckDuckGo and Brave Search and although they seem to do the job for generic searches they really suck for very specific searches. How likely is for one of these search engines to catch-up technologically to Google's sophistication? I really can't see a clear trajectory for them to compete with Google's quality.

They will never catch up because Google is the only one dedicating enough engineering to match the growing amount of information, and their level of effort sets the pace of increasingly high user expectations for search results.

Brave is already comparable in quality to Google IMO, to the point where I maybe go to Google once every couple of weeks, if that. Superior, if you're searching for anything at all "controversial" that Google bans or demotes. And where it knows it's lacking, it gives you the option to mix in Google results if you'd like. I'm very impressed with Brave Search. I'm also disappointed and annoyed that Apple completely controls iOS search engine selection and doesn't allow adding custom search engines at all. Safari is the best mobile browser hands down, except for this "inconvenience". iOS Brave is worse than Safari, at least for me.

Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#17

Post by anaganisk »

TheEnder8 wrote: post #4

This seems more like trying to capture money. If this was about privacy, they could have just gone with duckduckgo.

What wrong if they’re trying to find more money while providing privacy? Would you rather have a browser from rich monopoly like google? Or an alternative thats self sustainable with its own money?

Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#18

Post by zestyping »

Does anyone else find the font choice in Brave Search to be an obstacle for them? I just find it so hard to read.

I've set Brave as the default search in my browser (Chrome) in an attempt to give less of my traffic to Google, but most of the time I just get frustrated trying to read the search results and repeat the query in Google Search. I know it's ridiculous that I haven't just switched back to Google. I still want Brave to win, but trying to stay on the Brave page is an actively unpleasant experience. The closest analogy I can think of is that it feels like trying to make myself eat vegetables I hate (which is a poor analogy because I like vegetables!)

Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#19

Post by silisili »

1123581321 wrote: post #13
whoisjuan wrote: post #8

Honest question. I have used DuckDuckGo and Brave Search and although they seem to do the job for generic searches they really suck for very specific searches. How likely is for one of these search engines to catch-up technologically to Google's sophistication? I really can't see a clear trajectory for them to compete with Google's quality.

They will never catch up because Google is the only one dedicating enough engineering to match the growing amount of information, and their level of effort sets the pace of increasingly high user expectations for search results.

There is a growing sentiment, mine included, that Google search isn't getting better. In fact, I feel it's markedly worse for many queries. The problem for me are all the blogspams out there. These -should- be easy to just punt, but alas, they do not. I'd gladly switch to any search that didn't show me such results.

Re: Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser

#20

Post by suddenexample »

eloisius wrote: post #7

I’ve been using Brave search for several months now. I switched the day that it was announced. The quality is fairly good, but I’m having troubling telling whether it’s just my own halo effect or if the initial quality that experienced has started to slip a little as it indexes more widely or something. At first I was impressed with how little spam ended up in top results, but lately exact queries for Python function…

Well, I'd bet a big factor is that these spammy sites probably spend a lot of time on SEO - illuminating StackOverflow answers and official documentation don't.
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