[HN Gopher] Brave Search beta
___________________________________________________________________
Brave Search beta
Author : vmullin
Score : 424 points
Date : 2021-06-22 16:01 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (search.brave.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (search.brave.com)
| azinman2 wrote:
| I find it very interesting that Eich was outsted from Mozilla for
| his anti-gay stance, and much of HN was in agreement at the time,
| yet this seems to never come up with Brave despite LGBTQ rights
| having far stronger support today. Why is that?
| pmurt7 wrote:
| I support LGBTQ rights, but I hate cancel culture. It's not
| acceptable to bully someone for something wrong he said or did
| many years ago.
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| Yes lets all grab pitchforks and chase him out of town because
| of his religious beliefs.
|
| So sick of leftists and your constant attacks in the name of
| diversity.
|
| Go find a hobby, you're not trying to further any cause or help
| anyone, you're just looking to cause drama and attack people.
|
| It was the majority opinion to oppose same-sex marriage. Are we
| going to cancel everyone who once or still supports it?
| Remember we are still very much a Christian country. Obama in
| 2008 ran against same-sex marriage and cited his Christian
| beliefs as the reason.
|
| We'd have to cancel many people's careers to pass your purity
| test of a clean history of accepted beliefs.
|
| In the woke world, similar to North Korea, if you commit a
| thought crime, you will be considered dirty blood, and it will
| be attributed to your family and friends as well.
| azinman2 wrote:
| First, I'm not looking to cause drama or attack anyone. I'm
| genuinely curious and to know what changed? It was a big deal
| then, but seems to never surface with anything Brave related
| since. And as they make bigger and bigger splashes, and this
| continues to not come up, I'm wondering why that is?
|
| You're making a lot of assumptions about me, my motives, and
| belief structures. I'm just seeing a change in behavior on
| this issue in combination with larger societal sea changes,
| and wondering about the inconsistency.
|
| Meanwhile it sounds like you're wanting to grab a pitchfork
| and chase me out of town for asking a question rooted in
| curiosity, which I understand to be the basis for HN
| conversation.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| You're concern trolling. It's blatantly obvious: Hey, I
| just have a question. Five paragraphs later...
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| You know exactly what you're doing. It wasn't a big deal
| then, and it shouldn't be a big deal now. It's cancel
| culture and you're participating in it.
|
| This is an amazing release and I'm glad Brave revived the
| technical marvel that was Cliqz, you can see that on
| display in their blog: https://www.0x65.dev/
|
| But no, you decided to bring up bullshit drama. You're not
| generally curious, and even if you were, it's not really on
| topic. It's negative and non-constructive.
|
| You fool no one when you hide behind your "I was just
| asking a question" defense. You knew ahead of time what
| your question would provoke.
| kbelder wrote:
| The 'anti-gay' stance was that he donated to a campaign for
| prop 8 in California; that preposition passed. So he was guilty
| of agreeing with the majority of voters in California.
|
| It's not that odious of a sin (and I disagree with Eich,
| incidentally). Should the majority of California citizens be
| canceled, permanently? Not allowed any leadership positions?
| azinman2 wrote:
| I'm not trying to re-litigate the past. But it was enough of
| a consequential donation back then to have removed from as
| CEO of Mozilla. So that's a pretty big deal. Somehow that has
| never made its way into anything related to Brave as far as
| I've noticed, and generally I've followed the company at
| least in terms of top HN links (always curious to see what
| people are doing in the browser space). I've never seen it
| mentioned in any articles discussing Brave, or in any of the
| HN commentary since. I just find that odd, especially against
| the bigger societal winds. I'm wondering if I'm missing
| something like he himself did some about-face, or people lost
| track of this, or if they just don't care anymore or what?
| But not only did Mozilla care back then, but quite a bit of
| HN did as well when it happened.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| > But it was enough of a consequential donation back then
| to have removed from as CEO of Mozilla.
|
| False. The reason for leaving Mozilla was never published.
|
| > I'm wondering if I'm missing something like he himself
| did some about-face, or people lost track of this, or if
| they just don't care anymore or what?
|
| So your disappointed Hacker News isn't more engaged with
| identity politics and cancel culture?
|
| And by the way you are wrong. It has come up in several
| threads in the past.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25844354
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26328758
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27549604&p=2
| azinman2 wrote:
| > False. The reason for leaving Mozilla was never
| published.
|
| Well, then the timing is so aligned then at this point
| it's just occam's razor unless there's another
| explanation.
|
| > So your disappointed Hacker News isn't more engaged
| with identity politics and cancel culture?
|
| There's plenty of that. It's nearly daily now on HN. That
| wasn't my point at all. Just the inconsistency has always
| been apparent for years now so I finally asked the hive
| mind.
|
| > And by the way you are wrong. It has come up in several
| threads in the past.
|
| I stand corrected. I had never noticed those comments.
| That said, it was easy to not notice them as they're a
| tiny fraction of everything around Brave and have almost
| no discussion around them compared to his original
| ousting.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| It's not a current news event. It's old news. Why are you
| so desperate to cancel him... again?
| azinman2 wrote:
| This is the last time I'll mention this here as it's
| getting not only repetitive but it feels like I'm the
| only one discussing in good faith:
|
| 1. I'm not trying to cancel anyone
|
| 2. I'm not trying to start a flame war
|
| 3. I haven't actually stated any "sides" in this
| discussion at all
|
| 4. I've wondered about this for years now and hadn't
| personally seen it brought up at all, thus prompting my
| question.
|
| Sheesh.
| zeven7 wrote:
| Every time Brave comes up on HN I search the comment
| section for "Eich" to see if this is still being mentioned.
| It always is. That's how I found your comment. You just
| haven't really been looking.
| xeromal wrote:
| It was a wave of public emotion that gout Eich ousted.
| crackercrews wrote:
| Is there a way to make this the default browser on iOS? I can see
| how to make it the default for searching in Brave but not system-
| wide. This matters for Siri-initiated searches.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I wish them luck. More competition in search is welcome. I don't
| think I will use it very often though because accuracy in search
| results trumps any concern I have with privacy online that I get
| from using google or bing.
| staticmist wrote:
| The result accuracy actually seems pretty good thus far.
| Although I have mixed feelings about Brave as a company, I may
| have to switch over from DDG/SP.
| RileyJames wrote:
| But which is more accurate google or bing? Having used DDG
| (~bing) for a few years now, at first I felt it was inferior,
| but I stuck with it for the privacy. Now I feel it's roughly
| equal, depending on the query. Google is full of spammy SEO
| content, where as DDG elevates niche content (probably more
| because it's not targeted by SEO spam, but I'll give them the
| benefit of the doubt)
|
| I feel it's somewhat impossible to discern accuracy in search
| results, as you can't see what's missing. But by the time you
| feel the results are missing something, they're likely missing
| ALOT.
| tschellenbach wrote:
| part of the accuracy comes from google knowing who you are and
| what you typically search for.
| merlinscholz wrote:
| 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.
| meinfuhrer wrote:
| My first impressions using this are really good. I've been using
| DDG on mobile for many months (while sticking with Google on the
| desktop), but increasingly grew frustrated with the overall
| speed, and results on some queries...so I reluctantly switched
| back to Google on mobile this week.
|
| Unfortunately, looks like there's no way to set this as the
| default on Samsung Internet at the moment so I'm going to stick
| with Google for now.
| zanethomas wrote:
| compare search results for "lab leak"
|
| https://search.brave.com/search?q=lab+leak
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=lab+leak
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lab+leak
|
| https://www.bing.com/search?q=lab+leak
| kbelder wrote:
| How do they fare on the 'tank man' test?
| zanethomas wrote:
| nearly identical, iirc that was not the case on june 4th
| bart__ wrote:
| What am I supposed to see? All engines give the same or very
| similar results for me
| zanethomas wrote:
| At least for me I saw that the search results for google were
| similar to brave while those for duckduckgo were similar to
| those from bing.
| [deleted]
| zanethomas wrote:
| The detractor below apparently fails to understand that
| searching for controversial topics is a great way to see
| which search engines are similar, or relying on the results
| from other engines.
| bmarquez wrote:
| This is a great idea. I also tested this out with "Alex
| Jones", some engines show articles criticizing him above
| his own website.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| Probably some conspiracy nonsense.
| zanethomas wrote:
| I'm not sure why you think it's relevant to make such a
| remark without a shred of evidence regarding my thoughts.
|
| I left it for the readers to form their own opinion.
| Something you apparently are loath to do.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| Yes, I say what I mean. I don't hide behind the "I'm just
| asking questions" facade.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| S/he literally didn't ask any questions though. Sounds
| like you have a lot of baggage and you're throwing it
| around here.
| schmorptron wrote:
| This is one to look out for, I've been using this for about a
| week, and the search results have been really good, empirically
| they feel a bit better than DuckDuckGo. If this stays this good
| over time and ends up having the same acceptable amount of text
| ads as DDG in order to be sustainable I might switch to it for
| good.
| open-paren wrote:
| I think they copied DuckDuckGo's bangs.
|
| It's nowhere in the documentation, and the UI never indicates it,
| but bang searches (like `!stackoverflow parse html with regex`)
| work in Brave Search exactly as they do in DuckDuckGo.
|
| Preliminary testing of mine suggests that they just copied
| DuckDuckGo's list directly-I tried a few obscure ones from DDG,
| like `!ldss` or `!uib`, and they work in Brave Search.
|
| @w0ts0n any details you are willing to share?
