[HN Gopher] Brave is launching its own search engine with the he...
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Brave is launching its own search engine with the help of ex-Cliqz
devs and tech
Author : quick_brown_fox
Score : 156 points
Date : 2021-03-03 14:40 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| rasengan wrote:
| That's pretty cool. I like Brave, and Brendan and his team are
| doing great things over there. Brave is absolutely faster than
| Chrome, and I believe everyone here on HN considers Brendan a
| hero once they discover what he's created.
|
| The search space absolutely needs more participants which will
| only help the experience for all internet users worldwide. This
| is very exciting for the search space.
|
| I'm also involved in this space so I wanted to let the Brave team
| know - if you're interested in collaborating in any way with
| Private Search [1] I would love to chat.
|
| [1] https://private.sh
| stephenr wrote:
| > I believe everyone here on HN considers Brendan a hero once
| they discover what he's created.
|
| Nope
| pmurt7 wrote:
| Brendan Eich? Netscape, Firefox, JavaScript... and now Brave!
|
| He is a legend of the Internet you idiot!
| matesz wrote:
| Don't forget about Ted Nelson ;)
| stephenr wrote:
| I know what he's done.
|
| Does it offend you so much that I don't consider him a
| "hero"?
|
| Idiot indeed.
| nperez wrote:
| I'm with you on it. I respect his work. I actually like
| Javascript. I think considering him a hero is a bit of a
| stretch. I don't think that's unreasonable.
|
| HN is really not a fun place to express left-leaning
| views tbh (or any political views, for that matter), but
| I feel how I feel.
| chartpath wrote:
| Yep, and he is against gay marriage.
| mosselman wrote:
| Source?
| chartpath wrote:
| https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/28/after-supporting-
| prop-8-br...
| stephenr wrote:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26868536
| rasengan wrote:
| Regardless, I'm not sure what that has to do with his
| contributions of code and product.
| kube-system wrote:
| It has nothing to do with that, but could have something
| to do with whether a person would consider someone a
| hero.
| stephenr wrote:
| It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it.
|
| I simply refuted the claim that everyone considers him "a
| hero".
| jjcon wrote:
| So was Obama until halfway through his presidency but we
| don't put scarlet letters on him... as a gay dude I'm
| sick of us branding people all the time... the dude is a
| legend no if's ands or buts
| stephenr wrote:
| I'm sick of people elevating people on ridiculous
| pedestals - calling them hero's and legends - and then
| getting upset when other people expect said "legend/hero"
| to <checks notes> not be a bigoted homophobe.
| jjcon wrote:
| Inflammatory language like that isn't suitable for HN - I
| hardly think donating to a org that supports a political
| proposition opposing gay marriage qualifies as 'bigoted
| homophobe' - but if your hatred keeps you going... carry
| on
| chartpath wrote:
| What? Yes we do, see drone strikes [0].
|
| As a paranoid citizen I don't trust people with my
| privacy if they get off on punching down at other
| people's freedoms. Simultaneously I agree that Eich built
| some interesting technology. Just like Obama started to
| put a dent in mass incarceration [1].
|
| [0] https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2017-01
| -17/oba...
|
| [1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
| politics/2017/1/6/14189862/ob...
| jjcon wrote:
| How are Obama sanctioned drone strikes at all comparable
| to a scarlet letter?
| barnesto wrote:
| Point to the sanction that let him drone strike US
| citizens
| pmurt7 wrote:
| "Think different" is so 1980, now it's "Think right". The
| thought police is ruining tech.
| caslon wrote:
| He created a terrible programming language and a browser that's
| slower than Safari and risks the privacy of its users with
| half-considered Tor implementations; he also made Mozilla,
| which has been doing more harm than good since long before he
| left it.
|
| What exactly is legendary about Eich?
| rasengan wrote:
| JavaScript is spectacular and has reshaped our world for the
| better. I'm sure there will be improvements, but he pioneered
| this movement. This deserves respect.
|
| Brave is a new browser and will continue to improve. Take a
| step back and look at history - when has there ever been
| something awesome that simply was always awesome without
| bumps along the way?
|
| Finally, while some of Mozilla's more recent decisions have
| been brought to light on HN, during Brendan Eich's tenure, I
| assure you we all loved it.
|
| I salute the little guy taking on the big guy. Now, that's
| _Brave_.
| caslon wrote:
| > JavaScript is spectacular and has reshaped our world for
| the better.
|
| It made popular language design even _worse._ It also can
| 't be implemented efficiently or quickly, and on its own
| more than likely contributes to a sizeable portion of world
| carbon emissions.
|
| > but he pioneered this movement.
|
| What movement? The "worse languages than R6RS" movement?
