Brave's homegrown search claims to protect your privacy but there's a long way to go if it's to challenge the big G
- Reference: 1634732046
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/10/20/brave_search/
- Source link:
The Brave web browser is based on the Google-sponsored Chromium engine but with features designed to prevent tracking, as well as an unusual reward system using its own cryptocurrency, the Basic Attention Token (BAT). Brave search will now be the default on new installs for desktop, Android, and iOS. Existing Brave users will keep their current default unless they choose to change it.
Brave Search was released in [1]beta in June and uses technology called Tailcat, [2]acquired from the failed German [3]Cliqz project , which also sought to provide a Google-free index.
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The company said in June that "for some features, like searching for images, Brave Search will fetch results from Microsoft Bing," in line with the claim from Ecosia's founder, Christian Kroll, who [5]told us earlier this month that the existence of Bing is "absolutely essential" to competing search providers.
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A "search independence" metric shows the percentage of results delivered from Brave's index, and this is 87 per cent across all Brave search users at the time of writing. The company says it gets nearly 80 million queries per month. Google does that many queries in under four minutes, according to figures [8]here .
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Search independence shows how many results come from Brave versus other engines, primarily Bing
The search is smart in this respect since at the foot of the results is an option to "find elsewhere", in our case offering Google, Bing or [10]Mojeek (a UK-based independent search engine). Immediately conducting a further search is one of the indicators of poor search results that can optionally be recorded to improve the engine.
[11]Saving your battery as well as your privacy? New Brave for Android claims 5% power reduction
[12]From I'm feeling lucky to I'm feeling Brave: Browser maker erects web search engine beta
[13]Google's Privacy Budget doesn't add up, says Mozilla CTO - amazingly enough
[14]Alternative search providers write letter to EU complaining that Google antitrust action achieved diddly-squat
Brave search is currently ad-free, the bad news being that "the free version of Brave Search will soon be ad supported," according to a post [15]yesterday . "Brave Search will also offer an ad-free Premium version in the near future," the company said, though as yet no further details are available.
Brave has also introduced the [16]Web Discovery Project , a method of collecting user data (such as data on bad searches) while claiming to protect their privacy. "Brave needs data to power its privacy search," the project explains. The project aims to prevent linking records as belonging to the same person, to prevent profiling, "by strictly prohibiting any user identifier."
User data is still aggregated, but on the user's device, and when data is sent back to the Brave server, it omits any user identifier.
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How good is Brave Search? Since many users are in the habit of using search for navigation, many searches are trivial, meaning "take me to Apple" or similar. A question like "How many states in the USA" is answered while typing on Google (as a "prediction"), where Brave search came up with a Wikipedia article in top position, requiring further clicks to get the information.
A developer query like "call to undefined function simplexml_load_file" successfully returns a Stack Overflow entry with helpful information. There are many kinds of searches, though, and our brief experiments show that Brave is way behind on depth and quality of organic results, but a pleasure to use in respect of freedom from ads – and although this is set to change, it may still be less confusing and ad-laden than a typical Google search result page.
Although in principle a new privacy-respecting search index will be welcome, there is a long way to go before it can make much general impact. Currently Google has a 92 per cent market share, according to [18]Statcounter , with Bing in second place with 2.66 per cent. In web browsers, Google Chrome and Apple Safari account for around 84 per cent of the market, and both default to Google search. Brave's market share is somewhere in "Other", though the company [19]reports over 13 million daily active users, more than double that of one year ago. ®
Get our [20]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/22/brave_search_engine/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/03/brave_buys_a_search_engine/
[3] https://cliqz.com/en/magazine/cliqz-android-now-open-source
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YXA9PV5EpbvJM5gHrMfs6gAAANY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/07/alternative_search_providers_protest/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YXA9PV5EpbvJM5gHrMfs6gAAANY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YXA9PV5EpbvJM5gHrMfs6gAAANY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.internetlivestats.com/google-search-statistics/
[9] https://regmedia.co.uk/2021/10/20/independence.jpg
[10] https://blog.mojeek.com/2018/08/what-is-mojeek.html
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/08/saving_your_battery_as_well/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/22/brave_search_engine/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/11/googles_privacy_budge/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/07/alternative_search_providers_protest/
[15] https://brave.com/search-and-web-discovery/
[16] https://github.com/brave/web-discovery-project/blob/main/modules/web-discovery-project/sources/README.md
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YXA9PV5EpbvJM5gHrMfs6gAAANY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share
[19] https://brave.com/transparency/
[20] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Here's a guarantee
The number one search term on Bing is probably "Chrome". *,†
Personally, I'm a Firefox person (for all its faults), and however good the Brave browser may be, or however private its search is, it's still a Google browser. DuckDuckGo is my search engine of choice, but I have to admit, like Firefox, it's not entirely ideal. I use these things as a matter of principle though.
