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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

#431

Post by cvwright »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #340
kragen wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this mean you have more engineers working on it now? That was my reading of the grandparent comment's implications. BTW, thank you very much for offering this service, even though I don't use it often.

No I'm still solo developing. Would having a few more people working on it make stuff move faster? Undeniably. But I don't think lack of manpower is an obstacle at the moment in the same lack of hardware. It's reasonable to expect there's an upper limit to how big a project you can manage as a single developer, but I don't think I'm there yet.

What hardware would you want, and how much would it cost?

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

#432

Post by kokanee »

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…

I totally agree that this is a great sign. I'm a bit more pessimistic though - a search engine's willingness to actually let you click through to an organic search result is a function of A) how dominant in the search market they are, and therefore how much they can afford to jerk users around, and B) how mature they are economically, since growth is more difficult later in the life of the company.

This is to say that I don't trust Brave to keep doing things right as their incentives evolve. Trust is a finicky thing, but from the outset they strike me as an organization with lofty commercial intentions. And, I admit, I don't think I can trust anything Brendan Eich does.

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

#433

Post by gaurang_tandon »

nostromo wrote: post #164
bazmattaz wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask what’s so good about YT on Brave? I use the iOS app but could change. Does it block ads?

Yes. If you browse YouTube on mobile via the Brave browser it blocks all YouTube ads. I haven't used the YouTube app in a year...

Unrelated but you can also block ads with the FF mobile browser using ublock origin. I understand playing videos with screen locked is a big plus for brave though.

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

#434

Post by jb1991 »

lmm wrote: post #379
jb1991 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I typically use travel sites to search for hotels and read reviews, then just book directly with the hotel, which has never cost me more, and often less because some sites (i.e. booking) obfuscate the relationship between price and amenities/size so you don't get what you actually could get for the money if you just went to the hotel directly.

Life's too short to do direct hotel bookings. The sites are slow and terrible to navigate even when they're not straight-up broken. They never bother to tell you their cancellation policy, filling in your information is a drag and you don't get a proper calendar entry unless you make one manually.

Maybe I just know how to pick good hotels? Every single point you just mentioned has not applied to the way I typically do it, the cancellation policy is always the first thing I look for and make sure it’s clearly spelled out. I’ve never had any problems actually interacting with the sites either.

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

#435

Post by marginalia_nu »

cvwright wrote: post #431
marginalia_nu wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I'm still solo developing. Would having a few more people working on it make stuff move faster? Undeniably. But I don't think lack of manpower is an obstacle at the moment in the same lack of hardware. It's reasonable to expect there's an upper limit to how big a project you can manage as a single developer, but I don't think I'm there yet.

What hardware would you want, and how much would it cost?

Interesting question. If I wanted to say grow the index 10-fold and aim for a billion documents indexed (~2.5bn crawled), I'd need:

* More crawlers. This is mostly a network limitation. Disk requirement would be about 50 Tb in total of literally any hard drive, split along the crawlers.

* A dedicated number crunching machine for index construction and processing. Basically needs to be all cores and all RAM.

* A dedicated SQL server. Doesn't have to be super big or fast, but right now it's contending with the index for RAM.

* Either a bigger index server, or a few machines for a sharded index. I'd basically need 40 Tb worth of Enterpise SSD and 1 Tb total of RAM.

The problem space is very nice in that almost everything is either embarrassingly parallel along some axis or another or O(n)-O(n log n) so adding more hardware pays off well.

This is clearly too much hardware to run out of my apartment, even if the fuses held up the noise and heat would be intolerable, so likely some form of colocation hosting as well.

I dunno what it would land on. Probably a one-off cost of about $50k-$100k, depending the degree of redundancy. There's definitely stuff that could be done for less as well. Like right now the entire operation runs out of a single machine, and it's causing me to have to bring the service down for days at a time when I'm switching to a new index.

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

#436

Post by AlotOfReading »

soundnote wrote: post #396
AlotOfReading wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment was completely incongruous with my previous Brave experiences, so I went ahead and did a fresh install on a clean system. * The wallet is enabled by default. * The new tab page shows crypto ads by default. I couldn't figure out how to opt-out of these despite a couple of minutes in the "customize dashboard" menu. I know the option exists, but it's well-hidden. * The BAT rewards icon is enabled by default…

> * The new tab page shows crypto ads by default. I couldn't figure out how to opt-out of these despite a couple of minutes in the "customize dashboard" menu. I know the option exists, but it's well-hidden. Customize->Background image. Has a total of two switches. One for background images at all, the other for sponsored background images. Turn the second one off.

So it's not part of the "dashboard" with all the other UI elements on the new tab page despite having its own HTML elements and the option is hidden in the seemingly unrelated background image menu? That certainly is well hidden.

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

#437

Post by j1elo »

Alupis wrote: post #191
j1elo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

I took it as "of course we'll charge you the x% of Booking, so reserve with us if you want to save it". But it makes sense that not all operators will act the same.

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

#438

Post by JohnFen »

scarface74 wrote: post #344
JohnFen wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You actually use your real email and not an email relay service?

Yeah, it was a slipup.

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

#439

Post by cyanydeez »

kokanee wrote: post #432
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…

I totally agree that this is a great sign. I'm a bit more pessimistic though - a search engine's willingness to actually let you click through to an organic search result is a function of A) how dominant in the search market they are, and therefore how much they can afford to jerk users around, and B) how mature they are economically, since growth is more difficult later in the life of the company. This is to say tha…

In reality, search should be a government service as a utility.

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

#440

Post by rchaud »

nostromo wrote: post #167
rchaud wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would a nonprofit expect to compete against Google? It's not exactly evenly matched is it? Firefox on desktop has been more than good enough anyway.

Firefox competed against fairly successfully against Microsoft for a decade. They still spin off massive amounts of cash -- they just piss it away on their foundation, and not improving the product.

No they didn't. Microsoft was just asleep at the wheel. The difference between an incumbent who doesn't care (MS) and an upstart that cares (Google) is easily visible by how rapidly IE market share crashed after Firefox arrived -- and then later, how FF crashed as Chrome grew.
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