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Every web search result in Brave Search is now served by our own index

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Re: Every web search result in Brave Search is now served by our own index

#191

Post by Alupis »

j1elo wrote: post #175
lotsofpulp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the big hotel chains will usually give ~5% off for reserving directly since they pay ~15% to OTAs. They will require you to be a “rewards member”, but that is just checking a box since you already have to give them your personal information.

I got the feeling that it's the opposite. We pay the Booking fee. I've had hotel receptionists give me their card and say "If you come back some other time, just call to reserve directly with us, so you can save the x% that Booking charges for your reservation!"

You are both saying the same thing.

The hotel has a room they want to sell for $100 a night. They can list it on their website for $100 a night, and after paying credit card processing fees, they get to keep the remainder.

The hotel now lists the same room on one of the booking sites that charges a x% fee for facilitating the transaction and providing discovery for the hotel (getting the room in front of interested customers). The hotel can either take a x% haircut, or charge x% more. So that same room might be $110 per night now instead of $100.

It's a business decision, and not all operators will make the same one, naturally.

Re: Every web search result in Brave Search is now served by our own index

#192

Post by hattmall »

RajT88 wrote: post #187
bubblethink wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always buy directly from the hotel assuming that I will be treated better due to the hotel earning more money from me due to not having to pay commission to a travel agent. I have never found this to be true unfortunately. I have some conference related travel coming up, and the conference made some deal with Hilton for a special rate. Hilton's link wouldn't work, and I made 5 calls trying to get them to offer a…

> Unless you are really special (loyal and big spender), you won't get any special treatment. Lifetime Platinum Marriott member here. The special treatment is OK. It is nice to get room upgrades and freebies, but that's little stuff. It doesn't get you a room magically when they are sold out, and you don't magically get a better rate when prices are high. The biggest benefit if you're traveling a lot is your points a…

>don't magically get a better rate when prices are high.

That's when you spend your points. Though it depends severely on the brand. Marriott and Hilton are no longer great. But Wyndham and Hyatt are pretty amazing. Starwood, used to be good until Marriott bought them out.

Re: Every web search result in Brave Search is now served by our own index

#193

Post by tobyjsullivan »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #38
thrdbndndn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, interesting idea. I personally deliberately book though Booking and alike because it's so nice to have everything hotel related in one place especially when having long trips.

I always buy directly from the hotel assuming that I will be treated better due to the hotel earning more money from me due to not having to pay commission to a travel agent. Also, I assume there is less probability of errors since when you reserve on a travel agent website, your reservation goes through an additional system before it gets to the hotel.

I've tried to do this for years and ultimately been disappointed. Even on my latest hotel booking, the direct quote was 20% more than Expedia and that's not an isolated incident.

I suspect this is partly predatory pricing on behalf of Expedia (charge the hotel 30%, discount the price 20%, get all the bookings and take the difference.) Yet I really can't justify spending the extra $400 to stand the moral high ground. Seems like something the hotels need to work out.

They used to at least offer the same price and add in little things like "free wifi" and breakfast. I haven't seen that offer since the pre-covid years.

Re: Every web search result in Brave Search is now served by our own index

#194

Post by toomanyusers »

bazmattaz wrote: post #140
GCA10 wrote: post #26

Just started testing Brave Search, and it scored a rare 100 on the first test: If you type in the name of a favorite boutique hotel, will you get that hotel's true website -- or the usual hairball of third-party intermediaries? (For anyone who's ever tried to modify a reservation, the difference is astonishing. If you're booked with the hotel, all kinds of adjustments are at least possible. If you're booked with Book…

Interesting, my test of a search engine’s ability to return relevant results is usually some sort of obscure search for tech help like; “Best way to modify the xyz on a raspberry pi 4” I stopped using DuckDuckGo because it always failed at searches like this compared to Google. Brave was ok

I stopped using DuckDuckGo when it introduced its email relay service. This service had (and I think still does have) the peculiar requirement that the user must install a browser extension in order to use it.

I can think of no valid reason why a (supposedly privacy-respecting) email relay service should require a browser extension to be installed.

This made me realize DuckDuckGo may not actually value privacy. I stopped trusting all of its services.