(*which is the first thing most people will do in Edge, unless you're one of the many less-tech-savvy people who can't tell the difference between the little blue icon and "The Internet")
(†Edit: I just checked – apparently [1]"google" is the number one search on Bing in the US , while "Google Chrome" is at number 30. Elsewhere in the world, though (scroll down), "Google Chrome" does indeed take the no. 1 spot.)
[1] https://ahrefs.com/blog/top-bing-searches/
Firefox + NoScript + uBlock Origin here.
I search with StartPage.
It's hard to break in here with Google in the position it is. In the past I used Scroogle but that avenue of pleasure was closed to us. Now I use DuckDuckGO and have to say it's now at a standard where, for me at least, I rarely go anywhere else.
Google results have massively dropped in quality. Anything beyond top 5 results is most likely spam passing as legitimate website.
It's quite frustrating when you search for an article about something and then you realise you are reading AI generated garbage. Then most of those pages are trying to install Malware.
Using Google on Windows machine is like using adult websites in the 90s. You can be certain you'll get a virus.
Definite loss of quality
A Google image search for "idiot" used to get 8 of the first 10 right but now it is down to 3 in the first 20.
> Using Google on Windows machine is like using adult websites in the 90s. You can be certain you'll get a virus.
Both those "facts" are false.
(To be fair, the second one was pretty accurate as far as I can recall.)
anyone trust BAT?
anyone trust Basic Attention Token?
i'm not sure i do,.
Re: anyone trust BAT?
The concept of BAT seems fine, but the adverts they show are mostly crypto-scam-bollox which I don't trust at all. I assume that a single click on any of those ads will put me on a gullible fool list somewhere, so I simply don't bother.
I have tried to 'tip' ElReg and empty my stash of rewards, but so far they are not set up to take my tokens. There's $50 or so waiting for them ....
Consent
The fact that Google build their search database without consent - basically DDOSing the internet should be addressed by regulators.
I think Google database should be wiped and they should only be able to index pages on opt in basis.
Their scanning without consent needs to stop.
All other companies also should work on the opt in basis.
Re: Consent
It's always been opt-out, can't see that changing any time soon as it would be a massive impact on existing sites and pages, if that was changed now.
Don't want Google to scan your site, add a robots.txt
Without that, you are basically consenting to the scan.
You can also set noindex which removes a page from the database, so it won't show up even if the URL was referenced on a site that allows scanning.
Re: Consent
Don't want Google to scan your site, add a robots.txt
Google is ignoring robots.txt. There is no way to stop Google bot from scanning!
You can only make it ignore the contents (but probably they'll still use it for AI and whatnot) by adding noindex meta tag or noindex header in server's response. They still make requests though!
It's simply bandwidth and resource theft!
Re: Consent
Not sure why people downvote? Look at the source [1]Block access to content on your site
How Google bot is going to know that you put noindex tag? It has to scan the page!
Only sure way (that still uses up your resources) is to detect the bot and drop packets, but you need to be in control of the gateway you are using.
[2]Verifying Googlebot
So you have to run DNS lookup which you can imagine can slow down the legitimate traffic if given IP is not cached.
If they don't want to do opt in, they should be required by law to provide free tools and reimburse the time spent on blocking their bots!
[1] https://support.google.com/news/publisher-center/answer/9605477?hl=en
[2] https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/verifying-googlebot
I've been using Brave since I read the article published here about which of the browsers were more privacy focused (and didn't track you etc), and have been using the Brave search engine since it was released as Beta.
I'd say 90% of the searches I make are all catered for with Brave's engine, and I seldom have to go to Google to do a search. Things that are specific to me (such as when does a specific shop in a specific location open) are better served by Google than Brave. But to get my work done, to look for how to do a specific coding thingymajig, Brave is actually quite good. Better than DuckDuckGo in all fairness.
That's interesting, thank you. I use DDG at the moment, but have return to Google far too often. I'll be giving Brave search a try.
I do the same, DDG as primary, but I find whilst it's good for most generic type searches, it misses a lot on more technical items, where I end up going back to Google.
Might also give the Brave search a go, been testing the browser out for a little while.
I also switched from DDG to Brave about 2-3 months ago, as I found DDG was going downhill on the search results. Brave has so far been quite good, and I've rarely had to jump over to google (and on those rare occasions, usually my query on google also hasnt found what I'm after anyway, so obviously its more me, rather than brave, that's the problem... :P)
Change is inevitable
I remember the days before and leading up to google's launch. There were other search engines out there. Dogpile comes to mind, altavista? or was that the warez site? Lycos, and I'm drawing a blank for any others. Help me out! Right, I digress, Google will go the way of Internet Exploder. I probably won't see it in my professional career, but it will happen.
Brave search is currently ad-free, the bad news being that "the free version of Brave Search will soon be ad supported"
Not surprising; infrastructure and bandwidth cost real-world money.
"the free version of Brave Search will soon be ad supported"
AKA : the free version of Brave Search will soon no longer be used.
Here's a guarantee
The number one search term will be 'google'