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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

#301

Post by fleddr »

toyg wrote: post #254
fleddr wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to agree, but can't. The loss of market share has nothing to do with the browser in itself. Mozilla simply has no reach. Chrome is shipped via Android and on the desktop via services having a billion+ users, like Youtube and Gmail. Mozilla has no reach or push. It's not an engineering problem.

It's not like FF was ever shipped with Windows. It's just that enough people saw enough value and purpose in it, to go out and get it themselves. You can install FF on Android in a second on the Play Store, it's easier than it's ever been on the desktop; but you have to want to install it in the first place. Some of this want can be generated by feature excellence, some by peer pressure; but for a long time now, FF h…

Firefox came to power because there was a massive vacuum: the stagnant IE. Firefox simply was a fundamentally superior browser.

This vacuum no longer exists. The competition isn't stagnant, they're speeding away.

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

#302

Post by moehm »

arp242 wrote: post #124
rankun wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this criticism a lot and I always wonder whether that has something to do with either me not having a Google account and thus using the unpersonalized search, or simply with what I search for, but Google is almost always giving me worse results that DDG or, for that matter, any of the smaller competitors. Google seems to be filled with sponsored results that are only superficially relevant, and from page 2 onw…

I'm never logged in to Google, and don't even store cookies by default (although that may or may not be enough to prevent all tracking/personalisation, it's more than "the average" user and does seem to keep the worst out, not that personalisation is necessarily bad; the singular reason I have an account is because I actually like YouTube personalisation – without it I just get idiotic nonsense on the frontpage and n…

I'm not sure if I did it right, but I searched for "Cambodian date writing conventions" and got this as first result.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country

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

#303

Post by k__ »

jeroenhd wrote: post #195

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…

For me, Brave being a crypto company is a plus.

While I don't think much about BAT, having a browser with a nice wallet integration is a huge step forward in making Web3/DApps more useable for non-technical people.

It's still a long way, but I think this is one of the first big steps in the right direction.

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

#304

Post by hvis »

toyg wrote: post #254
fleddr wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to agree, but can't. The loss of market share has nothing to do with the browser in itself. Mozilla simply has no reach. Chrome is shipped via Android and on the desktop via services having a billion+ users, like Youtube and Gmail. Mozilla has no reach or push. It's not an engineering problem.

It's not like FF was ever shipped with Windows. It's just that enough people saw enough value and purpose in it, to go out and get it themselves. You can install FF on Android in a second on the Play Store, it's easier than it's ever been on the desktop; but you have to want to install it in the first place. Some of this want can be generated by feature excellence, some by peer pressure; but for a long time now, FF h…

> It's just that enough people saw enough value and purpose in it, to go out and get it themselves.

This happened at the time when no other browser vendor drove any kind of serious marketing campaign. Even so, Firefox only reached 30% market share at its peak.

Then Chrome shot out, backed by Google's marketing budget, bundled with popular software installers and featured at the "Internet home page": "Still running Firefox? Upgrade to Chrome now!" (quote is approximate, but very close)

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

#305

Post by StevePerkins »

toyg wrote: post #246
fleddr wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the real world, Firefox is already dead and the only real competing browser engine is Webkit/Safari. Firefox's market share is 3.6% and on mobile only 0.5%. On many websites, mobile traffic is now at about 70%. Firefox doesn't even show up in dashboards, and is smaller than various Chromium clones and/or regional browsers.

We've been here before (hell, 3% looked massive back then, and in a much smaller market). Marketshare is not an issue, the relationship with the community is. A strong community, united around a core of values and secure that the product is built with these values at heart, will evangelize such product out of a niche. Unfortunately, the current Mozilla leadership doesn't seem to understand that significant chunks of…

The difference is that when Firefox initially appeared, Microsoft was treating Internet Explorer as a "finished product" and letting it go completely stagnant.

Google and Apple aren't making that same mistake, at least not to that same level. The developers are happy with the tooling, and the fact that ECMAScript and HTML API's keep evolving faster than much of the ecosystem can keep up with. The casual public is happy about a fresh coat of paint, or putting tabs in a different place every few years.

There just isn't the same opportunity due to incumbent vulnerability today.

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

#306

Post by nine_k »

dmw_ng wrote: post #103
devwastaken wrote: post #6

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".

The right to directly vote for a search engine with actual money is huge, as is the right to withdraw that vote. If Google went this route a few decades ago, their search product (and the Internet as a whole) would likely be in a much, much healthier place today

Also, Google would have much, much less money.

What ad-supported financing removes, along with other things, is friction. You open google.com for the first time, and you can instantly use it.

Also, Google started in 1998. I don't know whether you remember, but I do: paying for stuff over the internet was pretty hard by then. Paying across national borders was harder still. I wished to pay for several pieces of software by then, but it was hard even if I agreed to walk down to a bank.

Compared to that, selling ads and receiving money from businesses was incomparably easier, for everyone involved. Unlike billing search users, it was a viable business model.

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

#307

Post by glenneroo »

sverhagen wrote: post #102
skinkestek wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Warning: unusual opinions sliding into a full fledged rant. I know it is cool to hate w3schools and I don't use it personally, but seriously, can we get over ourselves here? The reason why w3schools rank highly and have done for years is because for a large segment of users it works. And as someone else has pointed out the official documentation is often atrocious: both Python and Java online docs are close to worthl…

My hate for W3Schools comes from the low quality of the content and the impression I get that their high ranking is only the result of SEO hacking. I respect the fact that there's a lot of _poor_ official documentation. But let's not supplant that with different _poor_ documentation.

I find W3Schools fine for most use cases. What would you suggest as being a better resource?

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

#308

Post by thejosh »

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…

The spam google has for this is outrageous.

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

#309

Post by Proven »

eloisius wrote: post #143
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…

I just found a timely example of one of these sites that republish GitHub issues as their own content. Trying to understand a fairly specific Tensorflow error. Pasted an exact phrase query and the top result is gitmemory dot com. The content is horribly formatted, obviously just a low-effort scrape job. The author is attributed, but the link links to another page on this site that even says it just pull the data stra…

Worst shitsite on the web. It contains nothing useful, original or unique. I'd like to know what's Google's excuse for blacklisting that domain into oblivion.

I have a greasemonkey script that blocks domains from being shown in GSE results. Works well, but I don't have it on all of my browsers.

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

#310

Post by bodge5000 »

pmurt7 wrote: post #235
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…

"...That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."

Can anyone explain what this actually means? It sounds like she's saying that taking a lower pay by 5x is too much to ask of her, but then "people and their families" doesn't make any sense, because its 1 person and 1 family.

Thats not even getting into how true is may or may not be, or how its still a lot of money overall, even if its not compared to the market overall.

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