Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by hutzlibu » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 9:38 AM UTC

BarryMilo wrote: post #97

tommica wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading in HN an idea about allowing people to customize the weights used to filter search results - a search engine that provided that, where I could use some curated configuration file. Maybe I could have profiles like "cooking", "programming", "news" and help the search engine even better to understand my intent. Or just have the "don't show results from this site again" button from youtube taken into g…

This is where ad-based businesses show their ugly side: The more control you have over what you see, the fewer ways they have to slip you inconspicuous ads. This is why all content feeds like Facebook and Twitter get vaguer as time goes by, and it's why Google will never give up control over results unless it legally has to.

Yeah. The dependency to adds, are a big reason why so much tech suck so much, despite trillions invested.

Because those investments are not made, to show you clearly what you want to see, but to show you just enough, to not loose you while injection as much information garbage as possible. If we do not fix that, it will all just get worse, not better.

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

#232

Post by paulcarroty » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 9:40 AM UTC

Well, that's brave move! :)

Already tried it several times and can share some experience:

* searching 'npm flag xyz' - working fine

* searching 'npm error some text' - just bad, a lot of non-relevant stuff.

Anyway, it's naive to expect a real Google competitor right now.

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

#233

Post by anaganisk » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 9:43 AM UTC

Tom4hawk wrote: post #200

anaganisk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May be tone down your paranoia bit, once I disabled brave rewards, which was offered as a part of installation without any dark pattern I never saw any shilling. Also what’s wrong with premium search? You expect free things which cost a lot of money, but you must not see Ads? And Tor themselves wouldn’t recommend any other browser. Tor feature in brave doesn’t seem to be intended for super serious, but a safer VPN li…

Problem is that "free" is our only option. I would love to pay for search engine that has more configuration options and no ads, I would love to pay for a modern browser (engine) without any tracking and no ads. Reality is that I cannot do that.

Reality is apart from few hundreds may be users, no one wants to pay for stuff. WhatsApp costed a very nominal amount, No body in India cared until it became entirely free. So much that they favoured it over Indian grown app Hike messenger , which was much better Ux wise. So you must find a batch of users who are willing to pay, and hire/pay a chromium dev to maintain your code base, or some similar business model. Where the devs don’t expect to become rich based on the project, an their only goal is to maintain a ungoogled chromium. Expecting a corp to do that is a wrong way to look into it.

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

#234

Post by afurculita » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 9:46 AM UTC

I've been using Brave Browser for almost a year already. I fallback to Chrome when I can't get through some Recaptchas: this is the only annoying thing on Brave, you get a lot of Recaptchas that are invisible on Chrome and some are impossible to solve.

I've also switched to Brave Search immediately when it come out. I'm satisfied with the search results I get for 90% of my queries, switching back to Google for the remaining 10%. My main problems with Brave Search are: 1. It doesn't have good localised results for non-english queries; here Google remains the best; 2. It doesn't have support for verbatim searching

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

#235

Post by pmurt7 » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 9:47 AM UTC

skinkestek wrote: post #176

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.

Mitchell Baker (Mozilla CEO) makes $3 million a year, and Mozilla asks you to donate "to help a nonprofit organization".

"On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."

"By 2020 her salary had risen to over $3 million, while in the same year the Mozilla Corporation had to lay off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues. Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic."

This lady then goes on and on talking about "social justice".

Also Google deal produces 90% of Mozilla's revenue. I would say Mozilla is really controlled opposition.

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

#236

Post by pmurt7 » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 10:00 AM UTC

TheEnder8 wrote: post #4

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

duckduckgo is Bing with a new skin and privacy features. Brave Search is built on top of an independent index.

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

#237

Post by pmurt7 » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 10:01 AM UTC

travisgriggs wrote: post #80

Can anyone compare/contrast DuckDuckGo with Brave Search? I use the Brave browser and am a fan, but like many others, I search primarily with DDG, using the occasional g! to see if something developer related shows up better there (I'd say 20%-10% of the time I find additional resources/answers on Google). Does BS have bang codes like DDG?

duckduckgo is Bing with a new skin and privacy features. Brave Search is built on top of an independent index.

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

#238

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 10:01 AM UTC

vincent_s wrote: post #135

gremIin wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not you. Google nerfed search a few years ago. I noticed exactly what you noticed around 2016 or so.

Amit Singhal, who was Head of Search at Google until 2016, has always emphasized that Google will not use artificial intelligence for ranking search results. The reason he gave was that AI algorithms work like a black box and that it is infeasible to improve them incrementally. Then in 2016, John Giannandrea, an AI expert, took over. Since then, Google has increasingly relied on AI algorithms, which seem to work well…

[deleted]

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

#239

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 10:03 AM UTC

Proven wrote: post #2

> Brave Search is currently not displaying ads, but the free version of Brave Search will soon be ad-supported. Well, there's that. I assume they won't implement ad blocking for that one.

[deleted]

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

#240

Post by sam_goody » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 10:09 AM UTC

skinkestek wrote: post #176

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.

Well, you know, Brendan Eich was CEO of Mozilla and they were flying high.

Then he got cancelled, and with it was cancelled the dream of having a real platform that can compete with Google. (Brave, with all of its advantages, is still a fork of Chrome and in that way promotes the Chrome monopoly.)

Since then, the new CEO of Mozilla has made herself a lot of money, and she seems perfectly happy to destroy the long term viability of the company for some quick injections of cash that can justify her bonuses.

And Eich single-handedly created the only other viable browser in the market starting from scratch [market wise, not technology wise]. Yet, somehow, people still think this was better than leaving Eich as head of Mozilla.