[HN Gopher] Brave Search removes last remnant of Bing from searc...
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Brave Search removes last remnant of Bing from search results page
Author : twapi
Score : 294 points
Date : 2023-04-27 16:37 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (brave.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (brave.com)
| [deleted]
| enpojames wrote:
| Stoked for the independent Search API. Google and Bings are
| pricey. I anticipate it having a quicker adoption path compared
| to than the UI.
| GCA10 wrote:
| Just started testing Brave Search, and it scored a rare 100 on
| the first test: If you type in the name of a favorite boutique
| hotel, will you get that hotel's true website -- or the usual
| hairball of third-party intermediaries?
|
| (For anyone who's ever tried to modify a reservation, the
| difference is astonishing. If you're booked with the hotel, all
| kinds of adjustments are at least possible. If you're booked with
| Booking, Travelocity, Expedia, etc., it's somewhere between hard
| and hopeless.)
|
| Brave gets it right. Bing, Google and even DuckDuckGo do not.
| mintplant wrote:
| Fails my personal benchmark, unfortunately:
|
| haskell megaparsec operators -> should return [0] somewhere
| high in the result set. Found it on the third page of Brave
| Search. For comparison, it's the very first result on Google,
| second page for Bing, and the third page for DuckDuckGo.
|
| Sure, it's a bit obscure, and I don't even write that much
| Haskell these days. But it's calibrated to determine whether I
| can rely on the search engine to quickly surface what I need to
| be productive, and whether I can trust its 'negative results'
| (I don't see what I want on the results page -> I need to
| refine my query or take a different approach). The version
| number returned in the URL also shows how well the engine
| handles keeping up with versioned documentation pages and
| aggregating 'link juice' between them.
|
| I try this on every search engine alternative that pops up on
| HN. Very, very few pass. I find it often works like an
| adversarial example, yielding completely nonsensical results.
|
| [0]
| https://hackage.haskell.org/package/megaparsec-5.2.0/docs/Te...
| (or any other megaparsec-#.#.# version)
| autoexec wrote:
| Brave search also failed the old "office -microsoft" search
| by returning a ton of microsoft pages. Just to be safe I
| tried "office NOT microsoft" too but it was even worse.
|
| DDG and Bing (no surprise there) fails at it too, but Google
| actually works.
| burkaman wrote:
| That's the first result on Kagi, but I think that's because
| they just call Google behind the scenes for you.
|
| Edit: I didn't mean this to be an insult, I pay for Kagi and
| use it exclusively. But actually, the Kagi and Google first
| page of results look fairly different for this query, so Kagi
| is doing more curation and ordering than I realized.
| eitland wrote:
| They have API access to Google but there is clearly a
| sprinkling of magic and logic between.
|
| How can I know?
|
| The magic is proven by the fact that Kagi mostly respect my
| queries (or accept my bug reports if I can prove they
| didn't) despite being built on the shaky foundation of Bing
| and modern Google.
|
| Also there is some good old fashioned engineering there,
| like allowing me to pin, prioritize higher or lower or
| block certain sites.
| Spivak wrote:
| That's pretty much how all small search engines work, but
| with varying backing indexes. Kagi's value-add is Google
| quality index (since they literally pay for it), no ads,
| their ranking algorithm, and tools to control the results
| that Google doesn't give you like blacklists and your own
| weights.
|
| $25/mo is unfortunately a little steep because their lower
| priced option with 700 searches/month is comically small.
| On _just_ my work browser I have 4000 Google searches last
| month. Doesn 't count my personal laptop or phone. It's
| really hard to compete with $0/mo. for Google + AdBlock. I
| really do like Kagi better but $25/mo. is Tailscale +
| Notion + Spotify.
| eitland wrote:
| I have the early adopter professional plan, but I must
| admit that while I consider myself very much a power user
| I have never been close to even 700 searches a month.
| mathgorges wrote:
| Can you walk me through what a typical search day is like
| for you?
