Brave Search Passes 2.5 Billion Queries in Its First Year

Brave blog: One year ago, we launched Brave Search to give everyone online a real choice over Big Tech: a privacy-protecting, unbiased alternative to Google and Bing, and a truly independent alternative to providers -- such as DuckDuckGo or Startpage -- that rely on Big Tech to run. Today, Brave Search is exiting its beta phase. [...] Brave Search has grown faster than any search provider since Bing. Some numbers: 2.5 billion queries in the past 365 days, a high of 14.1 million queries per day, 5 billion queries annualized (projection based on current monthly totals).

Good.

[memory_register]

I'm all for more competition against the FAANG companies, especially if they have a free speech mindset.

Re:

[Bite The Pillow]

I read DuckDuckGo had a search decrease, it may be nin FAANG groups eating each other.

I tried Brave recently

[RitchCraft]

I still prefer no tracking and no ads at all. I tried Brave, meh. I still prefer Firefox with adblockers and other privacy blockers over Brave. Make a browser that removes ALL ads and tracking and I may be interested. For now I'll stick to a tried and true method.

Re:

[RitchCraft]

I really don't care about the politics of the whole thing. What I do know is that Firefox with Ublock Origin, Ghostery, Google Analytics Opt-Out Add-on, and ClearURLs installed makes the web tolerable in today's filthy tech world.

Re:

[sfcat]

Make a browser

The article is about a search engine, not the web browser. The article about the Brave web browser was yesterday.

Re:

[RitchCraft]

You are correct, sorry about the confusion. From my understanding though to get the most from the Brave search engine you should use the Brave browser as well.

Re:

[NateFromMich]

to get the most from the Brave search engine

I'm not sure what more you'd expect to get out of a search page than the results. Anything else they want to give you is probably something most people don't want.

https://search.brave.com/ [brave.com]

Re:

[Tony Isaac]

I recently switched from FireFox to Brave's browser because Brave does a much better job of blocking ads. It even blocks all those annoying "Please allow our ads" popups. Best of all, Brave blocks auto-play videos. I'm impressed.

Re:I tried Brave recently

[markdavis]

>"I recently switched from FireFox to Brave's browser because Brave does a much better job of blocking ads."

In Firefox, ad blocking is done as an addon, so it can't be "better than Firefox" at blocking ads, it can only be "better than X addon." And using UBlock Origin in Firefox, that is hard to beat.

Also, you have switched to a "yet another chromium" browser, which indirectly reinforces Google's control over the Web. Something not the case with Firefox.

>Best of all, Brave blocks auto-play videos. I'm impressed."

Firefox has been doing that for ages.

advertising

[awwshit]

It is important to remember that at its heart Brave is an advertising network. They can say whatever they want about privacy or how they purport to protect it, but without ads Brave does not exist. If you like ads then Brave is for you.

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[Neuroelectronic]

They must be providing some kind of privacy benefit though, what is their market??

Re:

[awwshit]

> what is their market??

Crypto enthusiast?

Re:

[sound+vision]

They seem to market it as a "lifestyle product" as much as a piece of software. Their browser, for example, doesn't seem to offer anything beyond Firefox with NoScript. If I was really, really afraid of seeing gay men or fat girls on Pocket, I could even turn that off.

Re: advertising

[ComputerKarate]

I use Brave search because I want unbiased search results. We know Google and bing hide what they don't agree with in the results. I use Firefox with Brave search because I am laz... Um I mean, efficient and don't feel like changing browsers.

Re:

[Tony Isaac]

I'm actually OK with that.

I'm not ideologically opposed to advertising. I just hate how far web sites have taken it. Without ad blockers, there are more ads than content, and they're all shimmying and moving around like football fans behind a celebrity, all trying to wave so TV viewers know "that was me acting like a fool back there"!

Calm it down, show a reasonable number of ads, keep them static, no auto-play videos, show some respect. I'm OK with that kind of advertising.

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[Thyamine]

Exactly this. There are also the malware attacks that occur because advertisers don't realize that a malicious ad is being delivered. I understand that in some cases it may be hard to detect, but it also feels like they just don't care enough sometimes. In that case, we have to take matters into our own hands to protect us, which means blocking their ad delivery.

How much in crypto was earned?

