from the strap-on-my-goggles-and-I'm-ready-to-go dept.
Privacy-focused Brave Search grew by 5,000% in a year:
Brave Search, the browser developer's privacy-centric Internet search engine, is celebrating its first anniversary after surpassing 2.5 billion queries and seeing almost 5,000% growth in a year.
To celebrate this success, Brave Software announced that Brave Search is finally exiting its beta phase and will become the default search engine for all users of the Brave browser.
Additionally, a new search results curation feature called "Goggles" will be released in beta and made available to those who wish to test it.
[...] Brave says that independence has remained at the epicenter of the company's focus, with Brave Search users receiving 92% of their queries directly from Brave's independent search index rather than through Bing and Google indexes.
"Search engines that depend too much or exclusively on Big Tech are subject to censorship, biases, and editorial decisions," explains Brave in the blog post.
"Brave Search is committed to openness in search. It does not manipulate its algorithm to bias, filter, or down-rank results (unless it's compelled by law to do so)."
[...] "Goggles" is a feature that allows Brave Search users to customize how search results are ranked, setting custom preferences and priorities.
For example, users may favor results from small news blogs instead of large media outlets, so instead of looking through multiple search result pages, they can create a Goggle for it and have these results rank higher.
[...] A white paper gives more details about Goggles, including examples of excluding the top 1,000 most popular domains for any search term and excluding product reviews with commercial backing.
With Goggles, users can get highly curated search results that would be otherwise impossible in the context of a search engine that doesn't log queries for user profiling and tracking.
[...] While there's a chance of Goggles being misused for creating disinformation and isolation bubbles, these unique "search filters" are poised to bring more benefits than risks to the community in general.
If the purpose of Goggles is to curate and limit results to certain domains, I would think the odds are very good that it will create isolation bubbles if used for generic web browsing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24 2022, @01:54AM (3 children)
Meanwhile, all I get in my software manager is Gnome-brave-icon-theme, Shike-brave-theme and com.brave.browser with zero reviews. Let me know when it's available for Mint.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Friday June 24 2022, @02:25AM
https://www.linuxfordevices.com/tutorials/linux/brave-browser-in-linux-mint [linuxfordevices.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by liar on Friday June 24 2022, @04:29AM
I got Brave browser to work on my TCL android T.V. by downloading the apk onto a usb thumbdrive...
Noli nothis permittere te terere.
(Score: 4, Informative) by stretch611 on Friday June 24 2022, @12:59PM
uhhh...
I have been using brave on linux mint for over 2 years now.
From: https://brave.com/linux/ [brave.com]
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24 2022, @02:06AM (2 children)
"Privacy Search" is an oxymoron. No explanation necessary if you have an ounce of brain.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24 2022, @02:25AM
Exactly. Parent here, too burnt out to login.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 24 2022, @03:59PM
That's O.K. because "Brave" searchers who need to skulk around behind privacy curtains also are an oxymoron - double negative makes a positive?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24 2022, @02:33AM
Where does the profit come from? What's the markup for the middle man?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24 2022, @02:42AM
I wasn't too impressed when I first tried it, but it looks better now. I have it in the rotation along with Startpage, Metager, and Bing.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday June 24 2022, @05:15AM (1 child)
Just bear that in mind when you use Brave Browser, Brave Search or anything.
Or, like Google, Brave may be true to their word now, but they'll turn full-on nasty at some point or other, because the lure of big data money will be too great. You know, don't be evil - until you are...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Opportunist on Friday June 24 2022, @09:14AM
They could well still be in the "build a customer base" phase where they actually pretend to be nice.
And when they start milking it, just move on. By then, someone else will be "privacy concerned" enough to start something like it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24 2022, @06:05AM (5 children)
So from 2 to 102?
Brave’s funding and model are sus to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24 2022, @09:57AM
Not surprising at all, there's 100 suckers who'll sign up for a free serving of their BAT crypto-token.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Friday June 24 2022, @10:52AM (3 children)
Plants in my garden grew 10000 % in the last week.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24 2022, @01:25PM (1 child)
is there anyway to get your plants to talk to my bank account?
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Friday June 24 2022, @05:15PM
Just please keep them away from mine.
I don't want my negative amount of money to be multiplied by a large number.
(Score: 3, Informative) by corey on Friday June 24 2022, @10:51PM
I always find media percentages amusing. 5000% is 50x. If Brave’s search engine had say 1000 searches a day, now it’s 50,000 searches. Ok. That’s some growth but not like the big guys with millions every minute. Your analogy of plant growth is apt. The wind outside yesterday was 5000% higher than the calm day before it.