Brave Search No Longer Using Bing
Brave (via Hacker News):
When Brave Search launched in June 2021, about 13% of the queries required the help of third parties to achieve the desired level of quality across various types of queries.
[…]
By default, Brave Search users will now receive 100% of results from the Brave Index, giving users fully independent results. As always, our results will preserve user privacy. And this independence does not come at the expense of quality: Over the past several months, the Search team has drastically improved Brave Search’s ability to answer nuanced, long-tail queries.
For users who want it, Google Fallback mixing will continue to be an option. Users can continue to support the growth of the index and results quality by opting into the Web Discovery Project, and submitting feedback in cases where we should improve. And users can use Goggles to re-rank and filter results from the Brave Search index.
Their own index, based on Tailcat, is working better than DuckDuckGo/Bing for me now. Hopefully, Apple will add built-in support to Safari.
Previously:
- Brave Search Summarizer
- Google Gives Apple a Cut of Chrome iOS Search Revenue
- Bing Search API Pricing Increase
- DuckDuckGo Increases Protection From Microsoft Trackers
- Yandex CEO Resigns
- Kagi Search and Orion Browser Public Betas
- Discussions in Brave Search
- Brave Search Public Beta
- Brave Search
- Web Search Indexes and Ecosia in Safari
6 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
I use Brave because of its built-in privacy features (and the fact I think it's likely to continue supporting uBlock Origin after Chrome has disabled the APIs it relies on), but I don't particularly trust them enough to use their search engine.
I've used Kagi since it first went into private beta and have been a paying user since day 1 of public beta. Very occasionally I will have to pop open a Google search when Kagi fails me, but it's been happening less and less. Overall, I'm extremely happy with it.
@Kevin Do you mean trusting Brave in terms of privacy or in having a complete index? I have been trying Kagi, too, and I’ve found that it can be valuable as a “second opinion” if the others aren’t finding what I want, but it has not been good enough to be my primary. Also, the fact that it’s tied to a paid account makes it seem less private, despite their assurances.
It's beyond time for Apple to allow us to use any search engine we want in Safari. There really has never been a good reason to restrict to the specific built-in list.
I’ve been sending feedbacks to Apple for months asking them to allow Brave Search as a search engine. It’s a fantastic search engine.
The workaround I use for now is keyboard autocomplete !b expands to !Brave in the search bar.
@Michael Mostly privacy. I realize how insane that sounds when I have to trust them enough to not be poking holes in the browser itself, but for me it feels different. Also, there's something about not putting all of my eggs in one basket.