| jonathansampson wrote:
| We support many shebangs, with more to come in the future. For
| now, this is what is offered:
|
| !i - Search Images
|
| !n - Search News
|
| !a - Amazon
|
| !b - Bing
|
| !d - DuckDuckGo
|
| !e - eBay
|
| !g - Google
|
| !p - Pinterest
|
| !r - Reddit
|
| !s - StartPage
|
| !w - Wikipedia
|
| !li - LinkedIn
|
| !gh - GitHub
|
| !gm - Google Maps
|
| !so - Stack Overflow
|
| !tw - Twitter
|
| !yt - YouTube
|
| !wa - Wolfram Alpha
|
| !mj - Mojeek
|
| !osm - Open Street Map
|
| !mdn - Mozilla Developer Network
| CallMeMarc wrote:
| Are the !a and !e bangs for Amazon and eBay defaulting to
| .com and if yes, is there a way to get them to default to
| e.g. amazon.de?
| open-paren wrote:
| If that's all that's offered, why does DDG's obscure shebangs
| work on Brave Search?
|
| https://search.brave.com/search?q=!hn+brave+search
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Oh, apologies for the confusion. We support DDG's shebangs
| too; the above list is what we add to the list.
| xpe wrote:
| !g is called a bang.
|
| A shebang is something else ('#!').
| open-paren wrote:
| No worries. Congrats on the launch.
| xpe wrote:
| !g is called a bang. A shebang is '#!'.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| Looks cool! I sort of hate the UI though. Everything is so spaced
| out, on my screen i literally don't see the results. I see two
| top results, and 3 videos _(it's not a video search..)_, and
| that's it. Those top results i'm not sure if they're paid or not
| - so it makes me feel unsure if i'm seeing any real results or
| not.
|
| The page seems to waste space. I'd need a compact mode to use
| this search. The UI is difficult for me.
| butz wrote:
| Strange, that there is a separate search tab for videos, but no
| "text only" search. Considering that 99% of video search
| results will be on youtube, I'd probably go straight to youtube
| if I needed to find a video.
| bosswipe wrote:
| My dream for a search engine is to be able to exclude the entire
| ad+seo web from my results by filtering out any results that have
| 3rd part ad javascript. Then we could actually find the non-
| commercial web again and hopefully help it grow.
|
| This search engine is just trying to copy google's with a few
| tweaks in the result, not that interesting.
| ppeetteerr wrote:
| I really like that they are pulling SO answers into their
| results: https://search.brave.com/search?q=strpos+php
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I'm stoked on this. Brave search may truly bring some new blood
| to the browser/search wars. This is what we desperately need as
| google gets less and less useful.
| yewenjie wrote:
| There is a self-hosted Google search (which just strips some
| tracking but ultimately sends the query to Google nonetheless).
|
| - https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search
|
| I would be curious if what HN thinks of it. I have experimented
| with it and it works fine from a user perspective.
| growt wrote:
| In really hope this improves. I firmly believe the web needs an
| independent index besides Google and MS. But the first two
| searches I made sadly returned subpar results. So I'll keep my
| fingers crossed.
| didip wrote:
| oh, wow! Not bad at all considering they are building their own
| index. I like their results better than DDG.
|
| Between Brave and Vivaldi, I think moving out of the Google world
| for common folks is a possibility now.
| austinshea wrote:
| brave is bad
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| Lex Fridman interviewed Brendan Eich earlier this year (a real
| gem of an interview, in my opinion).
|
| I found all of it interesting, but here's a timecode link where
| they begin to discuss the current era of "browser wars",
| technical aspects and history of privacy protections, ads,
| search, and how that's all related.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krB0enBeSiE&t=7652s
| Santosh83 wrote:
| Contrary to Brave Search's instructions to click the three dots
| (...) in Firefox's URL bar to add Brave Search, I don't get the
| dots at all.
|
| I do get Brave Search as a button when I click the URL bar and it
| drops down, but if I click on the Brave Search icon to add it,
| Firefox says:
|
| Invalid format Firefox could not install the search engine from:
| https://search.brave.com/auth/assets/opensearch.xml
| w0ts0n wrote:
| Edit: Try now, fix is out.
|
| We are aware of the issue. We have a fix pending.
| [deleted]
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| Is this actually more private then just opening your
| chrome/Firefox/etc in incognito mode and using Google?
| vlunkr wrote:
| 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, but at the end of the day, it's
| chromium, I'm skeptical that they can do much to make a huge
| difference. Now they're offering yet another search tool. ok. If
| they didn't market themselves so aggressively in tech circles I
| think we would have all forgotten about this.
| growt wrote:
| 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]
| hellcow wrote:
| Firefox offers bottom UI on Android and supports ublock
| origin.
| growt wrote:
| When I tried it, it was crashing a lot.
| [deleted]
| smoldesu wrote:
| People want a browser with an ad-blocker, and are too lazy to
| configure it themselves. Brave adds it and starts some "tell
| your friends" marketing hype. The rest writes itself.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > People want a browser with an ad-blocker, and are too lazy
| to configure it themselves.
|
| It's always shocked me, but this really is the case.
|
| I make a habit to install an adblocker (if they consent)
| whenever using a friend's computer, and have had many thank
| me for doing so a week later, saying what a huge difference
| it is - but none had thought it was worth the "effort"
| before.
|
| ?????
| smoldesu wrote:
| The world of postmodern software really is confusing.
| bmarquez wrote:
| It's not just laziness. My elderly parents aren't technically
| inclined, and are quite stubborn to learn.
|
| After they were phished by a malicious banner ad, I told them
| to install Brave since the idea of browser extensions would
| go over their heads.
| bmarquez wrote:
| > What special thing do they offer that people actually want?
|
| Brave has iOS bookmarks sync with Windows, while preserving
| privacy (by not asking for an email to create an account).
|
| Firefox and Edge require an account, Vivaldi doesn't have an
| iOS app, Safari requires a separate iCloud install on Windows,
| and Chrome is a non-starter for privacy reasons.
| counternotions wrote:
| "Three times faster than Chrome. Better privacy by default than
| Firefox. Uses 35% less battery on mobile."
| smoldesu wrote:
| If we're trusting the lies they dump onto the website, that
| should make Safari the fastest browser! /s
| nwienert wrote:
| It is?
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Where is the lie? Independent researchers have found Brave
| to exists in its own class as the "most private" browser: h
| ttps://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf.
| Happy to discuss any concerns you may have.
| smoldesu wrote:
| That paper compares them to Chrome, Firefox, Yandex, Edge
| and Safari. _Of course_ your browser phones home less
| than them, it would be pretty damn hard to make a browser
| that _does_ beat them for violating user privacy and
| security.
|
| Brave isn't competing against those browsers though. If
| you want to impress people who care about security,
| compare your browser to options like Vivaldi and
| Ungoogled Chromium. Otherwise, you're just bragging about
| having less telemetry than the foxes in the hen-house.
| entropie wrote:
| > What special thing do they offer that people actually want?
|
| I tried every browser and was a long term chrome user. I tried
| brave and was immediately sold. I use(d) chrome/chromium (and
| recently used vivaldi) on 3 different plattforms. Brave is
| noticeable faster on every one. I use it for like 3 month now
| and _never_ looked back.
|
| Its a very pleasant experience for me.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Brave is noticeable faster on every one
|
| This is interesting, because in my experience Ungoogled
| Chromium/Vivaldi feels much snappier than Brave across my
| computers. Especially on older devices (like my trusty X201),
| Brave starts to really chug when I open more than 4 or 5
| tabs.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| When you notice Brave slowing down, check > More Tools >
| Task Manager in the browser to see which process(es) in
| particular are responsible. We're always happy to chat
| about how we can improve. Thanks!
| retzkek wrote:
| > I just want to browse the web
|
| Do you run an ad blocker? If so you mean you want to browse the
| web ad-free, as many people do. The crypto stuff you don't
| understand is the killer feature for Brave.
|
| Instead of seeing ads everywhere, you can automatically
| contribute a small (configurable) amount to sites you spend
| time on, based on how much time you spend there. Come across an
| interesting or helpful article on someone's blog? Just click
| the button on your toolbar and give the owner a tip. Same thing
| to support a GitHub project you find particularly useful.
| bsclifton wrote:
| Have you given it a try? The crypto-currency parts are optional
| (you have to actually enable them). Brave has got a solid
| adblocker and privacy features out of the box
| smoldesu wrote:
| Google's targeted advertising campaign is also optional, that
| doesn't make me any more comfortable with the fact that it
| exists.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| "Targeting" means something entirely different to Brave
| than it does to Google. Google engages in targeted
| advertising by collecting your data wherever possible.
| Brave doesn't do anything remotely like that. Instead, in
| Brave, the entire Ads component is optional and off by
| default. If/when you opt-in, your data never leaves your
| device. Instead, Brave uses on-device machine-learning to
| determine what types of ads you might be interested in.
| This machine-learning evaluates a regional catalog which is
| routinely downloaded to your machine--the entire process
| happens locally, rather than in the cloud. And, if an ad is
| shown to you, you get 70% of the associated revenue. I
| covered this a bit more in a recent 5-minute talk:
| https://youtu.be/LsrrT502luI
| phreeza wrote:
| I don't quite remember, but wasn't the cliqz search engine
| ranking function somehow built on tracking users, kind of
| contrary to what brave stands for?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Why should I switch to this from DuckDuckGo? What is the value
| proposition here that's somehow greater than it's alternatives
| (DDG, Searx, etc.)?
| jonathansampson wrote:
| DDG is a great search engine, and we are very thankful for the
| movements they've brought about in the private search space.
| That said, Brave is developing its own, distinct index. A
| recent example of what this means is from the "Tank Man"
| results on Bing recently. When Bing returned no results, DDG
| also returned no results. Brave Search, on the other hand,
| continued serving up results. As was stated elsewhere, "we
| aren't beholden to anybody."
| tomcooks wrote:
| Very curious on how this is going to work, especially
| advertisement-wise
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I'd be really shocked if it didn't tie to BAT in the Brave
| Browser, but I am definitely curious what they'll do for people
| who use it with other browsers.
