Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

brave.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 571 posts

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

#461

Post by AJRF »

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 would pay for a search engine that let me 1 click ban results from a given domain from showing up. I never want to see reddit, facebook, twitter or pinterest in my results.

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

#463

Post by kylebenzle »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #422
jerjerjer wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pinterest. Bane of all image searches.

seriously, any Googlers around that are close enough to search to know why Pinterest is still dominating image results despite being incredibly low quality? this is a widely known problem.

We have had a few posts about this, a blog from an ex-employee explained it basically as Pintrest spending tens of millions to do everthing they can to game Google search results and they arn't going to stop any time soon. Pinterest just puts A LOT of time and money into SEO.

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

#464

Post by RandallBrown »

AJRF wrote: post #461
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 would pay for a search engine that let me 1 click ban results from a given domain from showing up. I never want to see reddit, facebook, twitter or pinterest in my results.

Interesting. I find reddit results are some of the most useful results but maybe that's just related to my specific hobbies/searches.

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

#466

Post by soundnote »

halfeatenpie wrote: post #364

How decent is Brave as a browser? I've been very hesitant on it as a primary browser due to them starting up their own cryptocurrency (BAT), adding automatic affiliate cryptocurrency links in pages, and a history of serving their own ads on top of others.

It's essentially stock Chromium with a bunch of tinfoil on top. This means good Chromium UI things like tab groups, which are a digital form of meth.

They have a built-in adblocker (not an extension, a modification of the browser itself so it doesn't care about Manifest v3. It can also do CNAME uncloaking, which is what makes uBO better on Firefox than Chromium), a lot of anti-tracking features.

Importantly, they maintain their own end to end encrypted sync architecture like Mozilla does.

They have miscellaneous sideshow features like a torrent client and a Tor implementation (but AFAIK recommend the Tor Browser still)

A big thing is that the adblocker is that it's there on mobile. They're also the only mobile Chromium browser that can play YouTube videos in the background as far as I know.

As far as the crypto goes, it's actually a decent system:

Brave sells adspace (which they deliver as new tab backgrounds and toaster popups, entirely separately from websites), gets paid in Money™. They keep a cut, take the rest and buy BAT with it, give it to users. They have a tipping system where users can then tip content creators with the BAT and get creators some compensation for Brave's part in killing tracking ads.

(this can never be a full compensation, since Brave's ads don't track, and should thus be less valuable than evil ads)

---

If you want bigtime UI innovation, I'd look elsewhere - Brave's angle is stock Chromium, privacy, and standalone infrastructure to provide independent revenue. The big UI innovators in Chromium land are Microsoft (if you don't care about privacy, Edge is sadly a disaster on that front) and Vivaldi (who are also very no tracky and run their own end to end encrypted sync service. Both have a lot of fantastic UI customization features. Microsoft's more well-designed ones that are both pleb friendly and powerful, Vivaldi's more of the "here's all the toggles" type. To illustrate their type of overkill, they have THREE separate tab group implementations built in. And a mail client, calendar, RSS reader, a barebones notes module - did I mention these guys used to make Opera?

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

#467

Post by howolduis »

It's not clear whether users are opted-out the data collection by default or if this is something that we need to do manually. Looking at the settings, it looks like everyone is opted-in the data collection, and you have to manually opt-out, which is a nightmare for people like me who delete all browsing history, cookies, and data upon browser exit. I will stick with DuckDuckGo.

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

#468

Post by howolduis »

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…

Looking at the settings, it looks like everyone is opted-in the data collection by default, and you have to manually opt-out, which is a nightmare for people like me who delete their browsing data on browser exit. I will stick with DuckDuckGo.

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

#469

Post by ryantgtg »

rchaud wrote: post #365
BarryMilo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's also why every social network moved to an algorithmic feed. Had it remained chronological, our primitive brains would have noticed content from yesterday come up after a certain point, signaling to us that we are caught up and don't need to scroll further. Can't imagine how catastrophic that would be to their ad business.

G*d forbid anyone ever stop scrolling. I was browsing airbnb the other day, looking at places in a small area (maybe 25 rentals) and was shocked/alarmed/saddened to discover that the app has infinite scrolling. Rather than the list ending once I’ve seen all 25 results, they just show them again in a different order.

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

#470

Post by ajvs »

mehphp wrote: post #447
infinitezest wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which of his claims are you asserting is misinformation?

His anti-vaccination stance (specific to coronavirus, I don't know if he's anti-vax in general). He pushes ivermectin as a valid alternative to the vaccines when the data does not currently back that up.

He's not an anti-vaxxer. He is pro-vaccine for all other illnesses. He's also said he doesn't care if you choose to take it, just don't mandate it For all people when the science is not clear about the cost:benefit ratio for certain populations such as children.

That being against mandating these emergency experimental COVID-19 vaccines for all individuals is being conflated as being an "anti-vaxxer" shows how much propaganda has caused some people to lose all rationality on this topic.

Post reply on HN