| That's been going on for a long time; he didn't start it,
| he'll be long-gone before it's finished.
|
| > This deserves respect.
|
| There are plenty of people who have made programming
| languages. Few people have created as bad a language as
| Javascript. It deserves no respect.
|
| > when has there ever been something awesome that simply
| was always awesome without bumps along the way?
|
| CHIP-8. Plan 9. Inferno. Anything that Chuck Moore touched
| for the first forty years of his career. Gopher, up until
| the organization that owned Gopher decided to make it
| proprietary. Most of the things Alan Kay has released. VAX.
|
| > during Brendan Eich's tenure, I assure you we all loved
| it.
|
| You're speaking collectively but your perspective is flawed
| and easy to prove as wrong. I didn't, for example. Nor did
| anyone who actually cared about freedom: Mozilla allowing
| DRM into Web standards permanently was incredibly close if
| not during Eich's tenure, and Mozilla had already been
| doing most of everything wrong before that.
|
| > I salute the little guy taking on the big guy.
|
| The little guy is Ekioh. Not someone repackaging Chromium
| with a few half-working extensions and a new UI.
| rasengan wrote:
| You're entitled to your opinions, and I think they are
| beautiful. Sometimes, people will have different opinions
| based on their own experiences and based on what factors
| they are looking at.
|
| Regardless of everything you're saying here, you still
| use Firefox, so I know you respect Brendan.
|
| We're probably not going to get anywhere arguing about
| the importance of a programming language, etc., but thank
| you for this conversation and sharing your thoughts, as
| it did open up my eyes to differing opinions.
|
| Cheers!
| caslon wrote:
| > so I know you respect Brendan.
|
| I really don't. Eich didn't make Firefox. I have respect
| for the three people who _did_ make Firefox, but none for
| Eich. Eich hasn 't done anything to earn respect.
| crazypython wrote:
| > It made popular language design even worse. It also
| can't be implemented efficiently or quickly, and on its
| own more than likely contributes to a sizeable portion of
| world carbon emissions.
|
| V8 JIT is pretty efficient. It's not perfect, but Eich
| designed JS with JITs in mind.
| caslon wrote:
| "pretty efficient" = slower than CCL and SBCL,
| implementations of a language that by-design isn't fast
| to begin with.
| gidam wrote:
| Brave has a long way to go to build real trust. Too many reckless
| stuff: hijacking links, suspicious url-rewriting, crypto-token
| stunts, forgetting to communicate with users about serious
| privacy leaks with their faulty TOR window... also it looks like
| they care about privacy only in their PR brochures.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Rebranded chrome with cryptocurrency / blockchain tech is all I
| see of it when someone mentions Brave.
| Zhyl wrote:
| For those who missed it, Cliqz did a very in-depth series of blog
| posts on their tech [0]. Basically, it was "word2vec: The Search
| Engine".
|
| It was actually very impressive in terms of semantic
| understanding, but the index was pretty awful. I either got
| exactly what I was looking for, or no hits at all. I can imagine
| that they'd get massive value by focusing on more information-
| rich natural language sources and de-prioritising images or
| structured/knowledge queries for the time being. Some good
| partnerships to provide instant answers a-la Duckduckgo's goodies
| would be excellent.
|
| I also can't express how much better the Brave brand will be for
| them - even 'Tailcat' is a much better name. Cliqz sounds too
| much like an off-brand, gutter ad seller to ever have
| credibility, and I say that as someone who was fairly impressed
| with their tech.
|
| I am worried that they're currently pitching this as a general
| purpose search engine at the moment when it will be a _while_
| before it can even pretend to compete with Google. I would advise
| for them to find a niche where they can whip Google into next
| week, and then expand on scope from there.
|
| [0] https://www.0x65.dev/
| abhinavsharma wrote:
| I think the most interesting idea here is that of Goggles,
| filters like
|
| - trusted product reviews - left biased media/right biased
| media - my cooking sites.
|
| This is something we've been doing for a while in Insight (YC
| W19) (https://insightbrowser.com/) and our users really like
| creating and sharing them. They work on top of Google, DDG or
| whatever your search engine is. We suggest useful filters as
| well.
|
| It's cool to see that idea proliferate -- it could be a part of
| every search/browsing experience soon. All modern search
| engines try and guess intent that that's an increasingly
| difficult guess to get right.
| jarcane wrote:
| "Cliqz sounds too much like an off-brand, gutter ad seller to
| ever have credibility, and I say that as someone who was fairly
| impressed with their tech."
|
| That's because they were. The parent company was in adtech and
| they even had another subsidiary that was hawking browser
| toolbars.
|
| Frankly though, the Brave brand has no better reputation with
| me however, so it still means seeing whatever promise the tech
| might've had consigned to the same headspace as the rest of the
| scamweb.