| izzytcp wrote:
| Just like their Ads -> BAT
| 55555 wrote:
| They say it's their own index. That's amazing if true (I
| wouldn't put it past them to lie). It's super fast and the
| results (formatting, snippets, etc) look a lot like Google.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| What reason would we have to lie? Thank you for the kind
| words and support otherwise Please do let us know if there is
| ever anything we can do for you.
| pineconewarrior wrote:
| I imagine they will utilize the Basic Attention Token for
| search ads, in a similar fashion to the rest of their
| advertising.
|
| From the page:
|
| ---
|
| > Will I see Brave ads in Brave Search beta? What about Brave
| Rewards?
|
| > We're currently thinking through different search experiences
| to offer our users. Some want a premium, ad-free search
| experience. Others want a free, ad-supported model. We think
| choice is best. Brave Ads with rewards is definitely possible,
| once we're ready to take on the challenge of privacy-protected
| search ads.
|
| ---
| schmorptron wrote:
| Right, their current browser ads seem to promise privacy by
| doing some floc-like thing on-device and preloading a bunch
| of ads to potentially show so the server doesn't know which
| ones were shown. Doing that for a website seems a bit
| different, but I don't see an issue with the DDG model of
| doing some very basic targeting based only on the current
| search term.
| andyxor wrote:
| interesting paper by Brave search team:
|
| "GOGGLES: Democracy dies in darkness, and so does the Web"
| https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/goggles.pdf
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Shorter URL for anybody wanting to share:
| https://brave.com/goggles/
| zanethomas wrote:
| Also interesting search for 'jan 6' and compare. It seems Brave
| and Google return similar results which differ from Bing and
| Duckduckgo, which resemble each other.
| calpaterson wrote:
| This seems to be quick and gives decent results for what I tried!
| Very promising!
|
| Going to try setting it as the default...
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I believe that in the address bar you should get an icon to set
| the current site as a search provider when you're on it. On
| Firefox it's in the more menu at the right end of the bar.
| calpaterson wrote:
| It looks to me that that is currently broken due to
| https://search.brave.com/auth/assets/opensearch.xml
| redirecting to https://search.brave.com/. I haven't managed
| it on Firefox yet
| w0ts0n wrote:
| Edit: Try now, fix is out.
|
| we are working on pushing a fix out shortly. Stay tuned.
| calpaterson wrote:
| Sorted! Thanks!
| azinman2 wrote:
| I search to ask if brave built their own index. Relevant
| results up top, then I'm getting CNN article about Fox's right
| word shift, and all kinds of other completely unrelated items.
| Incidentally they all were interesting sounding (clickbait) and
| I found myself reaching these unrelated articles. It was a bit
| like browsing Reddit, except this is a search engine and I had
| a very specific yes/no question.
| louffoster wrote:
| I've been using it as default for few weeks. No complaints
| prepend wrote:
| More privacy-oriented search is a good thing, I think.
|
| I'd like more details on what they mean by private.
|
| I do like that they have a metric for what's independent vs
| personalized and I think that will help reduce the "I did Google
| it and my top result conflicts with what you told me" type
| frustrations, https://search.brave.com/help/independence
| Maksadbek wrote:
| It is yet another indexer or yandex :)
| isoskeles wrote:
| If they add bang operators, I might trial switching over from
| ddg.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| We have them today
| btdmaster wrote:
| It seems there is telemetry, sending the day, OS and browser type
| (among other things I cannot identify) by POST:
| https://archive.is/0NTrt
|
| It seems it can be disabled in the settings
| (https://search.brave.com/settings) but it's opt-out rather than
| opt-in.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| This is rather annoying, hopefully it will be opt in once the
| beta is over.
| mark_mcnally_je wrote:
| How have they gotten there search results?
| 55555 wrote:
| "Even supposedly "neutral" or "private" search engines rely on
| big tech for results. Brave is different. We deliver results
| based on our own built-from-scratch index. We're beholden to no
| one."
| kypro wrote:
| Why is this?
|
| I get that it's not easy to build a _good_ search engine, but
| on the surface it doesn 't seem to be that hard a technical
| problem to solve either. Is it simply that the R&D required
| to build something competitive is too high for most
| companies?
| twobitshifter wrote:
| There are tons of hurdles. For example, many major websites
| will block you if you are not a crawler owned by a few
| companies. They have to be in Google's index to survive,
| but that doesn't mean they allow everyone else to copy
| their content.
| Santosh83 wrote:
| I guess you can get 90% of the way, but the remaining 10%
| becomes really hard unless you're Google scale. But even
| several 90% alternatives would be better than absolute
| monopoly.
| Yoric wrote:
| Do not forget that Brave (the browser) was
| designed/marketed as part of the US Culture Wars, basically
| as a Firefox-but-for-Conservatives.
|
| Brave (the search engine) apparently follows the same
| strategy. The reason for having this index is basically
| political. Brave doesn't want to be impacted by Google or
| Bing's editorial choices. Of course, Brave Search will
| certainly be doing its own editorial choices.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Brave is just a browser. It exists to empower the user,
| regardless of their personal politics. On "editorial
| choices," we've proposed Goggles, which you can read more
| about at https://brave.com/goggles.
| ramesh1994 wrote:
| I think it is definitely a hard problem to solve on a large
| scale to address latency, quality and size of the index
| they plan to address. It definitely isn't as easy as
| spinning up an elastic search cluster.
|
| I agree that getting something "mostly" good or a domain
| specific search engine isn't as hard with the newest
| advances in this space with vector similarity indices.
| whydoyoucare wrote:
| I still prefer Iridium with its Quant search engine.
| drannex wrote:
| Qwant really has been a lovely search engine, highly suggest it
| for anyone looking for something better than DDG.
| swader999 wrote:
| Brave browser on android doesn't let me set it as default search
| yet. Maybe I need an update.
| dalmo3 wrote:
| Same here. Latest version. Kinda ironic.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| We'll have this fixed soon; apologies for the inconvenience.
| TheFreim wrote:
| I use Brave on android and I was able to set it. I think you
| have to do a search (or possibly go to settings on the site? I
| forget) and THEN follow the steps to add it. I thought there
| was an issue for a while but then I managed to get it set just
| fine.
| threatofrain wrote:
| How does Brave plan to handle relations with law enforcement and
| their requests? Will Brave offer a mechanism to uniquely identify
| the most offensive users?
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Not sure what you're referring to here; Brave doesn't have any
| user data. We don't collect it to begin with. We believe in
| _Can 't be Evil_ over _Don 't be Evil_.
| meibo wrote:
| Yet, you have no way to prove it - or is this product
| completely open source?
|
| Additionally, I believe OP was referring to requests for
| removal of search results that contain personal information.
| Both Google and Bing support these and will remove results in
| accordance with GDPR.
| threatofrain wrote:
| I'm really just asking for those who search up "criminal"
| content, as I remember Google being asked to give up the IP
| addresses of those who searched under a term in a specific
| region at a specific time -- but that still meant thousands
| of addresses.
|
| But I think your case is also worth adding to the
| conversation, although I don't believe removing results
| collides with privacy.
| open-paren wrote:
| Apparently, they have their own search index, which they say
| covers ~95% of queries, and if the results aren't in the index,
| it will then get it from Google or Bing.
|
| I'd love some more details on how this works. They probably
| aren't scraping the whole web. Are they just mirroring Bing and
| Google indexes? They seem to have their own page ranking
| algorithm that they're hoping to get trained.
| evdoks wrote:
| Check this recent podcast with Brave's founder, where, among
| other things, he is talking about how the search is
| implemented: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/modern-
| finance/id13386...
| gabrielsroka wrote:
| Non-Apple link
|
| https://www.modern.finance/brave-browser/
| bleachedsleet wrote:
| Never heard of this show before, but it got a new subscriber
| out of me. Thanks for the link to this!
| Zhyl wrote:
| In December '19 the company that would end up being acquired by
| Brave did a number of blog posts [0] where they explained the
| tech. The short answer is 'a lot of word2vec'.
|
| [0] https://www.0x65.dev/
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| why is Brave calling them Tailcat? The company was Cliqz, not
| Tailcat.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Word2vec has its limitations... I assume by now they've
| trained their own GPT-3-like model on the data...
| x4e wrote:
| Funny how their posts show such a different approach to their
| browser than Braves. E.g. forking Firefox not Chromium,
| implementing functionality as extension instead of in browser
| where possible...
