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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

#221

Post by lmm »

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…

> (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 Booking, Travelocity, Expedia, etc., it's somewhere between hard and hopeless.)

That's utterly backwards IME. On Booking.com, most modifications are the push of a button (that, crucially, is right there in the UI that I already know) and if I need to do something complex I can send a message and they'll sort it and get back to me. On a boutique hotel website, maybe I'll get a phone number that I have to look up the international dialing code for and then call in that country's business hours, if their website isn't just completely broken.

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

#222

Post by q7xvh97o2pDhNrh »

lmm wrote: post #221
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…

> (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 Booking, Travelocity, Expedia, etc., it's somewhere between hard and hopeless.) That's utterly backwards IME. On Booking.com, most modifications are the push of a button (that, crucially, is right there in the UI that I already kn…

The problem is that Booking.com/Expedia/etc can't be trusted to book a real reservation. You never know if they're overbooking a hotel (and indeed I've been bitten by this multiple times).

By booking with the actual hotel's web site, you at least know you have a room. If the price of that certainty is a little bit of extra UX friction (or making a phone call, which I'll soon be able to delegate to an AI anyway), that sounds just fine.

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

#223

Post by derefr »

lmm wrote: post #221
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…

> (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 Booking, Travelocity, Expedia, etc., it's somewhere between hard and hopeless.) That's utterly backwards IME. On Booking.com, most modifications are the push of a button (that, crucially, is right there in the UI that I already kn…

I think you're talking about common modifications that the booking website understands how to make via the hotel's API. The GP, meanwhile, is talking about completely arbitrary stuff that is not part of any booking services's data schema for "modifiable properties of a booking"—and also, where the hotel likely doesn't actually have an API, because it's just some family-run thing, and the booking website is maybe just sending the hotel a fax to book for you.

In the boutique + arbitrary case, what you want is to talk to a real person, explain your issue, and get some kind of free-text note added to your booking in a way that staff will actually follow the instructions in it. You also want this to potentially increase the cost of your stay (rather than your request being denied on the basis that such a modification would increase the cost of your stay.)

If you book through a booking website, and then you speak to the booking agent to make such a modification, they will have no ability to add the note to your booking in the hotel's computer in such a way that the staff will take it seriously; nor even, necessarily, the ability to confirm that that modification is something that the hotel can do for you. (They can call the hotel... but they're just as likely to be brushed off as you are.)

If you book through a booking website, and then you speak to the hotel, they will tell you that they can't help you, because they want to charge you more, but they don't have the ability to charge you anything, since they're not billing you; they're billing the booking agency. And the booking agency itself has no way for a hotel to add an SKU for this kind of customization. (If it did, it'd be abused by unscrupulous hotels.) They'll then tell you that they can fix your problem if they cancel your agency booking and then re-book it through the hotel itself... but in so doing, you might not be able to keep your reservation.

If you book through the hotel, you can just speak with the hotel, and enter into whatever private direct customer-to-business deals you like with them to negotiate whatever kind of special service you want from them.

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

#224

Post by baryphonic »

arp242 wrote: post #141
eYrKEC2 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want search, not editorial guidance from a search engine.

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…

All of the examples you mentioned involved irrelevant search results (as in, I have never met a soul who wants spam & scams), whereas GP is implying he wants relevant ones.

To flip your example, if I wanted to search for "Barack Obama Anti-Christ," I'd want to get those results back, and not have DDG or whatever other authority decide categorically that I shouldn't see them.

"Editorial guidance" is a wide spectrum from favoring what the editor thinks is most relevant for the reader to the editor actively censoring content the reader wants to see for external reasons. To be charitable, I read GP as objecting to the latter and not the former.

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

#225

Post by tyingq »

ticoombs wrote: post #169
tyingq wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://brave.com/brave-search/ "Today Brave announced the acquisition of Tailcat, the open search engine developed by the team formerly responsible for the privacy search and browser products at Cliqz, a holding of Hubert Burda Media. Tailcat will become the foundation of Brave Search..."

The same cliqz [0] that got shipped to Germany Firefox users? [0] https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-i...

Seems so. Same references to Hubert Burda Media being the majority holder if I follow links from that mozilla post to the Cliqz Github repo, then back to their website.

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

#226

Post by eek2121 »

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote: post #222
lmm wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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 Booking, Travelocity, Expedia, etc., it's somewhere between hard and hopeless.) That's utterly backwards IME. On Booking.com, most modifications are the push of a button (that, crucially, is right there in the UI that I already kn…

The problem is that Booking.com/Expedia/etc can't be trusted to book a real reservation. You never know if they're overbooking a hotel (and indeed I've been bitten by this multiple times). By booking with the actual hotel's web site, you at least know you have a room. If the price of that certainty is a little bit of extra UX friction (or making a phone call, which I'll soon be able to delegate to an AI anyway), that…

I use booking.com quite a bit and I've never had that issue.

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

#227

Post by derefr »

toomanyusers wrote: post #194
bazmattaz wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sto…

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

I can answer this one: they're fine with not knowing who anyone is, but they're trying to make sure that each account maps to one real person — they're trying to prevent spammers from registering thousands of accounts to use to send spam, and from continuously registering more accounts whenever they get banned.

A browser extension that feeds their service a heartbeat packet every once in a while from a particular IP address, is a Proof of Identity. It ties the email account accessed through that browser, to a browser installation of the extension, such that you can only actively use as many email accounts as you have devices x installed browsers (which might be a surprisingly high number to you, a normal person with legitimate use-cases for multiple email accounts; but is still a problematically low number compared to the number of accounts the average spammer wants to register — especially when most of those accounts get banned in short order.)

This is a workaround for the fact that there's as-of-yet no such thing as an "anonymous identity verification service" — something like an OAuth IdP that deduplicates users on the client-to-IdP side through strong identity verification on registration (photo of your passport, webcam picture with this hand gesture, you know the drill); but then protects client anonymity on the IdP-to-service side. If you had to SSO to your DDG email through such a service, then they very likely wouldn't be asking you to install the extension.

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

#228

Post by eek2121 »

gondaloof wrote: post #214
toomanyusers wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but you had to install an app. Why? They already have your email. They're forwarding email to you as part of the service. And you probably had to verify your email with them when you started using it. So why should you be required to also install either an app or a browser extension? Doesn't the very act of installing something on your devices increase their technical ability to collect information about you and…

Reading your comments made me realize how a service like DDG could never succeed. The only people who care about its advantages are the same users they lose for anything that remotely helps the company grow. Apple is a regular company and gets points for adding privacy features. DDG? “Nah, F that, they suggested I run code on my device for a brand-new unrelated service. Reprehensible.”

Apple does add privacy though. The company does not collect and sell your data. Folks regularly read the ToS and freak out, without understanding why the ToS says what it says.

Most privacy oriented companies don't care about your data, but they need to be able to see diagnostic information about your session for when things don't work. Oh and guess what? Things don't work for many users due to all kinds of crazy stuff, with viruses, proxies, crap internet, crap browsers, crappier browser extensions, or just plain user stupidity causing 99% of it.

Diagnostic data and basic telemetry allows software engineers to find the root cause.

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

#230

Post by i-use-nixos-btw »

I have a love-hate relationship with Brave search. I love the browser, but the first thing I do (after disabling the crypto stuff) is change the search to Google. I’m tempted to change it to ChatGPT.

For searching every day things, brave search is great. For searching technical things, such as scientific articles or programming errors, the results are not just badly ordered - they’re often missing entirely.

At least, that’s how it was the last time I used it, which was admittedly about a year ago. If things have changed, let me know.

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