| api wrote:
| > hawking browser toolbars.
|
| Ahh yes, the lowest circle of adtech hell. I didn't know that
| kind of annoyware was even still a thing.
| themolecularman wrote:
| > Frankly though, the Brave brand has no better reputation
| with me however, so it still means seeing whatever promise
| the tech might've had consigned to the same headspace as the
| rest of the scamweb.
|
| Can I ask why? I've been de-googling my life and recently
| switched from Chrome to Brave.
| terhechte wrote:
| I think it is because they're also behind BAT which is a
| cryptocurrency.
| caslon wrote:
| The Brave brand is nearly worthless. I'm not sure how to feel
| about that. They're releasing their new search engine as free
| software, which is nice, but their long history of messing
| even the simplest of things up still leaves a sour taste in
| my mouth. I wonder if they'll ever work themselves out of the
| "le shill lion" moniker. Probably not. Though with this new
| search engine attempt, they might finally give up on
| cryptocurrency, which would be nice.
| carbotaniuman wrote:
| Brave's cryptocurrency is the only reason millions of
| people use it.
| ac29 wrote:
| Perhaps, but for many others a business model of "___,
| but with crypto!" is a huge turn off.
| abhinavsharma wrote:
| I think the most interesting idea here is that of Goggles,
| filters like
|
| - trusted product reviews - left biased media/right biased media
| - my cooking sites.
|
| This is something we've been doing for a while in Insight (YC
| W19) (https://insightbrowser.com/) and our users really like
| creating and sharing them. They work on top of Google, DDG or
| whatever your search engine is. We suggest useful filters as
| well.
|
| It's cool to see that idea proliferate -- it could be a part of
| every search/browsing experience soon. All modern search engines
| try and guess intent that that's an increasingly difficult guess
| to get right.
| wittyreference wrote:
| Installing this browser for a look-see as we speak.
|
| So, as a "privacy focused" browser, what's your revenue model?
| joshgoldman wrote:
| Can we trust Brave?
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| There are numerous accusations of dubious activity such as:
| - Inserting affiliate links[1] - They tried blocking ads,
| but then injecting their own[2] - Taking tips for people
| without consent[3] - Including Tor, but Leaking DNS[4]
| which is now fixed but a false sense of security is a dangerous
| thing
|
| _edit_ apparently [2] is not actually accurate, this seems to
| shed some more light:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18744481
|
| Not to say I don't have some respect for what they are doing,
| and for Brendan Eich's work, but I wouldn't say 100% blindly
| trust Brave either. It's had a sort of complex relationship
| with many people.
|
| - [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-
| aff...
|
| - [2] https://www.wired.com/2016/04/brave-software-publishers-
| resp...
|
| - [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999
|
| - [4] https://www.coindesk.com/brave-browser-leak-exposed-user-
| dom...
| justfortechnews wrote:
| You seem fairly biased, and have included those links and
| accusations without any counter or responses from Brave.
|
| #2, for example, is just false. Brave doesn't block ads and
| then inject their own; they block 3rd-party ads, and have an
| opt-in ad network. Doesn't replace or inject anything.
|
| #1 gets brought up a lot on HN it seems, but sounds like it
| was an oversight and was fixed quickly. Same with #4. Every
| product has its issues, and as long as they're fixed quickly,
| it's understandable in my opinion.
| fooker wrote:
| >#2, for example, is just false.
|
| Right now it is. It was not at some point.
| mixedCase wrote:
| When was it? I've never heard of a time when the system
| wasn't opt-in.
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| quickly fixed because they got caught
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| I apologise if only posting negative links seemed
| unreasonable, but not out of any deeply held bias, the
| question asked was "Can we trust Brave?", so praise about
| the good things they do didn't specifically seem relevant.
| It is true that they try and improve privacy (which is a
| USP as far as Tor and anti-tracking stuff go). If asked can
| I trust chrome, I'd not expect downvote for only sharing
| links about the various embedded tracking - and glossing
| over the good stuff they do (which is admittedly not even
| close to Brave as far as trust is concerned).
|
| If #2 is patently false, then apologies for spreading it
| further.
|
| > as long as they're fixed quickly, it's understandable in
| my opinion
|
| That's generally true, and I did mention the Tor thing had
| been fixed, but at the same time - it is very relevant to
| the trust question because for example people might well
| have visited sites that are illegal to do so within their
| countries under the premise of anonymous browsing via
| Brave, only to have their trust broken. I guess that's the
| risk you take if you do things like that, but it has an
| impact on trust of Brave.
| kreetx wrote:
| Doesn't #2 kind of qualify as "replace"?