|
| To me, the 700 soft limit seems absurd so I'm curious to
| hear how you interact with the product.
|
| I average 50-100 searches per work day and 10-20 searcher
| per off day (totalling 1-2.5k per month). But I don't
| feel I'm using search in a particularly strange way.
|
| For example, if I need to know how the new WidgetBean in
| SpringBoot works I'll usually end up making ~10 queries
| related to it before I move on to a new area of research.
|
| E.g., I'll search "SpringBoot WidgetBean release notes"
| then "SpringBoot WidgetBean examples" or "WidgetBean test
| double", "WidgetBean in MockMvc test", "WidgetBean
| PowerMock known issues in MockMvc test", "WidgetBean
| FooService interation in MockMvc test SpringBoot 3".
|
| Essentially, when I'm searching I go wide to survey the
| information landscape, then refine my search term as I
| discover what I actually need to know
|
| This quickly balloons as I'm expected to know many things
| at $dayjob :)
|
| What does it look like when you search?
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| As an early adopter, I reluctantly cancelled my Kagi plan
| today. It's a great search engine, but even while just
| restricting it to one of my desktop machines and not
| using it on mobile at all, I ran up against the search
| limit with 10 days to go before renewal.
| mathgorges wrote:
| This. Kagi is a great product and has been my daily
| driver for nearly a year. I honestly believe it's the
| best search engine on the market
|
| But I fear they're going to have to get their prices (and
| relatedly, cost per search) down considerably before I
| can recommend them to anyone again.
|
| I was fortunate enough to be grandfathered into an
| unlimited plan until March, but I don't think I know any
| _professionals_ , e.g. people using a search engine to
| get work done, which search less than 24 times per day.
| seti0Cha wrote:
| I don't know that I would rely on performance on a single
| search to categorize how a search engine performs even in
| related areas to that one search. Also, maybe this is a
| stupid question, but are you letting Google personalize your
| results? If so, the comparison becomes even more problematic.
| jacooper wrote:
| And you can customize it using goggles.
| oidar wrote:
| 0% on my test: ;-; meaning
|
| Google gets it right at the first page. Bing doesn't get it.
| DDG doesn't.
| dsissitka wrote:
| There are two matching results for it on the first page.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Are you counting ads as results?
|
| I just put "the 252 boutique hotel" into Google (without
| quotes) and the first non-ad result is the hotel's own website.
| It's also first in Brave. And first in Bing. So no difference
| here.
|
| Generally in my experience, I've never had a problem finding a
| hotel's website via Google.
| antihipocrat wrote:
| The ads can take up more than an entire display, requiring
| scrolling down a full screen of content before finding the
| official site.
|
| It's even more difficult when trying to find the official
| site for a business I'm unfamiliar with.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| I have rarely faced this problem, just an anecdote .
| benatkin wrote:
| It gets it wrong.
|
| Sometimes I want the Booking.com.
|
| Otherwise you'd fan the flames of the predatory brochure
| websites industry.
| sethherr wrote:
| Why not just use booking.com search then?
| benatkin wrote:
| The convenience of hitting the back button and looking at
| other pages about them. Booking is the first page I want to
| check but not the only one. Sometimes I won't hit back, but
| my browsing habits are informed by being able to hit back.
| orzig wrote:
| You're allowed to have your workflow, but I'll add my n=1
| that I want the exact opposite behavior, and I suspect
| I'm in the majority there
| benatkin wrote:
| You might be arguing for what people think they want if
| they're polled.
|
| If Google always prioritized official websites, dollars
| to donuts, people wouldn't like it.
| b33j0r wrote:
| That was a surprisingly peculiar example, but a quite practical
| test! I appreciate that you shared it.
|
| (Ad) and (sponsored) were ok at first, but then they became the
| first screenful of results on most devices.
|
| That's when my childhood BFF google went off the rails.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Huh, interesting idea. I personally deliberately book though
| Booking and alike because it's so nice to have everything hotel
| related in one place especially when having long trips.