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| > 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?
| toyg wrote:
| Chromium is _nominally_ open source - in practice it 's
| controlled by Google employees in any way that matters.
| So you would literally be handing full control over the
| web-experience to Google.
| aembleton wrote:
| Nothing would stop it being forked. If for example,
| Microsoft wanted something added then they could fork it;
| add their code and use that in Edge.
| x4e wrote:
| > all platforms
|
| Chrome doesn't even support all platforms. It probably
| wouldn't run on my car's display for example. If the web
| followed an open standard that wouldn't be a problem: the
| car manufacturer could make their own browser.
|
| And not everyone wants to use chrome/blink because the
| development is in practice entirely run my google who do
| not have consumer interests in mind.
| hawski wrote:
| This site works best in IE6 at 800x600.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Problem is, this means ceding what amounts to control of
| the browser, and so, the internet experience, to a
| privacy invasive megacorp.
|
| Were it a nonprofit trust, I'd be right there with you.
| But not a for-profit company, and sure as HELL not
| _Google_.
| rglullis wrote:
| 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.
| aloisdg wrote:
| > Evolution only happens when there is divergence and
| competition.
|
| Not when we can a have a logic stable and well made
| standard. Like the metric system. I am pretty sure that I
| would have a problem with any alternative to the metric
| system. The more we are to use it the better it become.
|
| Evolution can and thrive through cooperation and mutual
| aid. I would be fine with having one standard
| implementation of a browser engine if it was not rule by
| a greedy corporate like Google, Apple or Microsoft.
| open-paren wrote:
| I found the announcement blog post. Brave Search is a
| rebranding of Tailcat's product, which Brave acquired in March.
|
| https://brave.com/brave-search-beta/
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| @dang, this seems like a good candidate to replace the
| current link of this post.
| colesantiago wrote:
| I still wouldn't use it since it falls back to Bing or Google.
| vmullin wrote:
| Fallback can be turned off with an easy toggle in the
| settings: https://search.brave.com/settings
| jonathansampson wrote:
| 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
| counternotions wrote:
| What incentive do Google and Bing have to share free SERP
| data to Brave in an anonymous channel?
| jonathansampson wrote:
| They aren't sharing it with Brave directly, but rather
| with users. The query is issued via the participating
| user's Brave instance. This data then supplements what
| Brave Search has found, and assists Brave Search in
| presenting better results to that user, and others, in
| the future.
| gundmc wrote:
| This sounds like a dishonest way of bypassing payment for
| Google search API by impersonating a request from a user.
| twiddlebits wrote:
| I don't see a fallback mixing option on that page. Is it
| called 'Fallback Mixing' on that settings page? Also, these
| results are pulled from google and bing it seems for every
| query I do. seems like maybe some reranking is happening.
| And the query completions are from Bing. So you are sending
| everybody's queries to third parties. Not very private.
| andai wrote:
| > Note that choosing this option has no effect on your
| privacy. If you happen to have a Google account, Google
| will not be able to associate your query with this account.
|
| I'm confused about "routed through the browser" -- is the
| browser talking to Google directly, but without sending the
| login cookies, and then hoping Google doesn't associate
| searches from your IP with your identity?
| jonathansampson wrote:
| 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 enable the feature.
| bleachedsleet wrote:
| It does not appear that they are exposing all possible
| settings configs on mobile as fallback mixing is not shown
| as an option for me there. This seems like an oversight to
| me.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Fallback Mixing is only available to Brave on desktop and
| Android at this time. Apologies for any confusion.
| 1_player wrote:
| Why is it only available on Brave? Doesn't make any
| sense.
| Seirdy wrote:
| 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...
| smoldesu wrote:
| Even semi-independant seems generous. I probably would
| have just lumped them in with Google or Bing.
| Seirdy wrote:
| Some queries do actually return independent results, but
| the vast majority (in my experience) do not.
| solso wrote:
| Mixing with Google results only can happen after opt-in
| and only in Brave browser. You can see if a single query
| has been mixed clicking on the `Info`, or check the
| independence metrics on the `Settings` tab.
|
| The fact that you see results similar to Google for
| popular queries is a by-product of the fact that our
| ranking is trained using anonymous query-log. There is
| plenty of references to the methodology
| (https://0x65.dev/).
|
| The fact that we are similar to Google on certain types
| of queries, is good (at from the perspective of human
| assessment). It's easy to find other types of queries for
| which we are not similar to Google. It would be rather
| stupid if we were to "use google" on easy to solve
| queries but not on the complicated ones, don't you think?
| In any case, very nice article besides a couple of miss-
| conceptions (like this one), will bookmark.
|
| Disclaimer: work at Brave search, used to work at Cliqz
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Brave Search doesn't fall-back to Google; not unless you
| have enabled _Fallback Mixing_ in
| https://search.brave.com/settings/. Brave Search has its
| own index; the results may resemble those of other
| engines at times, but they aren't pulled from those
| engines (again, noting the exception of _Fallback Mixing_
| , an optional feature offered to the user via Settings).
| Seirdy wrote:
| 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 engines are nearly
| impossible to find for advanced /uncommon queries.
|
| 90% of queries being identical to Google but different
| from the 25 other independent engines is one hell of a
| coincidence.
|
| Archived example:
|
| Brave results for "gccgo": https://web.archive.org/web/20
| 210622172743/https://search.br...
|
| Google results for "gccgo" (proxied through Startpage): h
| ttps://web.archive.org/web/20210622172939/https://startpa
| ge...
|
| If this is a bug, it's very serious and needs to be
| publicly disclosed.
|
| Edit: more examples:
|
| Brave results for "oppenheimer": https://web.archive.org/
| web/20210622173647/https://search.br...
|
| Google results for "Oppenheimer" (proxied through
| Startpage): https://web.archive.org/web/20210622173658/ht
| tps://startpage...
| iudqnolq wrote:
| 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 right
| top set of pages.
| croddin wrote:
| If that is the case, what search engine do you currently use?
| x4e wrote:
| What search engine would you use then? This is what pretty
| much every alternative search engine does...
| andai wrote:
| Try our new Google alternative!
|
| * Powered by Google
| cj wrote:
| Presumably the fallback happens server side, and presumably
| the google/bing queries are cloaked so your IP isn't making
| it to google/bing.
|
| Curious why you wouldn't use bing/google even if your queries
| are "proxied" through Brave servers? (Assuming Brave isn't
| also sending your IP, etc, when they submit the query to
| google/bing)
| wutbrodo wrote:
| What do you use? Doesn't DDG use Bing as well?
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| I just tested an image search on Bing
| (https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=test) and Brave Search
| (https://search.brave.com/images?q=test) and it definitely
| appears that Brave is falling back to Bing as the results are
| highly identical, especially compared to Google
| (https://www.google.com/search?q=test).
| fatboy wrote:
| They mention that image search is 100% bing. Not sure if
| this is planned to be replaced by their own implementation
| later.
|
| "However for some features, like searching for images,
| Brave Search will fetch results from Microsoft Bing."
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| So, note that Brave brought in the Cliqz/Tailcat team to build
| this: While it's a "new search engine", I'm guessing the data
| and algorithms they were working on previously have all made it
| into this project at some point. Cliqz launched in 2015, so
| there's a number of years of work put in.
| ramesh1994 wrote:
| I would also highly recommend the blog post series [1] from
| Cliqz talking about the tech behind the search.
|
| [1] - https://0x65.dev/
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I was involved with the cliqz search engine and used their
| browser for a while. Great people with excellent integrity.
| [deleted]
| float4 wrote:
| What is the roadmap for localisation? I tried some queries that
| should give localised results, but they yield terrible results
| (just like DDG does).
| cweagans wrote:
| I really cannot understand why people go through the effort of
| building manual light/dark mode toggles in websites these days. I
| already set it system-wide. Just default to what I already
| specified. I see it all over the place and it boggles my mind
| when the user's preference is just a media query away.
| jtdev wrote:
| I've been using it. Seems like a solid search engine.
| Interestingly, Google appeared to be censoring results yesterday
| to hide reports about an unfortunate shooting at a Juneteenth
| event in Oakland and a subsequent situation where a crowd of
| people were blocking an ambulance from exiting the area of the
| shooting with wounded victims. Let's just say the story didn't
| play well to Google's political base... so they hid it. Brave
| search provided unfiltered/uncensored results.
| isoskeles wrote:
| Do events show up on Google _search_ that quickly, and in turn,
| get censored that quickly?
|
| I saw the video of what you are referring to on Twitter. Just
| searched on Google, "alameda twerking", and the first four
| results I see are for this incident.
| jtdev wrote:
| Well I'd be interested in hearing how Brave search was able
| to surface results faster than Google yesterday... YouTube
| (another Alphabet echo chamber) was/is also removing video of
| the ambulance incident, so it was definitely on the big tech
| thought police radar.
| matchbok wrote:
| I can find that story on google just fine. Please take your
| right-wing conspiracies back to 4chan bud.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I'm wondering how this censoring process you envision actually
| played out at Google. Like did an executive tell an underling
| to hide this information from the world? I'm genuinely curious.
| enumjorge wrote:
| I'm also curious what Google's "political base" is, since
| they're apparently getting final say on the search results. I
| keep getting Pinterest on my image searches and maybe the
| political base can help.
| jtdev wrote:
| Do you believe that Google doesn't engage in censoring search
| results? Do you know that YouTube was taking down the video
| of said incident yesterday and continues to do so today?
| https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/02/09/google-quietly-
| esc...
| matchbok wrote:
| Breitbart is not news, it's white nationalist facist
| garbage. If you think anything on that site is reliable,
| please go get educated. You providing "evidence" from there
| is embarrassing.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Hiding a news story like this specific example? No, I do
| not believe Google did that. Not for a second. That is
| absurd.
|
| How they handle possible spammers, people posting dangerous
| medical advice, etc is a bit different, no? I'm not letting
| them off the hook entirely, but this example is simply
| ridiculous. What benefit would they get from it, and at
| what risk? (i.e. disgruntled employee blows the whistle on
| their behavior)
|
| And really, Breitbart? Omg.
| nmx- wrote:
| Do you have other sources than breitbart?
| jtdev wrote:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/15/google-tweaks-its-
| algorithm-...
| zzyzxd wrote:
| 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 fine for 95% of time, but the
| remaining 5% failure often led to some extreme frustration that I
| just couldn't stand. I would imagine Brave Search to have similar
| issues, at least in the beginning, but they did something smart
| to make it less painful:
|
| > Brave Search beta is based on an independent index, the first
| of its kind. However, for some queries, Brave can anonymously
| check our search results against third-party results, and mix
| them on the results page.
|
| So, if I am not satisfied with Brave's result, Google's result is
| on the same page, or just one click away.
| lowkeyokay wrote:
| > I mean, DDG worked fine for 95% of time, but the remaining 5%
| failure often led to some extreme frustration that I just
| couldn't stand.
|
| Is 95% really not acceptable?My experience is quite different
| though. When I don't get the results I hoped I just use !g.