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| Certainly many would see a certain double standard of
| blocking ads, and then showing them in any form (whether
| opt-in or not), even if it is indirect.
|
| Personally I'm more interesting in Coil and to some
| extent Scroll in terms of replacing ads with
| micropayments, than Brave's BAT - but I'm glad they are
| at least trying to do something that _could_ act as an
| alternative to ad funding.
|
| - https://coil.com/
|
| - https://scroll.com/
| pcal10 wrote:
| What about segmented digital subscription products?
|
| Micropayments have failed, digital subscription
| conversion is a lowly 1-3% even at publishers like NYT
| and WSJ, ad markets are owned by Google and Facebook...
|
| -https://nicklpass.com/
|
| The Atlantic took off like a rocket with this approach.
| Why don't other publishers follow suit and reduce their
| reliance on digital advertising? Why even consider
| micropayments then?
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| Interesting. Well The Atlantic do accept Scroll to remove
| ads too (although there is still article limit).
|
| I'm not sure yet whether we can say that micropayments
| have failed because there is still a lot of innovation in
| the space, and I think it is only beginning to see any
| seriously mature offerings. The interledger protocol,
| used by Coil, being one of the tools that might actually
| be workable and international.
|
| Segmented subscription products might well be a better
| avenue, but I think we have not seen the end of
| innovation here and I think micropayments are preferable
| to things like the Australia Facebook(and others)
| solution.
| etr71115 wrote:
| Here's the official blog post:
|
| https://brave.com/brave-search/
| justfortechnews wrote:
| There's a good overview of Brave's search engine focus from their
| team (the former Cliqz team) found in
| https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/03/brave_buys_a_search_e...
|
| Paper on the search engine:
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-B3ZvHpbnxsT2OdnUH8vS3-tvTv...
| [deleted]
| schmorptron wrote:
| Super interesting how this will play out. Does anyone have any
| experience with cliqz? I saw it at a friends place once but never
| tried it myself. Is it any different from using firefox and
| duckduckgo?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Can someome please make a search engine that doesn't use Natural
| Language Processing? I just want to enter keywords and get
| results. No fixating on certain terms in the query and no
| attempts to specialize or localize my results based on my data. I
| want an old-school search engine, not a digital assistant/answers
| machine.
| gbmatt wrote:
| I made this search engine: https://www.gigablast.com/ that
| seems to fit that bill. As I am really the only programmer on
| it, my budget is essentially non-existent, therefore not
| allowing for many of the fancy additions you mentioned. The two
| biggest problems are 1) small index (need more servers) and 2)
| synonyms. The synonyms get pretty wonky sometimes, and often I
| miss good synonyms that I should be getting. But I don't have
| query logs like Google to use for synonym generation.
|
| Also, I probably should have quit developing this years ago, I
| know, but it is an obsession. :)
| thestepafter wrote:
| I have to say that I tried this out and really loved it. A
| simple search for monitor arms shows sites that aren't click
| bait with links back to Amazon. I was able to see Herman
| Miller and Humanscale on the front page. Nice job with this.
| If you ever lose interest in doing this let me know, I have
| been considering building a search engine myself for awhile
| now.
| gbmatt wrote:
| Also check out this new instant answers thing if you are
| interested. i'd love to get back constructive criticism:
|
| https://www.gigablast.com/search?c=main&qlangcountry=en-
| us&q...
| https://www.gigablast.com/search?c=main&qlangcountry=en-
| us&q...
| https://www.gigablast.com/search?c=main&qlangcountry=en-
| us&q...
| chris_f wrote:
| Very cool Matt!
|
| My only feedback is that it would be good if the source
| of the instant answer was displayed and linked to so that
| I could go to the underlying webpage source directly.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I'm really intruiged about the idea of topic/directory based
| searches. Usually when I'm searching for something I'm not
| looking to scan through the entirety of what the internet has
| to offer, I'm looking for something in a specific domain of
| knowledge.
|
| I would much rather have a more detailed index for a specific
| topic than a generalized index covering everything. Looking
| forward to trying this out more.
| chris_f wrote:
| https://www.runnaroo.com/blog/the-search-engine-hacker-news-...
|
| Uses Google index for organic search, but respects quotes
| unlike Google, Bing, or DDG. I'm the creator.
|
| Gigablast also mentioned here is very cool as well.
| snug wrote:
| Some how Google + Chrome is bad
|
| But Brave + Cliqz is good?
|
| I thought the whole argument was a browser shouldn't be owned by
| the same company that runs a search engine, or for-profit
| organization
| riston wrote:
| I hope to see some more alternatives to Google as the search
| results provided by Google last six months contain in most of the
| case some phishing/scam sites.
|
| Not sure why these pages aren't removed from the result lists?
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