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Brave Search beta

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Re: Brave Search beta

#591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDG already includes Google (amongst others) in its results. It's not just a front end to Bing, like many assume (though I can't find DDG's article on the subject to directly cite). The thing with people who switch to DDG is, they do so consciously for privacy reasons but then forget that the reason G's results are so good is because they add little bits of context in through their profiling. But that doesn't mean th…

DDG also makes it very to download images, unlike Google that now makes you go though to whatever site and have to scroll around in the page to find the image

Google was forced to do that because sites where screaming google is stealing their traffic by linking directly to images.

Once DDG is big enough, they will be forced to do the same.

Re: Brave Search beta

#593
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm testing on Firefox and the Tor browser right now, JS disabled. I also disabled cookies in Firefox. Searches for "Seirdy", "Neovim", "gccgo", and others return results identical to Google, Startpage, and Searx instances with only Google enabled. No other independent engine of all the 25 other English independently-indexing engines I compared in the article has had this happen; identical pages on all the other engi…

As a counterexample, I searched for something very obscure (only three pages on startpage) expecting to see them pulling in results from startpage to cover the long tail. I was surprised to see different results, suggesting their index is much larger than I assumed. The query was "retail snap incentive program" Edit: All your queries are for relatively popular terms. I wouldn't be surprised if there's just a clearly…

> I wouldn't be surprised if there's just a clearly right top set of pages.

I would be astounded! Why would DDG, Bing, etc. not use it? Different search indices and engines should practically always have differences in results, as ranking results is very fuzzy and dependent on the available data.

Re: Brave Search beta

#594

I'm really impressed by how finished this beta feels. Well done! The only thing stopping me from trying this out as my default search engine is my new-found reliance on the 'bang operators' on DuckDuckGo. Being able to type: !subreddit or !maps or whatever right in my address bar has become so convenient I feel I'm probably locked in for now. Maybe if something similar appears in future versions I might switch.

Hey, have you tried bangs on Brave Search? Lots of them should already work out of the box, if not, please let us know!

Re: Brave Search beta

#595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, a query is issued from your browser but without any cookies. While it's true your IP address tags along for the ride, the IP address isn't typically how users are tracked on Google-scale properties. Due to NAT and more, your IP address is not exclusively yours. It can represent many people at once, and over time. That said, if you are not comfortable with the idea of Fallback Mixing , you do not need to enab…

At the very least I suggest modifying the text on the page as it is misleading. > Note that choosing this option has no effect on your privacy. IP address is definitely considered private information even at court level. https://www.whitecase.com/publications/alert/court-confirms-...

Well.. it kinda isnt. If your IP would be private you CANNOT use the internet. You just cant. If you use a VPN, you share your IP with the VPN. So you ALWAYS have to share your IP with someone for anything you do on the internet. So it cant be private.. it just cant.

There are 2 things u can do, either use a VPN and only share your IP with them, but then brave will also use your vpn when sending info to google, so your IP is safe in this case..

Or option 2 is that you watch out for the things u make connection to. Which is literally impossible. Visit any popular website and your IP gets sent all over place in the background, mostly towards CDNs or analytic platforms. But yeah, the brave feature is an opt-in.. so u kinda give your consent there.

IP addresses are not exclussive to the internet, they also exist within local networks at home or office etc, people refer to your IP address when using the internet as your "Public IP address".

That being said, it's not nice when people are spreading around your IP address. It's much the same as people sharing your home address. Companies should indeed not be allowed to just give this information away to other companies. But brave isnt doing this, as long it's an opt-in it's your own choice.

Re: Brave Search beta

#596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If all browsers end up using Blink (Google), the Web will suffer as developers will only optimize and test for the Blink rendering engine. Am I the only one that thinks that this would be a good thing? Like the entire industry sharing the same core open source technology? Write a website once and it works perfectly across all platforms?

No monopoly or monoculture, even if open source, is good. It is not just about the features that you think makes your life better, you have also to consider the potential catastrophic bugs that could be exploited and leave everyone without an alternative. Evolution only happens when there is divergence and competition.

Well we're already effectively at monoculture. The only other rendering engine that has any meaningful market share is Apple's fork of Webkit.

I disagree that with the proposition that a single open source project with broad industry representation would hinder evolution.

Companies like Google and Microsoft don't compete on their ability to support the various web specs, but on quality of the web applications they can deliver to customers. Competition in this space will continue to drive innovation even with a single agreed upon rendering engine.

It would, however, limit the ability of a company like Apple to hobble their only-supported browser such that web apps can't compete with native ones.

Re: Brave Search beta

#597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you work for Brave. I can't take what you say on face value

Please don't take my words for granted. Verify everything. If you wish to prod a little, I'm always happy to chat :-)

Appreciate you taking part in the conversation. So often people complain about companies not communicating like humans, but when they do people almost seem to get more pissed off. You can't win really.

Re: Brave Search beta

#598
post #594

I'm really impressed by how finished this beta feels. Well done! The only thing stopping me from trying this out as my default search engine is my new-found reliance on the 'bang operators' on DuckDuckGo. Being able to type: !subreddit or !maps or whatever right in my address bar has become so convenient I feel I'm probably locked in for now. Maybe if something similar appears in future versions I might switch.

Hey, have you tried bangs on Brave Search? Lots of them should already work out of the box, if not, please let us know!

Oh wow, I had tried `!reddit` and didn't get redirected so assumed none of them worked. Just tried `!subreddit` though and that one works. Will definitely give this a try as default engine now. Cheers.

Re: Brave Search beta

#599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No monopoly or monoculture, even if open source, is good. It is not just about the features that you think makes your life better, you have also to consider the potential catastrophic bugs that could be exploited and leave everyone without an alternative. Evolution only happens when there is divergence and competition.

Well we're already effectively at monoculture. The only other rendering engine that has any meaningful market share is Apple's fork of Webkit. I disagree that with the proposition that a single open source project with broad industry representation would hinder evolution. Companies like Google and Microsoft don't compete on their ability to support the various web specs, but on quality of the web applications they ca…

> market share

If there is at least one alternative that is significant, then by definition it's not "effectively a monoculture".

In any case, market share is the least important factor here. As long as we have an intolerant minority (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27262240) that does not want be subject to Chromium as the only open source project, we will be fine.

Mozilla is screwing up badly, and I switched to Brave mostly because I believe that they are building a stronger artillery to fight surveillance capitalism (as in, Mozilla gives you wishy-washy feel-good words, Brave gives you money), but this does not mean that Mozilla needs to go away. Quite the opposite: I still hope that we see a "Next acquires Apple for negative $400 million" story. If Firefox builds integration with Brave's network and also adopts BAT, I would go back to it in a heartbeat.

> I disagree that (...) would hinder evolution. Competition in this space will continue to drive innovation even with a single agreed upon rendering engine.

God, no! The worrying thing is not that the development of the web specs would stagnate. The problem is that the development would only happen in the direction that benefits them and that they would be completely unchecked.

Re: Brave Search beta

#600
Oh wow! Goood news!

I normally use Chrome and Google search for work and Firefox and DDG for personal things. Then, Brave for personal browsing that requires a vpn or Chromium support. Some websites are just optimised for Chrome, Brave always come in handy in that case.

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