Brave is a web browser that places an emphasis on privacy, with built-in features that block ads, trackers, and other scripts. Now the folks behind the Brave browser are launching something new – a privacy-focused search engine.
Brave Search is now available in beta, and you can access it from within the brave browser or by visiting the Brave Search website in any browser.
While this isn’t the first search engine designed to protect users’ privacy, rival DuckDuckGo relies heavily on Microsoft’s Bing for search results. Brave Search is “built on top of a completely independent index,” although it too will leverage Bing for some features like image search.
The Brave web browser has been around for more than five years at this point, and has about 32 million active users. I find some of the company’s strategy a little odd (users can enable opt-in ads in the browser and choose to share revenue with publishers. I just realized I’ve got about $30 worth of credit from visitors to this website, if I ever set up a crypto wallet for Brave to transfer it to, so… thanks?).
We first learned that the company was planning to enter the search market earlier this year when Brave acquired Cliqz, a privacy-focused browser & search company.
At this point, Brave Search is free to use and free of all trackers. The company says doesn’t build profiles of users.
For now it’s also an ad-free experience, but in the future Brave plans to start showing ads to users. The company will also offer ad-free searches to paying customers though.
That might seem a bit ironic from a company that includes an ad blocker in its web browser, but Brave does focus on ads that do not track user data if that makes you feel any better.
via Brave Blog