| Easy. But the result are rarely any better
| tobr wrote:
| I used to do this, but at some point I just stopped. Google
| is not better than DDG. More SEO spam and much more hostile
| UX.
|
| Brave has a culture of user-hostile UX too so I don't have
| any big hopes for this. I like the idea of paying for a
| search engine, though. I would seriously consider that if DDG
| offered it.
| burn wrote:
| Why not try Neeva? They are going the route of a paid
| search engine.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| For me it's random technical dumb stuff, like library version
| compatibility. Or a specific syntax I know exist but I can't
| figure out.
|
| Now when I don't find what I need, I double check with g! ...
| once every 2 or 3 times, google do find what I'm vaguely
| remember exist and is out there.
|
| Is never actual content, it's when I look for a specific one
| liner to copy paste and DDG do not deliver.
|
| I can live with that.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| It isn't acceptable, no. I tried Duck Search (aka Bing) for a
| couple weeks and in the beginning I wouldn't know that I
| wasn't getting the results I was looking for and eventually
| realized that the results just sucked compared to Google.
|
| I found myself having to second guess the results and then
| did a Duck / Google hybrid for a while, going to Google when
| I didn't get what I was looking for and eventually it was too
| much friction. I equate it with when I used to use two
| different text editors, one for speed (Sublime) and another
| (IntelliJ)for step-debugging because Sublime didn't have that
| part well implemented and it was just maddening to have to
| switch back and forth all the time and learn/maintain two
| sets of keyboard shortcuts etc.
| mbauman wrote:
| > When I don't get the results I hoped I just use !g. Easy.
| But the result are rarely any better
|
| This is exactly my experience. I have a "failed" search
| probably about a quarter of the time. Changing around the
| keywords can sometimes fix those failures... maybe about a
| quarter again are still stuck. So, yeah, ~5% failure rate. I
| inevitably try !g and am inevitably disappointed with
| effectively the same results (or lack thereof). Google
| successfully recovers a failed search maybe 10% of the time.
| mastazi wrote:
| > When I don't get the results I hoped I just use !g
|
| I use !sp instead, same results and no Google tracking
|
| (!sp searches on Startpage which in turn uses results from
| Google; according to both Privacy Badger and Brave Shields
| there are no trackers on SP)
| fowlie wrote:
| After using the duck for a couple of years, I have become
| better at two things:
|
| - Reading man pages or official documentation sites before
| opening a search engine
|
| - Thinking of more precise search keywords, as I got used to
| duck not helping me as much as google
| trts wrote:
| also: considering how far out in the long tail of search
| terms my query is, before choosing to go with the !g bang
| out of the gate.
|
| Google I find is still better for topics that are more
| idiosyncratic. But the bang syntax makes DDG a natural
| choice as default because many times I'll want to go
| directly to a specific domain search, e.g. !r or !nyt
| cturtle wrote:
| Along these lines I use ddg's bangs for the same benefit.
| So many searches for Python help are filled with very
| shallow intros on tutorial sites of varying quality with
| the official docs rarely the first result.
|
| Now I just prefix my query with !py and I'm immediately
| taken to the docs.
| truth_ wrote:
| > Over the past few years, I have made several attempts to
| replace Google Search with DuckDuckGo
|
| I have been using Startpage for a while. It's results are same
| as Google, but with zero tracking. But it puts (non-
| personalized) ads in results.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| You can't have something be zero tracking and paid since they
| need to know if you have paid and so need to be able to track
| you.
|
| I use DDG for my main search, but there is the !g (i think)
| that you can prefix a search with to get it sent to google
| through DDG.
| smsm42 wrote:
| If DDG works in 95% cases, just use it and use !google command
| on it when it misses the mark.
| mastazi wrote:
| or even better you can use !sp
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598042
| axaxs wrote:
| 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...
| judge2020 wrote:
| > I just don't want them advertising to me, or selling my
| data.
|
| You can get pretty close to that by buying YT Premium [if you
| watch YouTube] and using an adblocker everywhere else, and
| this gives Google the non-ad-based monetary incentive to
| profile your viewing habits to show you more videos it thinks
| you'll like without optimizing for Ads.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > 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.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| You should read The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=swMo1sK5ntk
| [deleted]
| axaxs wrote:
| > Then your data is worthless to them
|
| This is precisely the point. It should be worse than
| worthless, it should cost them money. And they should
| charge that to me, plus some nominal fee. I guess that's
| what I'm asking for.
| smoldesu wrote:
| The issue is that you're not describing a sustainable
| business model. Sure, it would be a much better situation
| than we have now, but you can't cover hosting fees with
| data bills.
| xpe wrote:
| If there was a broadly enforced requirement to pay users
| for their data, businesses would adapt.
| Closi wrote:
| Uh oh, someone better tell Microsoft that charging
| businesses for Exchange isn't a sustainable business
| model.
| squiggleblaz wrote:
| That's a strange argument. "If we pay you for the product
| you give us, we'll never be able to pay our service
| providers. Instead, we'll give sell it to someone else."
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Fyi. In Firefox you prefix your search with the engine you want
| to use. That is, DDG can be your start and you can conveniently
| use Google as needed.
| smoldesu wrote:
| DuckDuckGo does the exact same thing with shebangs. Brave's
| implementation is just less granular.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Brave Search supports the _Fallback Mixing_ option, as well
| as shebangs (e.g. !g, !a, !b, !d, !e, !yt).
| xpe wrote:
| They are called bangs, not shebangs. A shebang is #!
|
| > In computing, a shebang is the character sequence
| consisting of the characters number sign and exclamation
| mark (#!) at the beginning of a script. It is also called
| sha-bang,[1][2] hashbang,[3][4] pound-bang,[5][6] or hash-
| pling.[7] - Wikipedia
|
| > Bangs are shortcuts that quickly take you to search
| results on other sites. For example, when you know you want
| to search on another site like Wikipedia or Amazon, our
| bangs get you there fastest. A search for !w filter bubble
| will take you directly to Wikipedia. -DDG
| lopatin wrote:
| Just curious, why are you opposed to search ads? They are
| already targeted by your search query, so don't fundamentally
| rely on tracking data.
| toddmorey wrote:
| Honestly, ads clearly marked as ads and contained just to the
| results page would be fine.
|
| But in the race for better ad performance, they introduced
| tracking & retargeting & profile building while at the same
| time both minimizing the visual difference between ads &
| organic as well as nearly pushing organic of the first page.
| zzyzxd wrote:
| IMHO search ads are bad search results, and in 99% of time
| they are not something I would want to click. So they are
| doing nothing useful but only adding friction to my search
| experience. I am not against privacy friendly ads in free
| services, but if there's an option to pay to get rid of ads,
| I will pay.
| spullara wrote:
| Since the brave search results are so thin, maybe put them on
| the right to be less confusing.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I can't answer him, but there is a peace of mind not having
| ads talk (is not the right word) to you, even absent
| everything else. As in I can actually set my attention to
| something and finish a coherent whole without having to give
| any attention to ads.
|
| I didn't realize this until I installed Sponsorblock which
| got rid of the last ads I was seeing there. Suddenly I could
| focus on whatever they were creating and the video was
| talking about without having my attention diverted to
| something else.
|
| Maybe that is just me, but that is why I now mind ads.
| travoc wrote:
| Search ads have become visually almost indistinguishable from
| legitimate search results on most search engines, including
| DuckDuckGo. That's why I try to avoid them whenever possible.
| DuckDuckGo allows you to turn them off completely.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Since they're nearly indistinguishable from real organic
| search results, people click on them assuming the search
| engine found them the best result. This leads to two major
| problems:
|
| 1. Search ads are the primary source of malware and fraud on
| the Internet today. (Phishing emails are second.) Sites
| pretend to be other sites all the time, and to allow tracking
| and landing page behaviors, every major search ad provider
| allows ads to "lie" about the destination domain. So you may
| see an Amazon ad, it says it goes to Amazon.com, but actually
| directs through to realamazonlinkipromise.biz instead.
| Fraud's really profitable, so fraudsters win ad slots easily,
| and are adtech companies' best customers, so there's really
| little incentive to crack down on this.
|
| 2. Search ads use this placement as a form of extortion. If
| you run, say, Best Buy, you shouldn't have to buy search ads
| for "best buy", because obviously you're the best result.
| However, they have to, because if they don't, the search
| engine will sell ads to their competitors using their
| keyword, so people searching "best buy" get "Circuit City" as
| the top result instead. (Yes, I chose that reference in part
| because I don't want to shame any real current companies in
| this example for sleezy practices.) And since users click the
| top result (the ad), not the first organic result, Best Buy
| ends up paying for every click for every user who goes
| through Google/Bing/etc. to get to Best Buy.
|
| The second reason is why browsers are so obsessed with
| combining the search and address bars: They want you to
| search "best buy" or "bestbuy" or etc. because that's ad
| revenue, whereas actually typing bestbuy.com nets Google
| nothing.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Google only charges users once per user per click.
| [deleted]
| slver wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Hmm...
|
| > Brave Search beta is based on an independent index, the first
| of its kind. However, for some queries, Brave can anonymously
| check our search results against third-party results, and mix
| them on the results page.
|
| That's also what DDG does. If you don't like DDG, odds you'll
| like some even smaller effort are quite to zero.
| Dah00n wrote:
| > Brave Search beta is based on an independent index, the first
| of its kind.
|
| That's... an interesting way to put it. I can't really twist
| and turn it into the truth though. Smells like it was put
| through a lot of PR.
|
| >However, for some queries, Brave can anonymously check our
| search results against third-party results, and mix them on the
| results page.
|
| This is something almost all of the search engines outside
| Google and Bing does. DDG does this with Bing for example.
