Brave does as the name suggests and takes the courage to replace google search as the default search engine of the Brave browser. The replacement, in case you haven’t guessed it already, is Brave Search.
Brave announced that it was developing a privacy-focused search engine in March and then launched it in June. Brave Search does not contain any tracking, user profiles, or reliance on other vendors, and has focused on competing directly with Google. Just over three months after launch, Brave believes its own search engine is ready to be the default engine for its own browser.
Brave’s desktop browser, Android and iOS version 1.31 apps all include Brave Search as the default engine and are available now. However, the change is limited to users in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France and Germany. Until now, the default engine in France was Qwant, and in Germany it was DuckDuckGo.
Back when Brave Search was first announced, Brave said it would eventually show ads, but a Premium version without ads would be offered. For now, Brave Search remains free and ad-free, but that will change in the “near future”, so you can take the time to give it a try and decide if it is a good enough replacement for the existing search engine of your choice. . . If you want to try it out without installing a new browser, just visit search.brave.com.
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To help improve Brave Search, Brave also launched the Web Discovery Project (WDP) this week. As the support page for WDP explains, “If you sign up, you will be providing anonymous data about searches and web page visits made in the Brave browser (including pages accessed through some, but not all, of other search engines). This data helps build the Independent Brave Search Index, and ensures that we display results that are relevant to your search queries. â€By default, users are unsubscribed from WDP, but you can enable it by opening the settings of the WDP. Brave browser and scrolling to the “Web Discovery Project” section where there is a toggle.
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