Re: Every web search result in Brave Search is now served by our own index

#195

Post by elzbardico »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #38
thrdbndndn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, interesting idea. I personally deliberately book though Booking and alike because it's so nice to have everything hotel related in one place especially when having long trips.

I always buy directly from the hotel assuming that I will be treated better due to the hotel earning more money from me due to not having to pay commission to a travel agent. Also, I assume there is less probability of errors since when you reserve on a travel agent website, your reservation goes through an additional system before it gets to the hotel.

The travel agent is a more valuable customer for the hotel than you. Also, they have deep pockets and an army of lawyers.

Re: Every web search result in Brave Search is now served by our own index

#196

Post by elzbardico »

lisasays wrote: post #111
logicalmonster wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDG is too busy adopting the censorship policies of Big Tech to innovate against them.

You mean in not caving to conservative-friendly "free speech" preferences? Its decision to downrank state-sponsored disinformation? One can question the wisdom of these decisions - but ultimately it's a matter of editorial control, not censorship.

You know, if the conservatives ever come back to power, this precedent that we are creating on justifying censorship will bit us hard, and it will hurt as hell.

Re: Every web search result in Brave Search is now served by our own index

#197

Post by lisasays »

torial wrote: post #179
lisasays wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is all censorship. Sorry, but that's not what the word means. By definition, it refers to the interception of communications between others . That's now what's happening here.

That isn't the only definition. For example Cambridge's definition of censorship ( https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/censo... ) "the action of preventing part or the whole of a book, movie, work of art, document, or other kind of communication from being seen or made available to the public, because it is considered to be offensive or harmful, or because it contains information that someone wishe…

Implicit in that the action is about preventing someone else from making that content public.

Re: Every web search result in Brave Search is now served by our own index

#198

Post by lisasays »

mardifoufs wrote: post #185
arp242 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a search engine's job to rank results; there is no other way to do it: only one link can be in position #1, only one link can be in position #2, etc. Or in other words: "editorial guidance" is pretty much the entirety of a search engine's job: you give it a large set of documents (the internet), some user input (what you typed in the search box), and it ranks – or "editorializes" – the set of documents to someth…

There is a massive difference between ranking stuff based on relevance and not getting RT articles when... searching for RT. (They rolled back the block pretty quickly, so they seem to agree with that too) You are basically arguing for a slippery slope argument. Because they already need some editorial control to filter spam and obviously irrelevant material does not mean that every type of filtering/block listing is…

It pretty much was just about fake news and trash results, actually. RT really is pure garbage, by its very intent and purpose.

I do agree that blocking RT outright was overreach and somewhat silly. However, I imagine it comes more from a gut feeling of disgust and "this is bullshit" then than some ultraelitist, "gotta protect the unwashed masses from harmful ideas that may bring the global order into question" motive that people in this thread seem to want DDG to have.

Re: Every web search result in Brave Search is now served by our own index

#199

Post by dividedbyzero »

JohnFen wrote: post #136
lotsofpulp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the big hotel chains will usually give ~5% off for reserving directly since they pay ~15% to OTAs. They will require you to be a “rewards member”, but that is just checking a box since you already have to give them your personal information.

> They will require you to be a “rewards member”, but that is just checking a box since you already have to give them your personal information. I became a "rewards member" with a major hotel chain once. Never again. The deluge of spam I got was intolerable.

That, and the discounts they offer are weirdly misaligned with what I actually book and could possibly want. If a discount happens to actually be applicable for a trip I want to make, booking.com usually is still cheaper. But then I've never managed to get a better deal booking with a hotel directly, usually it's significantly more expensive with more restrictive cancellation policy, which is a shame as I don't really trust booking.com et al. Maybe it works like that because I'm in Europe and mostly booking there?

Re: Every web search result in Brave Search is now served by our own index

#200

Post by lelanthran »

PpEY4fu85hkQpn wrote: post #170
bigtex wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the guy who started Brave used to head up Firefox before the employees revolted and demanded he be fired over politics.

"politics" is one way to describe him donating a large sum of money to a bigoted anti-gay cause and losing the trust of his employees.

Yeah, but ... It was a political effort.

It was a movement that used the existing mechanism to promote a law they wanted, not a mob trying to get their way by shouting down others.

You may not like how the process works, but it works the same for everyone. Trying to smear the ones you don't agree with as not legitimate doesn't work, because it's the process that you're smearing.

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