|
| As far as I can tell the only "new" in this will be that the
| same thing is done again by another company.
| unicornporn wrote:
| > I mean, DDG worked fine for 95% of time, but the remaining 5%
| failure often led to some extreme frustration that I just
| couldn't stand.
|
| So, just use https://startpage.com/ and get proxied Google
| results. Searx is another alternative.
| mrpf1ster wrote:
| 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.
| aazaa wrote:
| It redirects to Google. So the effect (including tracking) is
| identical to just doing a Google search.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| This is incorrect. _Fallback-Mixing_ , if you have enabled
| it (which requires Brave), issues an anonymous query to
| Google, lacking any cookies or other persistent state for
| that domain. These results are then presented along with
| Brave Search's own results. There's no tracking involved.
| If you perform a direct Google search, you're passing along
| your cookies as well.
| Semaphor wrote:
| The user was replying to using DDG with !g
|
| In an indirect way, it's possible by doing !sp on DDG,
| which redirects the search to startpage, which shows
| untracked google results.
| unicornporn wrote:
| Or you could just use https://startpage.com/ and get Google
| quality results 100% of the time.
| mastazi wrote:
| As I said in my other comment[1], you might be interested in
| using !sp which gives you the same results without Google
| tracking
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598042
| Dah00n wrote:
| Startpage is owned by an adtech company now.
| zzyzxd wrote:
| 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.
| the-pigeon wrote:
| Personally I find it pretty predictable which queries duck
| duck go will fail on. Basically very niche ones.
|
| So I just prepend based on what I'm searching for to begin
| with instead of after a failure. But I've also been using
| duckduckgo as my default for over a decade so I've gotten
| used to it.
| amoshi wrote:
| The !g can be almost anywhere in the query, it just can't
| be followed by non-whitespace or prefixed by special signs.
| freedomben wrote:
| This is what I wanted to say. It's a life saver on mobile
| especially. Just append !g to the query (or !gi for
| google images, !gm for maps, etc)
| gnull wrote:
| If you use Tridactyl, you can quickly jump to the search
| bar with "gi". That's what I do.
| tonyspiff wrote:
| you can easily create a command for it (and bind to
| key(s)): command ddgGoogleBang composite
| js (new URLSearchParams(window.location.search)).get('q')
| + ' !g' | urlmodify_js -q q | open
| smithza wrote:
| most browsers support <c-l> to hop the cursor to the url
| bar for searches or url entries
| fictorial wrote:
| / <c-e> !g <enter>
| jonathansampson wrote:
| You can use !g on Brave Search too, or turn on _Fallback
| Mixing_ in Brave Search Settings, which will anonymously call
| out to Google and pull in results as needed. This helps to
| train the nascent engine more rapidly. I hope this helps!
| JeremyBanks wrote:
| Is that legal?
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Why wouldn't it be? Google scrapes the web to populate
| it's results, why wouldn't other search engines scrape
| the web as well? Google is a website.
| SamBam wrote:
| It's not scraping static text in order to point you to
| those sites, it's using the features of the site to
| perform a service better than you can do yourself. It's
| completely different.
|
| If I made a site that claimed to help you with your math
| homework and simply sent the queries to WolframAlpha,
| that would also not just be "scraping."
| xpe wrote:
| This is naive. Web sites have various terms of service.
| therein wrote:
| Violating a website's ToS is hardly illegal, though.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Because Google's robots.txt disallows it, and those
| websites allow it.
| smsm42 wrote:
| robots.txt is not a legal contract. It's just a
| convention to express the wishes of the site author, but
| there's no legal obligation to follow these wishes.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| It does indicate that those other sites _want_ Google to
| scrape them, while Google does _not_ want others to
| scrape their results, which is an important distinction
| ocdtrekkie ignored for whether the scrapee will want to
| take legal action.
| mthoms wrote:
| It's just a redirect to Google.
| decrypt wrote:
| There seem to be two different features:
|
| 1. Redirection to Google.
|
| 2. Piping Google's results back to Brave Search's UI:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27594754
|
| The original commenter was asking about the latter.
| mthoms wrote:
| Ah, I see, Thanks for the heads up.
| decrypt wrote:
| I am not able to locate this setting. I am using Brave
| Search on Firefox. Is that available only on Brave Search
| on Brave browser?
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Yes, the _Fallback Mixing_ requires the Brave browser,
| since it pipes the request through the participating user
| 's machine (only if the user has first opted-in to the
| feature).
| 55555 wrote:
| They will definitely implement ads. They're an advertising
| company.
| fossislife wrote:
| "options for ad-free paid search and ad-supported search"
|
| https://brave.com/brave-search-beta/
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Nice, I would pay for it. Would make it a lot easier if the
| backend was #opensource though. Not saying I won't but it
| would make it a no-brainer.
| deadite wrote:
| Future post: "We have listened to our users, and we are
| removing ad-free paid search due to a lack of demand and
| [some excuses about how it's technically difficult to
| maintain it]."
|
| We'll see which comes first. That post, or "Our Great
| Journey."
| gigamatt wrote:
| I've been working on this private search engine
| https://private.sh/ for a while. It encrypts your query using
| client-side javascript so only the Gigablast search engine can
| read your query. And your query is delivered to Gigablast through
| an anonymizing proxy that is not in Gigablast's control. So you
| get TOR-like privacy. Also Gigablast's privacy policy
| https://gigablast.com/privacy.html shows that your query is not
| transmitted to 3rd parties or used for anything other than to
| return your results. Gigablast also has 0 dependencies on Bing or
| Google.
| [deleted]
| timvisee wrote:
| Why does this footer hide after the first page view?
|
| > Brave Search uses private usage metrics to estimate overall
| activity and performance. You can turn off this option in
| Settings.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Keeping the UI clean. A section and toggle exists for the
| feature immediately within the
| https://search.brave.com/settings page too.
| claytongulick wrote:
| I think the thing that excites me the most about this, is the
| non-personalized search results.
|
| Ironically, I end up using DDG for _more_ accuracy, because a lot
| of the time on Google I am unable to get to articles or
| information I 'm looking for, no matter how I search.
|
| I think this is a result of personalized search results - i.e.
| Google "guessing" based on ML models what my interests are. Many
| times I don't want this, I just want to see pages that use the
| more classic PageRank algorithm.
|
| Honestly, sometimes when I search it feels like Google is
| "preaching" to me in a way - rather than showing me what I search
| for, it shows me what it thinks I ought to be viewing. I don't
| get this from DDG, it feels like the results there are a lot more
| objective?
| blackcat201 wrote:
| If Brave is just another ad company (quote in their blog post)
| how is this different than Google?
| joemccall86 wrote:
| Not sure if it's the hug of death, but this search generates a
| 500: https://search.brave.com/search?q=Spring+Boot
| reed1234 wrote:
| Weird- spring+boots doesn't
| pythux wrote:
| Fixed now! Not a hug of death (yet).
| bsclifton wrote:
| Thanks for the report! :) Fix coming
| siproprio wrote:
| Why do they use > instead of /?
|
| It's Horrible.
|
| They also do not indicate when the result is a .pdf or a
| document.
|
| The best feature that google killed was advanced filtering. If
| instead of privacy brave gave me that, I'll sell my soul in a
| heartbeat!
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| There's only 1 page of search results, regardless of the search
| term. Why?
| pythux wrote:
| Not to be nitpicking, but we actually show up to 20 results
| (not counting infobox, videos, news, places, instance answer,
| etc.) in a single page, which would correspond to 2 pages of
| other search engines (they usually show up to 10 results per
| page).
|
| The idea is that most people will never go beyond first or
| (very rarely) second page. And as said in another comment, if
| you did not find what you were looking for in the top 20
| results, changes are you will not find it in following results.
|
| We do have plans for a feature which would allow community-
| based alterations of our core ranking algorithm which might
| help here. You can read about it here:
| https://brave.com/goggles/
|
| Disclaimer: I work on Brave Search.
| fiala__ wrote:
| this is to do with the philosophy of Cliqz (who developed
| what's now Brave Search) - if you can't find the results on the
| first page, you'll probably be better off changing the search
| term than paginating. I have no idea how reasonable that is
| though.
| codesternews wrote:
| "Why not Shown HN" :P
| twiddlebits wrote:
| This is just bing reranked with occasional results thrown in
| perhaps from their own index. Just look at the query completion
| suggestions, they are identical to Bing. If they had their own
| index they'd have a link to the cached copy.
| staticassertion wrote:
| 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.
| schmorptron wrote:
| They already do, at least partially. Adding !g to the end of a
| search redirects to google.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| 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!
| staticassertion wrote:
| Very cool - good to know.
| staticassertion wrote:
| > Update: We do support !rust as well (and all of DDG's other
| bangs).
|
| damn, alright, you got me. I'll try it out as default for a
| while
| rhizome wrote:
| "Shebangs" have been defined as '#!' for decades, I'd suggest
| they not be redefined.
| smoldesu wrote:
| 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.
| morelisp wrote:
| The "she" is specifically a phonetic clipping of the "#",
| otherwise it's just a bang - but oh well, even jargon
| doesn't mean shit anymore.
| detaro wrote:
| DDG generally calls them "bangs":
| https://duckduckgo.com/bang
| surround wrote:
| > In computing, a shebang is the character sequence
| consisting of the characters number sign and exclamation
| mark (#!) at the beginning of a script.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebang_(Unix)
|
| The word "shebang" has different uses outside of
| computing, but I can't find any use of the word that
| refers to a ! _without_ a #
| staticassertion wrote:
| Here I had assumed it was a Ricky Martin reference.
| nr2x wrote:
| At least they are trying to build an actual index instead of
| rebranding Bing like duck duck.
