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Brave Search beta

search.brave.com

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Re: Brave Search beta

#141
post #116

Reminder that Brave has done some morally questionable things in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Controvers... They've since corrected both of those things, but those are enough for me to choose not to trust them as an organization.

It's funny seeing all these folks nitpicking at Brave but who are fine using Google or Microsoft every day.

>It's funny seeing all these folks nitpicking at Brave but who are fine using Google or Microsoft every day.

How do you know this?

Re: Brave Search beta

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DuckDuckGo allows you to do a Google search by prepending "!g" to any query. So usually I do that for the last 5% of queries that DDG fails on.

You can use !g on Brave Search too, or turn on Fallback Mixing in Brave Search Settings, which will anonymously call out to Google and pull in results as needed. This helps to train the nascent engine more rapidly. I hope this helps!

I am not able to locate this setting. I am using Brave Search on Firefox. Is that available only on Brave Search on Brave browser?

Re: Brave Search beta

#143
post #132
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe that Google doesn't engage in censoring search results? Do you know that YouTube was taking down the video of said incident yesterday and continues to do so today? https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/02/09/google-quietly-esc...

Do you have other sources than breitbart?

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/15/google-tweaks-its-algorithm-...

Re: Brave Search beta

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still wouldn't use it since it falls back to Bing or Google.

You're referring to Fallback Mixing , which is off by default. You have to enable it in https://search.brave.com/settings . When enabled, this feature will (at times) pull in results from Google via an anonymous query, routed through the browser. Read more about it here: https://search.brave.com/help/google-fallback

It does not appear that they are exposing all possible settings configs on mobile as fallback mixing is not shown as an option for me there. This seems like an oversight to me.

Re: Brave Search beta

#145
post #46

Previous related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26328758 If things go as planned, this may become a paid, ad-free, zero-tracking search engine. I can't express how exciting this is to me. Over the past few years, I have made several attempts to replace Google Search with DuckDuckGo. But they have all failed and I always ended up changing the default search engine back to Google. I mean, DDG worked f…

Just curious, why are you opposed to search ads? They are already targeted by your search query, so don't fundamentally rely on tracking data.

Search ads have become visually almost indistinguishable from legitimate search results on most search engines, including DuckDuckGo. That's why I try to avoid them whenever possible. DuckDuckGo allows you to turn them off completely.

Re: Brave Search beta

#146
post #81

I really don't understand Brave. What special thing do they offer that people actually want? The main concrete selling point seems to built-in ad blockers, but we've had that for ages in every other browser. They have some crypto stuff going on, I'll be honest, I don't understand it, because I don't care, I just want to browse the web. That should be possible without a blockchain. They claim performance is better, bu…

> What special thing do they offer that people actually want?

I tried every browser and was a long term chrome user. I tried brave and was immediately sold. I use(d) chrome/chromium (and recently used vivaldi) on 3 different plattforms. Brave is noticeable faster on every one. I use it for like 3 month now and never looked back.

Its a very pleasant experience for me.

Re: Brave Search beta

#147
post #125
post #81

I really don't understand Brave. What special thing do they offer that people actually want? The main concrete selling point seems to built-in ad blockers, but we've had that for ages in every other browser. They have some crypto stuff going on, I'll be honest, I don't understand it, because I don't care, I just want to browse the web. That should be possible without a blockchain. They claim performance is better, bu…

I use brave on mobile. Because they seem to be the only stable Browser that offers bottom UI (tabs and new tab button in a bottom menu bar). I don't know how people use >6" phone screens with navigation all on top and I have hands the size of dessert plates!

Firefox offers bottom UI on Android and supports ublock origin.

Re: Brave Search beta

#148

Apparently, they have their own search index, which they say covers ~95% of queries, and if the results aren't in the index, it will then get it from Google or Bing. I'd love some more details on how this works. They probably aren't scraping the whole web. Are they just mirroring Bing and Google indexes? They seem to have their own page ranking algorithm that they're hoping to get trained.

I still wouldn't use it since it falls back to Bing or Google.

What do you use? Doesn't DDG use Bing as well?

Re: Brave Search beta

#149

Seems quite fast, good UX overall. I like that it gives me information like "all results from Brave" so that if they do fall back I know about it. DDG has a 'bang syntax' where I can do things like '!rust' to start searching the rust docs from my url - I like that a lot, I wonder if there's anything similar here or if I could work around that somehow.

Update: We do support !rust as well (and all of DDG's other bangs ). Brave Search supports many shebangs , but I don't believe we've added support for `!rust` yet (we do have `!mdn` and `!so` though). I'll submit a request to add a `!rust` option too!

"Shebangs" have been defined as '#!' for decades, I'd suggest they not be redefined.

Re: Brave Search beta

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably some conspiracy nonsense.

I'm not sure why you think it's relevant to make such a remark without a shred of evidence regarding my thoughts. I left it for the readers to form their own opinion. Something you apparently are loath to do.

Yes, I say what I mean. I don't hide behind the "I'm just asking questions" facade.
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