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Brave Search beta

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Re: Brave Search beta

#151

Post by [deleted] »

growt wrote: post #125
vlunkr wrote: 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!

[deleted]

Re: Brave Search beta

#152

Post by smoldesu »

axaxs wrote: post #128
zzyzxd wrote: 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…

Same excitement here. I'd love to see anyone(Brave or others) chip away at my Google dependencies, even if they charge me for them. I already love Brave as a browser, so here's hoping search pans out. I don't mind a company profiling me. A lot of Google's cross interacting products work great(Gmail to Calendar and Maps, for example). I just don't want them advertising to me, or selling my data. A guy can dream...

> I don't mind a company profiling me

Not everyone has that luxury.

> I just don't want them advertising to me, or selling my data

Then your data is worthless to them. Nobody wants companies to abuse their personal data, that's why it's such a lucrative business. Companies like Apple and Brave get away with it by edging out competition and instating their own standards (see: Brave's Ad "replacement"). It's all so ridiculously asinine that it makes me want to uninstall every piece of software from my computer and use it exclusively as a space heater for the rest of my life.

Re: Brave Search beta

#153

Post by fictorial »

zzyzxd wrote: post #87
mrpf1ster wrote: post #63

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.

The frustration I am talking about is: Check query result -> realize the result is bad -> scroll back to the search bar -> place cursor at the beginning of the query -> enter "!g" -> redirect to Google.com It is not too bad on desktop, but doing it once on a smartphone is more than enough to push me to switch back to Google.

    /  !g

Re: Brave Search beta

#154

Post by merlinscholz »

Loving Brave search so far, but I am wondering if there is a way to manually add sites to the index? Adding them to the Google index and hoping for Brave to pick them up doesn't seem like a clean solution.

Re: Brave Search beta

#155

Post by smoldesu »

Seirdy wrote: post #109
jonathansampson wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This has not been my experience. Comparing results with Google, Startpage, and a Searx instance with only Google enabled reveals that the results are almost always from Google. Sometimes they merge multiple results that share a domain. I decided to add them to the "Semi-Independent" category of my collection of indexing search engines: https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe...

Even semi-independant seems generous. I probably would have just lumped them in with Google or Bing.

Re: Brave Search beta

#156

Post by staticassertion »

jonathansampson wrote: post #107
staticassertion wrote: post #23

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!

Very cool - good to know.

Re: Brave Search beta

#157

Post by annoyingnoob »

tnorthcutt wrote: post #25

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.

I'm concerned about what happens to data Brave collects when Brave decides to sell itself. At some point they could be attractive to acquire.

Re: Brave Search beta

#158

Post by [deleted] »

growt wrote: post #125
vlunkr wrote: 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!

[deleted]

Re: Brave Search beta

#159

Post by smoldesu »

rhizome wrote: post #149
jonathansampson wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Shebang specifically refers to using an exclamation point to define where data should be directed. Same as it is in Bash scripts, just a different context and slightly different syntax.
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