| Nicksil wrote:
| Bing is one of many sources from which duckduckgo derives its
| results; kind of like what's going on here with Brave's new
| search.
| corobo wrote:
| Do side by side comparisons. I haven't seen any of my
| searches (admittedly only the few I checked for this) differ
| from Bing's results in results or result positioning
|
| It's unfortunate really as the owner guy keeps saying they
| use multiple sources but in all of my tests.. they're all
| Bing. I don't care about using Bing, I do care about being
| deceived (slippery slope, thin end of the wedge, etc etc)
| lawl wrote:
| Not true. In practice I've found their results to be
| basically identical to bing and other bing front-ends. What's
| not from bing are the widgets like weather, or dictionary
| definitions etc.
|
| So imo, "many sources, bing is just one" is misleading, as
| the main SERPs are pretty much straight up bing.
|
| (Note: I've used ddg as my main search engine for years)
| Nicksil wrote:
| >Not true.
|
| https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-
| pages/results/so...
|
| >In practice I've found their results to be basically
| identical to bing and other bing front-ends.
|
| This is anecdote. Countering my argument -- calling it
| misleading -- with anecdote doesn't work.
| [deleted]
| lawl wrote:
| They pretty clearly only talk about instant answers
| there.
|
| When they say over 400 sources it _even links_ to [0] a
| page about instant answers.
|
| What do you expect? That I hack into ddg and give you
| their source? Try some searches for yourself and see that
| the results [1] are basically identical to bing [2] and
| other engines using bing[3], when compared to different
| indicies[4][5][6].
|
| [0] https://duck.co/ia
|
| [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=monkey
|
| [2] https://www.bing.com/search?q=monkey
|
| [3] https://www.qwant.com/?q=monkey
|
| [4] https://www.google.com/search?q=monkey
|
| [5] https://search.brave.com/search?q=monkey
|
| [6] https://www.mojeek.com/search?q=monkey
| Nicksil wrote:
| >They pretty clearly only talk about instant answers
| there.
|
| You seem to be dismissing instant answers when in-fact
| those are exactly what the end-user expects; that's
| search results: Type in a query, get an answer. What am I
| missing here?
| lawl wrote:
| > You seem to be dismissing instant answers when in-fact
| those are exactly what the end-user expects; that's
| search results: Type in a query, get an answer. What am I
| missing here?
|
| No, I didn't, and in my first post I also said they
| aren't from bing:
|
| > What's not from bing are the widgets like weather, or
| dictionary definitions etc
|
| I also said that I've used ddg for years. Presumably that
| had a reason?
|
| I said the main results are pretty much straight bing,
| and have now backed it up, about as well as you can
| reasonably expect me to. That's all there's to it. Please
| don't interpret more into what I wrote, than what I
| actually wrote.
| Nicksil wrote:
| I stated
|
| >Bing is one of many sources from which duckduckgo
| derives its results
|
| You stated
|
| >Not true.
|
| I then backed-up my statement with a source.
|
| You still haven't made clear what part of my statement
| was not true.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Obviously they're saying (correctly) that the part that
| isn't true is the part where you said the search results
| aren't directly from bing. And by search results they
| clearly mean the list of links wherein you click on a
| link and go to a webpage that matches your query.
| Nicksil wrote:
| >Obviously they're saying(correctly) that the part that
| isn't true is the part where you said the search results
| aren't directly from bing.
|
| This makes no sense. What I said is still there. I said
| that Bing is one source used to derive the results DDG
| returns.
| bilkow wrote:
| > They pretty clearly only talk about instant answers
| there.
|
| They talk about both, "traditional links" are not instant
| answers: "We also of course have more traditional links
| in the search results, which we also source from multiple
| partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from
| Google)."
|
| > Try some searches for yourself and see that the results
| are basically identical to bing
|
| I disagree on your definition of "basically identical".
| Google and Bing results (in a private window) are more
| similar to me than DDG and Google:
|
| Bing:
|
| 1. https://www.monkey.exchange
|
| 2. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cool.mon
| key.an...
|
| 3. https://www.monkey.cool
|
| 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey
|
| 5. https://pt.surveymonkey.com/
|
| (change page)
|
| 6. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cool.mon
| key.an...
|
| 7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0hyYWKXF0Q (TONES AND
| I - DANCE MONKEY (OFFICIAL VIDEO))
|
| 8. https://www.britannica.com/animal/monkey
|
| 9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_(TV_series)
|
| 10. https://www.monkey.vision/
|
| DDG:
|
| 1. https://www.monkey.cool
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey
|
| 3. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cool.mon
| key.an...
|
| 4. https://www.britannica.com/animal/monkey
|
| 5. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monkey
|
| 6. 2pchat.monkey.cool
|
| 7. https://www.livescience.com/27944-monkeys.html
|
| 8. https://a-z-animals.com/animals/monkey/
|
| 9. https://www.monkeyworlds.com/
|
| 10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTrnSJLXGBg (Mokey's
| Show - Is Not Christmas - YouTube)
|
| Google (after changing to english bc they don't respect
| browser prefs...):
|
| 1. https://www.monkey.exchange
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey
|
| (Videos links)
|
| 3. https://www.motociclismoonline.com.br/noticias/honda-
| monkey-... ("localized" news bc I can't get rid of it)
|
| 4. https://www.linkedin.com/company/monkeyexchange
|
| 5. https://motor1.uol.com.br/news/515705/honda-
| monkey-125-2022-... (also localized)
|
| 6. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cool.mon
| key.an...
|
| 7. https://hbr.org/1999/11/management-time-whos-got-the-
| monkey
|
| 8. https://www.britannica.com/animal/monkey
|
| 9. https://www.surveymonkey.com/user/sign-up/
|
| 10. https://www.surveymonkey.com/
|
| DDG has more "monkey" definitions than both Google and
| Bing, all have Wikipedia, all have cool.monkey (in
| different ways), Bing + Google have monkey.exchange and
| surveymonkey, the video's the same on Google and Bing,
| all of them have some unique links (such as monkey.vision
| and monkeyworlds.com)
|
| (Edit: formatting)
| tisthetruth wrote:
| Does anyone use StartPage? Is it truly privacy friendly?
| allyourhorses wrote:
| Based on the principles in the blog post alone (
| https://brave.com/brave-search-beta/ ), this will obviously be my
| new default search until it's proven sufficiently unusable.
|
| DDG's usability has always been a bit of a problem for me, it
| feels more like a perl wrapper over some search bookmarks than an
| engine in its own right. Will give this one a go for a while,
| there is literally every reason to try and few reasons not to.
|
| edit: holy crap Brave, c'mon, 13 CSS files and 15 JS files for
| the search result page? Cold cache case absolutely matters when
| you're trying to grow, sort it out!
| onli wrote:
| I used brave search over the last week or so. It worked well
| for me, with less failed searches than on DDG, which sadly
| often does not work for me for more local queries. It did not
| feel unusable at all.
|
| Note that I already liked cliqz before (properly evaluating how
| good a search engine is is hard, so that might have introduced
| bias).
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I going to try it, too, but I'm concerned that I only get 1
| page of search results regardless of the search term. Weird.
| [deleted]
| gbmatt wrote:
| I've been working on this private search engine
| https://private.sh/ for a while. It encrypts your query using
| client-side javascript so only the Gigablast search engine can
| read your query. And your query is delivered to Gigablast through
| an anonymizing proxy that is not in Gigablast's control. So you
| get TOR-like privacy. Also Gigablast's privacy policy
| https://gigablast.com/privacy.html shows that your query is not
| transmitted to 3rd parties or used for anything other than to
| return your results. Gigablast also has 0 dependencies on Bing or
| Google.
| tnorthcutt wrote:
| 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.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| 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.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Brave doesn't collect user data. We believe in _Can 't be
| Evil_ over _Don 't be Evil_.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| To be clear, I only mentioned 'data' generically and not
| 'user data' specifically. Its clear that Brave Ads collects
| data, even if _you_ don 't consider that data to be _user
| data_.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Define 'user data'.
| AegirLeet wrote:
| It's a browser with built-in cryptocurrency nonsense. That
| should tell you everything you need to know.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Yep. The fact that it even existed in the Brave browser at
| any point in time is enough to eternally dissuade me from
| using it.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| The BAT (and before it, Bitcoin) is there as an optional
| feature. It's not on or enabled by default. It's there for
| users who wish to anonymously earn rewards for their
| attention, and use those rewards to support content
| creators on the Web.
| smoldesu wrote:
| ...except those "rewards" don't ever reach the creators
| pockets, unless they're savvy enough to make their own
| ERC wallet and go through the collection process.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| "If a publisher has not verified ownership, then a user's
| contributions will be held in reserve inside the browser
| for 90 days. [...] At the end of the 90 day period, any
| contributions marked for unverified publishers will be
| released back to the wallet. No funds leave the browser
| except to go to verified creators."
|
| https://brave.com/faq-rewards/#unclaimed-funds
| smoldesu wrote:
| Case in point.
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| The only issue you have left with BAT is user education,
| got it.
|
| So thankfully the tech is solid. Now just UX polishing
| and onboarding.
|
| Personally, I think you're just being obtuse and looking
| for a problem.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| I have a few websites and receive payments from Brave Rewards
| almost every month. They pay me in BAT, but since I don't
| care about BAT or can use it directly, it gets converted to
| my local currency, which I then can use to pay for stuff.
|
| It's a mistake to assume something is nonsense or bad just
| because crypto is involved. Provided that you can convert it
| to something usable, it doesn't really matter if you're paid
| in dollars, BAT or something else.
| simonw wrote:
| How much are you earning? A few dollars a month or
| something more substantial?
