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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

#331

Post by toyg »

StevePerkins wrote: post #305
toyg wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hap…

As I mentioned below, antitrust authorities are coming for Apple and Google. The opportunity will be there very, very soon; but you can't ride a wave without a surfboard, and at the moment it looks like Mozilla is more interested in selling product-placement stickers than building a great board.

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

#332

Post by that_guy_iain »

LMYahooTFY wrote: post #324
that_guy_iain wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read this as "I can't find stuff because Google blocks misinformation". Every time I search for politics, news, or covid related stuff I find it straight away. News it right at the top with multiple articles available. Politics and COVID I find the offical source straight away.

I read this as "Google is perfectly capable of determining the truth". Moving from an era of media oligopoly into the internet age was very hopeful IMO, and now it's bottlenecked by even fewer companies.

> I read this as "Google is perfectly capable of determining the truth".

Well, OP was the one that defined the info they were looking for as misinformation as far as I can tell.

And then I stated I could find offical sources for politcs and COVID. These are not Google's opinions but simply a fact. WHO, RKI, CDC, etc are all offical sources of information for COVID, etc. This is not them define what is true or false but merely providing me with the offical information so I can educate myself.

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

#333

Post by smallerfish »

kodah wrote: post #141
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…

I use Neeva.com and I think one of their features resembles this idea. It is a paid for search engine though.

They won't let me try it because they "haven't launched in my region". Presumably that's because I'm in latin america, and they're conflating location and language.

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

#334

Post by NoGravitas »

rankun wrote: post #111
arp242 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

Same for me... I think maybe part of it is that people have forgotten (or never knew) how to choose good search terms, and Google has worked hard on giving good-for-most-people or good-for-your-profile-bubble search results for terribly-constructed search terms, while the others haven't. I've long had the habit of constructing search terms that are minimal but distinct, since I had to do a lot of searching on less-DWIM systems like library catalogs and journal indices dating back to the 90s, and this seems to serve me well with searching DDG. I expect Google simply doesn't care about your actual search terms very much, and gives you stuff matching some kind of linguistic model of your search; what it thinks you want to search for, rather than what you ask for. That would account for it giving worse results on a well-constructed query.

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

#335

Post by freediver »

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 really wish a search engine would empower me to provide a URL ban list

Brave discussed implementing similar concept called Goggles:

https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/goggles.pdf

Kagi Search already has customizable 'prefer' and 'mute' lists for domains, as well as customizable 'lenses' which are similar to goggles concept from Brave. (disclaimer: founder at Kagi)

https://kagi.com

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

#336

Post by userbinator »

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…

On the other hand, I actually like the fact that such mirror sites exist, because they often have content that's disappeared from the original for whatever reason. The name GitMemory is itself suggestive of that.

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

#338

Post by mminer237 »

ajvs wrote: post #319
yonaguska wrote: post #312

For non-technical searches, mostly stuff relating to news, politics, or Covid, Google is next to useless at this point due to their attempts to combat misinformation. Even their autocomplete functionality guides potential search queries in an entirely unorganic manner. For instance, something may be trending according to google, while simultaneously being blacklisted as an autocomplete option- if it has Any elements…

Joe Rogan also commented on this cover-up a few days ago: > "Look, if I wanted to find specific cases about people who died from vaccine-related injuries, I had to go to Duck Duck Go. I wasn’t finding them on Google,” Rogan urged. [1] https://summit.news/2021/10/19/video-joe-rogan-accuses-googl...

I can find info about vaccine-related injuries fine on Google. It's actually easier than on DDG:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=covid+vaccine-related+injuries

https://www.google.com/search?q=covid+vaccine-related+injuri...

I'm assuming he's just upset that blogspam that inanely conflates VAERS with evidence of injuries actually related to COVID vaccines shows up higher on DDG because that reinforces his false presuppositions.

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

#339

Post by OneLeggedCat »

sam_goody wrote: post #240
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 ter…

I'd forgotten about Brendan Eich. Thanks for reminding me why I'll try hard to never install any software that benefits him, like Brave.

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

#340

Post by kodah »

tommica wrote: post #269
kodah wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Neeva.com and I think one of their features resembles this idea. It is a paid for search engine though.

Hmm, a paid search engine - wonder how they handle the spam SEO problem, but is an interesting idea

I'm not sure how they actually do it, but it works pretty well. When I search for things I almost always find what I'm looking for. I use it both for tech and for personal stuff.
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