[backslashdot]

How much did they earn by involuntarily redirecting users to crypto sites of their affiliates? Heck how many of that 2.5 billion was via involuntary redirection?
Reference: https://www.theverge.com/2020/... [theverge.com]

I guess they have to make money somehow.

Re:

[ink]

We went out for Chinese food last week. Every single fortune cookie was a "cute" quip about how bad fiat currency is, and how awesome crypto is. The fucking cookies were sponsored by some crytpo company called "FTX".

It's everywhere now.

Re:

[garett_spencley]

For full context this is Brave's explanation and apology:

https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/ [brave.com]

Completely up to the reader who to trust and what to make of the news articles and/or Brave's side of it.

Sounds impressive.

[thegarbz]

Except Google does over twice that in a single day.

Re:

[garcia]

This is the context which should have been added to the blurb IMHO. Over the course of 2021, Google was doing ~5.6B per day.

While 2.5B in a year is admirable, particularly because competition in the search space is incredibly important; Brave isn't even making a dent.

Privacy focussed

[backslashdot]

They are privately focused on selling your info. References: https://www.coindesk.com/tech/... [coindesk.com] and https://ebin.city/~werwolf/pos... [ebin.city]

Re:

[greytree]

In view of the above, particulary this evisceration of Brave's lies https://ebin.city/~werwolf/posts/brave-is-shit/

Maybe Msmash could come back here and explain why she posted this story without comment on Brave's lies ?

Re:

[Tony Isaac]

There is no privacy on the web. Brave may be selling my info, but so is everyone else. I use Brave because it's a great ad blocker, and it blocks auto-play videos.

Re:

[markdavis]

>"There is no privacy on the web. Brave may be selling my info, but so is everyone else.

Depends on how you use a browser and what addons and how it is configured. But yes, most everyone is ATTEMPTING to sell your info.

>"I use Brave because it's a great ad blocker, and it blocks auto-play videos."

Both of which Firefox does, and without reinforcing Google's control over the structure of the Web (because, unlike Brave Browser, and Chrome, and Edge, and Opera, and, and, and, it is not based on Google's C

Re:

[Tony Isaac]

No, there is no privacy on the web, regardless of your configuration and addons. As a web developer, I can track you even if you use noscript, by using URL query strings with ID numbers embedded in them. You can hide your IP address using a VPN (are you doing that?), but if you go to enough affiliated sites (and they are all affiliated these days), they can still put the pieces together to identify you. The only way to not be tracked on the web, is to not use the web, AND not use a cell phone.

And those clai

Re:

[groebke]

Would the tracker removers not catch this before the affiliated sites is parsed prior to being visited?

Re:

[Tony Isaac]

Catch what? The tracking removers look for cookies. To track you, it isn't necessary to use cookies. Something as simple as an image URL can track you:

www.website.com/image.jpg?31415927

The number may have no purpose other than to track you, because you're the only person who gets that number. There are all kinds of creative ways to bury tracking numbers in URLs referenced by web pages. The tracking blocker can't always tell whether the number is significant for the operation of the web site, or not.

Re:

[groebke]

Diabolical!

Re:

[groebke]

So, assuming the base image is there, 'www.website.com/image.jpg,' stripping off the '?31415927' should be possible. Probably what that the Tracking Token Strippers do, right?

Too bad they're shady

[ninsega]

They are sketchy as hell and it is mostly sketchy people that push that browser...

But Why?

[logicnazi]

I have the same concerns as anyone else about the monopolistic power of big tech but I don't understand this idea that somehow you are preserving your privacy by using companies that don't use your information to target ads or build up profiles.

I mean neither the ads themselves or the kind of things they currently try to predict with them seem particularly invasive. What disturbs people isn't the actual targeting of the ads but the fact that it reveals that these companies have these huge troves of informa

A long way to go

[Tony Isaac]

Google processes 5 billion searches...per day.

https://blog.hubspot.com/marke... [hubspot.com].

isnt Brave produced by the FBI?

[bonedonut]

seems all the Super Privacy Rights browsers, phones, et al always have connections to law enforcement.

That's really not much

[juancn]

Google processes 5.6 billion per day as a comparison, heck I maintain an analytics engine at work that runs close to ~12B a year.