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

#551

Post by ryan_lane » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

busymom0 wrote: post #512

bgarbiak wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s equivalent to calling people the 4 letter n word. No, it's absolutely different thing. One is derogative racial slur, carrying a baggage of slavery, violence, rapes, and systemic injustice that's present in the society to this day; and the other one is a description of people who choose to ignore science and are willing to risk life of others basing on their anecdotal evidence.

I said "4 letter". You are confusing it with another unrelated word. > who choose to ignore science and are willing to risk life of others basing on their anecdotal evidence You clearly did not read the rest of my comment other than the first line which you also read incorrectly. And I didn't mention a single anecdotal thing in my comment so not sure what that's all about. So it seems like you are commenting for a sp…

I don't think we know what word you're implying.

If you feel the need to obfuscate one word, and don't feel the need to obfuscate the other, it's obviously clear which one is worse.

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

#552

Post by BarryMilo » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 5:30 AM UTC

ryantgtg wrote: post #469

rchaud wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's both garbage and outlandish design...

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

#553

Post by eloisius » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 8:20 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #336

eloisius wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mirrors can exist without gaming search to supplant canonical sources

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

#554

Post by arp242 » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 9:03 AM UTC

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…

Here's another one I had today: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=maan+leo&ia=web

Maan Leo is a Dutch author. DDG gives me a few bad results about Maan Leo, a few bullshit links about horoscopes ("Make a Leo man chase you"), and finally the Wikipedia page for Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

The Google search gives me results about, well, Maan Leo (in spite of using Indonesian search by the way – this GeoIP stuff Google does is so annoying). For this particular term, DDG is basically useless.

The Brave search results also seem a lot better by the way. Certainly loads better than DDG.

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

#555

Post by matheusmoreira » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 9:23 AM UTC

handrous wrote: post #474

matheusmoreira wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I continued to be baffled why such blatant spam can consistently make it into top results Same here. It's like they don't even care anymore. The results are just there to hold your interest so they can show some keyword ads along with them. I wish people would start maintaining curated web directories again.

Google clearly gave up on fighting spam some time around '08 or '09. I think they realized it's expensive, and not actually good for business if the spammy stuff is using your own ads and/or analytics anyway. This is why almost all of the web looks like a shady spam-site if you don't have Adblock enabled. Google doesn't give a shit anymore.

Seems that way. Yet another reason not to feel any guilt when using uBlock Origin.

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

#556

Post by npteljes » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 11:57 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #276

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…

> I'd rather see Qwant succeed, but their search is having trouble competing with even duckduckgo. Why? (I use the latter.) > Microsoft blatantly started serving the CCP by blocking queries for "tank man" Works fine for me [1]. [1] https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=tank+man&form=HDRSC2&fi...

It was temporarily censored around a critical time, and there was also some bullshit explanation floating around.

See the last paragraph in the Censorship section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man#Censorship

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

#557

Post by penjelly » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 12:31 PM UTC

ive been using brave search since release. i switched from DDG which was working for me. brave works for most of my purposes but when it doesn't the option to "anonymously gather google results" makes me feel like I'm never missing out

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

#558

Post by zeepzeep » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 1:04 PM UTC

godshatter wrote: post #457

amelius wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, instead of Google collecting information about me to improve my search experience, I want: - A box where I can select the context of my search. - The box then appends a specific string to the query. For example, if I set the box to "clothes", the box will append "waist 34 inch, 5 feet tall" to the query. If I set the box to "programming", the box will append "favorite_languages:Python,C++" to the query. And of c…

I just want a search engine that gives me AND, OR, and NOT qualifiers or something similar. Parens, too, if possible. Ideally, an sql interface, but that's probably pushing it :)

> Ideally, an sql interface

You could use Google BigQuery to write such queries for the whole internet (or parts you chose)

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

#559

Post by NoGravitas » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 1:16 PM UTC

wubin wrote: post #372

NoGravitas wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd honestly rather have a search provider run by the CPC than by a cryptocurrency company, though naturally I'd prefer neither.

> I'd honestly rather have a search provider run by the CPC Any reason behind your preference? It baffles me to hear you'd rather use a heavily censored and CCP-controlled search provider than a search provider from a free market with an alternative business model.

As @skyfaller posted elsewhere in this discussion:

> Cryptocurrency isn't just a disaster, it's several disasters bundled together. Anyone working with it in any way, anyone who has a stake in cryptocurrency, has been compromised, and can no longer be trusted, just as your neighbor who is trying to sell you on their multilevel marketing scheme can no longer be trusted. (Did they invite you to dinner? Oh, surprise, it's just to sell you on their MLM again.) They are ignoring multiple dire ethical problems as they sell their relationship with you for funny money.

Basically, any involvement with cryptocurrency is a strong signal of untrustworthiness and lack of scruples. Mere political censorship isn't in the same league.

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

#560

Post by Isomorpheus » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

BrendanEich wrote: post #487

amelius wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really wish a search engine would empower me to provide a URL ban list that gets applied server-side instead of filtering on the front end (if anything). The irony is that Google wants all our information "to improve our user experience", except they don't want our ban lists.

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

This is an exciting idea, but the style of the paper is off-putting. It's written in the style of an academic paper, while clearly eschewing associated norms like not giving blatant opinion or waxing philosophical.

"The rationale is not to customize the ranking according to the implicit interests of the user, but to offer a mechanism to define multiple rankings, plural, open and explicit, for only if it is so, can it be trusted."

Please put opinions in a blogpost and uphold the (reasonable) norms of the research community, for only if it is so, can your work be trusted.