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

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

#321
post #319

For non-technical searches, mostly stuff relating to news, politics, or Covid, Google is next to useless at this point due to their attempts to combat misinformation. Even their autocomplete functionality guides potential search queries in an entirely unorganic manner. For instance, something may be trending according to google, while simultaneously being blacklisted as an autocomplete option- if it has Any elements…

Joe Rogan also commented on this cover-up a few days ago: > "Look, if I wanted to find specific cases about people who died from vaccine-related injuries, I had to go to Duck Duck Go. I wasn’t finding them on Google,” Rogan urged. [1] https://summit.news/2021/10/19/video-joe-rogan-accuses-googl...

It's sad that Joe Rogan comes up as any kind of authority on anything besides mixed martial arts.

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

#322
post #319

For non-technical searches, mostly stuff relating to news, politics, or Covid, Google is next to useless at this point due to their attempts to combat misinformation. Even their autocomplete functionality guides potential search queries in an entirely unorganic manner. For instance, something may be trending according to google, while simultaneously being blacklisted as an autocomplete option- if it has Any elements…

Joe Rogan also commented on this cover-up a few days ago: > "Look, if I wanted to find specific cases about people who died from vaccine-related injuries, I had to go to Duck Duck Go. I wasn’t finding them on Google,” Rogan urged. [1] https://summit.news/2021/10/19/video-joe-rogan-accuses-googl...

And he would know because why? He’s a loud personality with an audience.

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

#323

For non-technical searches, mostly stuff relating to news, politics, or Covid, Google is next to useless at this point due to their attempts to combat misinformation. Even their autocomplete functionality guides potential search queries in an entirely unorganic manner. For instance, something may be trending according to google, while simultaneously being blacklisted as an autocomplete option- if it has Any elements…

I read this as "I can't find stuff because Google blocks misinformation". Every time I search for politics, news, or covid related stuff I find it straight away. News it right at the top with multiple articles available. Politics and COVID I find the offical source straight away.

I’m generally happy with Google’s results as well, but I also acknowledge that both of our experiences could be a symptom of us wanting to see the things Google that has not labeled as misinformation and it would be harder to detect subtle missing perspectives that might be being downranked if the results shown are generally pleasing to us.

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

#324

For non-technical searches, mostly stuff relating to news, politics, or Covid, Google is next to useless at this point due to their attempts to combat misinformation. Even their autocomplete functionality guides potential search queries in an entirely unorganic manner. For instance, something may be trending according to google, while simultaneously being blacklisted as an autocomplete option- if it has Any elements…

I read this as "I can't find stuff because Google blocks misinformation". Every time I search for politics, news, or covid related stuff I find it straight away. News it right at the top with multiple articles available. Politics and COVID I find the offical source straight away.

I read this as "Google is perfectly capable of determining the truth".

Moving from an era of media oligopoly into the internet age was very hopeful IMO, and now it's bottlenecked by even fewer companies.

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

#326
post #7

I’ve been using Brave search for several months now. I switched the day that it was announced. The quality is fairly good, but I’m having troubling telling whether it’s just my own halo effect or if the initial quality that experienced has started to slip a little as it indexes more widely or something. At first I was impressed with how little spam ended up in top results, but lately exact queries for Python function…

> 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.

pinterest. Bane of all image searches.

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

#327
post #301
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like FF was ever shipped with Windows. It's just that enough people saw enough value and purpose in it, to go out and get it themselves. You can install FF on Android in a second on the Play Store, it's easier than it's ever been on the desktop; but you have to want to install it in the first place. Some of this want can be generated by feature excellence, some by peer pressure; but for a long time now, FF h…

Firefox came to power because there was a massive vacuum: the stagnant IE. Firefox simply was a fundamentally superior browser. This vacuum no longer exists. The competition isn't stagnant, they're speeding away.

People say that but for ages FF simply couldn't do what IE did. ActiveX was a thing and FF just didn't support it. Java applets broke all over, and CSS support was a minefield. Most of the mainstream web was outright broken in MozSuite and FF. It wasn't clear at all that FF was "superior" in any way - in fact, the build system was a nightmare, you couldn't embed it anywhere, you had to fix proxy settings all the time (because it had its internal stuff, not using the Windows settings)... Yeah it had extensions, but a lot of people didn't even know what those were (and making them wasn't particularly easy - easier than dealing with MSVC++, but still not easy). Still, people were invested in the success of FF; they tolerated the brokenness and pestered the hell out of website owners to fix their shit and evangelized the browser to friends and family. Because people cared about FF and what it represented: an open browser to use the open web, built for people and geeks - not "consumers" or "enterprise customers".

Now people don't care, because Mozilla is seen as Just Another Silicon Valley Corp, with overpaid execs doing shady deals to push shit down our throat. At that point, "they are all the same" so might as well use the browser that works more often (Chrome). This can change, but it needs a positive shock.

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

#329
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading in HN an idea about allowing people to customize the weights used to filter search results - a search engine that provided that, where I could use some curated configuration file. Maybe I could have profiles like "cooking", "programming", "news" and help the search engine even better to understand my intent. Or just have the "don't show results from this site again" button from youtube taken into g…

This is where ad-based businesses show their ugly side: The more control you have over what you see, the fewer ways they have to slip you inconspicuous ads. This is why all content feeds like Facebook and Twitter get vaguer as time goes by, and it's why Google will never give up control over results unless it legally has to.

If you control what articles and pages show up based on some searches you can impact elections. Forget ads, who would give up control every close election on the planet?

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

#330
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the tracking part, you may like to check Whoogle Search - https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search It's Google results without the tracking, and it can be self-hosted.

This looks great. I wish Nextdns provided this.

I have used NextDNS in the past (pihole now) but I wonder what Whoogle does different from DNS filters.
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