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| A little over 800 BAT this year:
| https://i.imgur.com/p7o6QKT.png
|
| That's ~400 dollars at current BAT prices ($0.49) or
| ~1200 dollars at the price BAT was ~1 month ago ($1.50).
|
| It's not _a lot_ , BAT value isn't very stable and I'd
| make more money with Google Adsense, but this comes from
| users that block ads anyway. 400 is better than 0.
| tomstockmail wrote:
| That, and anytime there's a critical comment on hackernews
| their employee's come flying in to do damage control.
| Dah00n wrote:
| Yes, it happens in every thread about Brave. Full-on damage
| control at the smallest mention, which says a lot.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Seriously. For a privacy focused org to have these moral
| failings makes me skeptical they won't abuse users' trust in
| the future. I still don't think it's right to accept donations
| on behalf of someone you have no prior agreement with.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| That's a misleading way to frame it; Brave distributed BAT
| tokens to its users at the time (this was in 2018). We then
| asked those users to give (or "mark") those tokens to their
| favorite content creators. Some gave them to verified
| creators (who were shown with a check-mark, similar to
| Twitter), while others gave them to unverified creators (who
| had no distinguishing marks, similar again to Twitter). When
| the creator was unverified, the BAT (which Brave gave to the
| user) was deposited into a settlement wallet, waiting to be
| claimed (similar to how PayPal lets you email money to
| others). Needless to say, there were may naive UI/UX
| components in the product and process, and the community
| feedback that we acted upon (quickly, within a couple days)
| was phenomenal. Read more at https://brave.com/rewards-
| update/.
| SahAssar wrote:
| When comparing to twitter you fail to mention two large
| differences:
|
| 1. You don't donate to people via twitter.
|
| 2. The people on twitter actually signed up for twitter.
|
| If you actually think it was a mistake then perhaps stop
| defending it. If you don't think it was a mistake then stop
| explaining away to controversy by saying it was "naive
| UI/UX".
| opheliate wrote:
| I disagree with you that it's a misleading way to frame
| your company's actions. Even if users all knew that the
| creators had no relationship with Brave, the company was
| still accepting donations on their behalf, which is what
| the parent comment said.
|
| And to be clear, I'm _highly_ doubtful that the users were
| all aware that there was no relationship there. Framing the
| distinction as being between "verified" and "unverified"
| creators is disingenuous IMO: On any other platform,
| creators being "unverified" would mean they'd signed up,
| but just hadn't confirmed some details yet. The comparison
| of the check-marks to Twitter is also very strange,
| Twitter's own UI would prime users to think that a check-
| mark signified a notable user, not just any user who'd
| signed up. Whereas Brave's "unverified" users have no
| relationship to the company whatsoever.
|
| Perhaps this was all just naivete on the part of Brave, but
| it's very concerning to me that a company which
| (presumably) intends to become the de-facto method of
| monetising content could possibly be so naive as to how
| their actions would be perceived.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Didn't even realize the extent of the referral codes. Imagine
| if Chrome auto-inserted their own amazon affiliate links when
| people typed in Amazon.com - people would be up in arms.
| vntok wrote:
| Why would people be in arms? Seems like a perfectly fine
| thing to do. They are literally referring people with buy
| intent to amazon's deep product pages.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I've since clarified my comment, I meant if Chrome inserted
| affiliate links, not Google (search).
|
| For chrome doing it, the same applies to Brave as those
| people would have visited binance.us regardless of if Brave
| inserted their referral code link there.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| It's traffic attribution; Brave showed the affiliate option
| to users via a pre-search UI panel in the browser
| (screenshot: https://brave.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/06/image3.png). Users could then decide
| to use the top suggested result, or not. The mistake here was
| matching on fully-qualified URLs, as opposed to search-input
| exclusively (the intended behavior). You can read more about
| it here: https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-
| sites/. No element of this is malicious.
|
| As for what others do, traffic attribution is common. Open
| Firefox and perform a search from the address bar. Long
| before you press Enter, Firefox has already sent keystrokes
| off to Google.com (assuming you haven't changed your default
| search engine), along with a tag on the URL identifying
| Firefox as the source of the traffic.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The problem is that referral programs are intended to get
| people who wouldn't have signed up for a site to use it,
| and for binance that means getting people not already
| signed up to sign up and trade crypto on binance.us. This
| includes the referer getting up to 40% of trading fees[0].
| Even for the example where a user chooses between the
| search 'binance' and `binance.us/?ref=`, in both cases they
| were already planning to visit and/or sign up for the
| crypto trading site, Brave didn't do any referring
| themselves. The profit sharing aspect makes it far-removed
| from the notion of just being for traffic attribution.
|
| 0: https://support.binance.us/hc/en-
| us/articles/360047428793-Re...
| jonathansampson wrote:
| If you read the post covering the feature in Brave, and
| reviewed the screenshots of its implementation, you'd see
| that the intent here was to respond to user input, and
| _offer_ the user the option of using Brave 's referral
| link. The intent was never to _coerce_ users into using
| the link; it was merely presented as an option--a clean
| and clear way to support Brave development.
|
| It is still an example of traffic attribution, as is the
| case with Firefox sending your keystrokes to Google
| asynchronously (marked with the Firefox identifier). This
| is how Firefox continues to get paid, by sending users
| over to the Google search engine. In the case of Brave,
| this identifier was shown to the user prior to any
| network activity. That isn't the case with Firefox (and
| nearly every other popular browser).
| judge2020 wrote:
| If binance is fine with it then sure, but it's not like
| Binance is getting any extra sign-ups thanks to Brave
| from these suggestions, they're just giving up a
| percentage of their trading fees when it happens (the
| user would have signed up regardless of if you allowed
| them to use the optional referral code or not).
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Fair point. Agreed :)
| [deleted]
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| I do my best to avoid sarcasm, but but but... have you looked
| at other players in search?
| jonathansampson wrote:
| You make it sound like Brave has intentionally done wrong; that
| isn't the case. Brave is designed in every way to preclude
| abuse from the design stage, and with a _Can 't Be Evil_
| mindset, as opposed to the _Don 't Be Evil_ of Google. If you
| have questions about Brave, or Brave Search, we're always happy
| to chat.
|
| - 2018 Rewards Update documented at https://brave.com/rewards-
| update/
|
| - Affiliate Codes explained at https://brave.com/referral-
| codes-in-suggested-sites/
|
| - The Tor/DNS issue resulted from https://brave.com/privacy-
| updates-6/
| tnorthcutt wrote:
| I appreciate the response! I stand by what I said, but I do
| appreciate you adding your perspective and sharing links so
| that others can read what Brave as an organization has to say
| about these incidents.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > You make it sound like Brave has intentionally done wrong;
|
| They're not saying Brave did anything intentionally wrong,
| they're just big enough mistakes that it's not possible for
| them, personally, to trust the organization.
|
| > those are enough for me to choose not to trust them as an
| organization
| pmurt7 wrote:
| It's funny seeing all these folks nitpicking at Brave but who
| are fine using Google or Microsoft every day.
| Nicksil wrote:
| >It's funny seeing all these folks nitpicking at Brave but
| who are fine using Google or Microsoft every day.
|
| How do you know this?
| counternotions wrote:
| A likely monetization by Brave will be prioritizing search
| results for verified content creators within the BAT token
| ecosystem (a la Twitter check-mark).
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| Not that they're required to do so and more choice can be good,
| but why didn't they work with DDG? I see they've gone ahead and
| stolen the bangs (!w) feature for themselves.
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| DDG just uses Bing results. This solution is completely
| independent.
|
| You may ask why that's needed, just recently DDG was censoring
| the "tank man" photo on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square
| because Bing was censoring it.
|
| This new indexer is very much welcome and I hope it stays free
| of censorship from the CCP, marxists, and others.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| Yes that much is clear, but DDG has a privacy bent to their
| engine too. It just seems like working with DDG to remove
| that fault would be beneficial to both parties.
|
| If I recall, DDG chose to use Bing to remove Google from the
| equation but also prevent the need to reinvent the wheel.
|
| Brave for all their technological progress and talk about
| improving the web, often seem to promote only themselves with
| their advancements. They aren't required to share anything
| however. The parroting of bangs is just a bit hostile is all.
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| Bing and thus DDG's index really isn't that good.
|
| Is Microsoft an underdog now? Why do you consider them any
| better than Google, especially after the "tank man" fiasco?
|
| I don't see why it's a bad thing to make your own thing or
| to only promote your own company.
|
| Brave isn't reinventing the wheel either, they purchased &
| revived Tailcats from Cliqz (https://0x65.dev/)
|
| The bang operators are a small feature that are easy to
| implement, nothing special. Taking inspiration and features
| from competitors is nothing new.
|
| Even in this thread there was a user asking for them,
| saying they'd switch over if Brave implements them (they
| already have them obviously)
|
| I don't even think DDG came up with them first...
| toper-centage wrote:
| Did DDG have a trademark ovet bangs? That's just a feature that
| users expect. Other small search engine frontends have those
| too.
| pmurt7 wrote:
| Very impressed. Results seem already better than duckduckgo.
| [deleted]
| jppope wrote:
| Definitely worth giving it a try for a week or two. I already
| noticed that they put stackoverflow snippets right in the results
| which is fab
| staunch wrote:
| It's good for Google to have competition but they, or someone
| else, could just buy Brave and mangle or kill it.
|
| Turning web search into a _protocol_ is what is needed. Maybe
| Brave could do this by sharing their index and creating a
| standard system for sharing indexes, spam blocklists, and
| whatever else is needed to operate an open web index that
| competes with Google.
| dylkil wrote:
| it failed my first test of returning stackoverflow for a code
| error
|
| https://search.brave.com/search?q=null+pointer+exception
| jaflo wrote:
| Not sure if they updated it recently, but it pulls up all SO
| instant answer for me.
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(page generated 2021-06-22 23:00 UTC)