Brave – the Chromium-based, privacy-focused and openness web browser company acquired “Tailcat” last year. It used to be an open source European search engine, and now that it has been rebranded as Brave Search, the team behind it is trying to tackle Google search to deliver a more user-centric experience. user than the tech giant.
The the idea was to build a service from scratch that would return search results for individuals without the targeted advertising or malicious algorithms often offered by businesses. You can read all about the team’s ambitions in their academic document.
Now, Brave Browser itself has made the decision to remove the default Google search to find information instead of Brave Search, and well, that’s a brave move. The CEO says the default search engine set to his will dramatically increase adoption rates for those who use his browser. In addition, the Web Discovery Project has also been introduced, which allows users to share specific data with the company without compromising their privacy. Essentially, this data would be anonymous and would lack clear identifiers. It is also completely optional.
I tried Brave Search, and it comes at a cost. I found it much less useful for autocomplete, correcting searches, and finding relevant information than Google. I guess it will take time for the company to sort out these issues. For example, I wanted to try a delicious Korean hotteok, which is a pancake often filled with nuts, brown sugar, and / or syrup, but forgot how to spell it because I’m an uncultured pork. Google would have detected this and fixed it for me, but with Brave I had to know the exact spelling and nothing less than food.
As Google continues to come under scrutiny by the courts for its advertising practices, more and more competitors like Brave will certainly emerge in an attempt to serve users. Apple itself has reportedly been working on its own search engine to compete with Google’s, but it remains to be seen whether any of them will have stamina.
Google has been at the forefront of information technology for decades, even going far beyond linking back and implementing artificial intelligence and machine learning to better understand the relationship between humans. and computers. I need to do more research on Brave, but if a rival is hoping to take on Google, they’ll have to do a lot better than only returning little blue links like Google did a decade ago.
