Live data from Hacker News

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

brave.com

221–230 of 571 posts

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

#221
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking back, yes it is probably true what you write about Python docs, the problem is you easily end up in the wrong docs when searching for something.

I'm not sure why that's happening to you. Perhaps you're being misled by some SEO to click on pages that are sites trying to put advertisements in front of you?

Not the same but I admit my explanation might not be the best.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28927092 for a more descriptive example.

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

#223
post #211
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This time it returned relevant result for me too, I recall getting annoyed by it some time ago so maybe its not relevant example anymore. Anyway, it happens all the time. Goole assumes that I mean something and I need to quote words trying to enforce my query. Pretty much every time when the returned results don't include the words I typed is a frustration for me. It makes it very hard to fix the query because I need…

This seems somewhat natural, at least to me. Imagine you're talking to your friend, and you say the exact same thing you tell Google: "North Korea DHL". They're not going to have any idea what you're talking about (they can guess) - do you want to ship something there? Are you making a comment/observation? A business opportunity? Your friend would probably ask clarifying questions to narrow down what you're talking a…

It's possible that my habits don't represent how the general population uses the search. I've read that many people are asking questions, not simply searching for keyword and as a result Google tries to optimize for that. But then again, when I ask questions it's also hit and miss for me.

I also no longer get good navigation suggestion from Google Maps, maybe my constant frustration with Google lately is pushing me to be too dismissive about all of their products. Surely they do great things but I'm not as happy with Google as I used to be.

I find that systems trying to predict my intent are unbearable when they fail, it just feels like trying to interact with a very stupid person.

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

#224

This reminds me to uninstall brave. Rebranded chromium with crypto shilling and now "premium search"? They didn't even test DNS with their tor feature, causing identity leaks. Can we not just have the chromium builds degoogled and include the codecs and DRM libs? Woolyss builds do all that, but there's no fancy single download installer+auto updater. We need just "chromium".

I've been using Brave on Android for a couple of years now, and it's great!

It asked me once during initial setup if I wanted to use Brave Rewards (or whatever the crypto component is called), I said "no", and it's never bothered me with anything crypto related ever again.

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

#225
post #37
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

DDG can give downright weird and irrelevant results, and sometimes (rarely) even returning with "noting matched your search". I hate it, but I have to fall back to Google quite often, and the results are consistently better; sometimes much better. I still have DDG as the default because it does work a lot of the time, and because it's easy to turn a search in to a Google search with !g, but I have to admit it's not a…

Come on, "dates in Cambodia"? How do you search for local trendy music, "Hot singles in my area"?

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

#226

I'm actually tempted to start using Brave. I'm still holding out with Firefox despite Mozilla trying very hard to get rid of us (to the point where the thought has struck me more than once if the current CEO of Mozilla is in the pocket of Google). If at some point the last competing mainstream browser engine is gone I'll probably go for Brave and I might start testing it this week.

>to the point where the thought has struck me more than once if the current CEO of Mozilla is in the pocket of Google No need to wonder. Mozilla gets $450M per year from Google [0], and the Mozilla Chair gets a large chunk [1]: [0]: https://www.androidheadlines.com/2020/08/mozilla-firefox-goo... [1]: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html

I wonder what it would take to trigger an official investigation, because if they manage this Google has destroyed a values for many hundred million dollars and also solidified their position as a monopoly.

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

#227

You know what, I welcome a new search provider, even if it's by a cryptocurrency company. I'd rather see Qwant succeed, but their search is having trouble competing with even duckduckgo. What I don't see is where Brave gets its image search results from. After Microsoft blatantly started serving the CCP by blocking queries for "tank man", which as far as I know they've never actually apologised for, just explained it…

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tank+man&atb=v156-1&iax=images&ia=... seems fine to me.

If you are referring to it being blocked in China, well, are we at all surprised that private companies kowtow to autocratic regimes in favor of making more money?

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

#228
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…

That's an interesting observation and one I think rings true even though I haven't really actively noticed it. Stuff like tutorialspoint or w3schools is fine imo since they actually write their own content and add a but of beginner friendly explanation to it, but there's some blatant stack overflow copying that's been popping up.

At least they have the option to report bad search results so they might be able to improve it in the future again.

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

#229
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. If you search for any Python documentation the first links on Google are almost always geeksforgeeks, w3schools, etc instead of the official Python docs.

I think this is telling of how often the python docs actually solve peoples’ questions. For example, I searched “python string replace”, with the first 4 being tutorialpoint, w3schools, geeksforgeeks, stack overflow and at position 8 is the python docs. The issue with the python docs for this search is that it takes me to “built-in types”, and starts off with things totally irrelevant to what I want. I now have to go…

This is true, and if you want the docs you can always just add the word docs to your query. Expecting the search engine to always favor one thing seems like it'd work well in this case for some people, but in other cases might get mushy

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

#230

You know what, I welcome a new search provider, even if it's by a cryptocurrency company. I'd rather see Qwant succeed, but their search is having trouble competing with even duckduckgo. What I don't see is where Brave gets its image search results from. After Microsoft blatantly started serving the CCP by blocking queries for "tank man", which as far as I know they've never actually apologised for, just explained it…

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tank+man&atb=v156-1&iax=images&ia=... seems fine to me. If you are referring to it being blocked in China, well, are we at all surprised that private companies kowtow to autocratic regimes in favor of making more money?

It seems fine now.

But the tank man image was blocked for the whole world and not just china. So they fixed this after an public outcry.

But you do not know, what is missing now. Thats a reason for me to not trust them anymore.

Post reply on HN