| benatkin wrote:
| I prefer the hotel website but only if it's a really good
| website.
| drc500free wrote:
| Having worked in the travel industry, I recommend booking
| direct and organizing everything together with TripIt.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I always buy directly from the hotel assuming that I will be
| treated better due to the hotel earning more money from me
| due to not having to pay commission to a travel agent.
|
| Also, I assume there is less probability of errors since when
| you reserve on a travel agent website, your reservation goes
| through an additional system before it gets to the hotel.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| I worked for a travel startup for a bit and after that
| experience I _only_ book airfare and hotels directly.
|
| Specifically with airfare, a 3rd party is not allowed to
| sell for less than the airline directly, so it's always
| better options since it is _much_ easier to reschedule
| /cancel/refund directly with the airline. Plus, if you
| travel a lot, it is better to find a favorite airline and
| stick to them. Any bonus "features" offered by a 3rd party
| I can assure you are either not in your interest or
| actually a scam.
|
| I don't know if the pricing rules applies to hotels, but
| I'd rather pay extra then get to the hotel and be screwed
| over last minute because some 3rd party is trying something
| "clever" behind the scenes and it turns out it ruins your
| travel plans.
| coldcode wrote:
| Most contracts between an OTA and a hotel chain included
| language requiring no lower price when I worked for an
| OTA 10 years ago. Not sure about today, but would not
| surprise me that nothing changed. OTA's are useful as a
| comparison but you are always better off going direct.
| Other than TripAdvisor, most OTA brands are either owned
| by Expedia or Priceline, but they never let you know.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I do this as well. The fewer middlemen between me and the
| product or service I want, the better.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| I imagine it's booking.com requirement that the hotel can't
| sell cheaper thought its own website, just like credit card
| companies forbid discounts for paying cash.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The big hotel brands get around this by requiring
| customers to sign up for their rewards program to qualify
| for the discount.
| vkou wrote:
| Yeah, but when the hotel over-books, guess which
| customers are the first to get their reservation
| cancelled/sent to the room with a leaky ceiling.
|
| (It's going to be the Booking.com ones.)
| HeavenFox wrote:
| It actually could be the opposite: since the OTA guest can
| leave a bad review, hotels may treat them better.
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Anyone can leave a review on Google Maps and TripAdvisor
| and the hotel brands' website, I assume a review on an
| OTA would not be any more valuable.
|
| As a side note, I wonder if many people pay attention to
| reviews outside of extremely low rated places.
| [deleted]
| achates wrote:
| I do. One bad review doesn't make much difference to me
| but if I see a few mentioning the same issue I usually
| trust them.
| bubblethink wrote:
| > I always buy directly from the hotel assuming that I will
| be treated better due to the hotel earning more money from
| me due to not having to pay commission to a travel agent.
|
| I have never found this to be true unfortunately. I have
| some conference related travel coming up, and the
| conference made some deal with Hilton for a special rate.
| Hilton's link wouldn't work, and I made 5 calls trying to
| get them to offer a discounted rate to no avail. Eventually
| had to book at a discounted rate on hotwire (same as the
| conference's rate), which presumably made Hilton 20-30%
| less. At scale, hotels are just operated like commodities.
| Unless you are really special (loyal and big spender), you
| won't get any special treatment.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > Unless you are really special (loyal and big spender),
| you won't get any special treatment.
|
| Lifetime Platinum Marriott member here.
|
| The special treatment is OK. It is nice to get room
| upgrades and freebies, but that's little stuff. It
| doesn't get you a room magically when they are sold out,
| and you don't magically get a better rate when prices are
| high.
|
| The biggest benefit if you're traveling a lot is your
| points accrual rate is higher with status, which lets you
| more rapidly exchange points for things. The only sane
| way to spend points of course, is more hotel stays.
| Nothing else comes close value-wise. I recall running the
| numbers on that (points/dollar ratio), and you'd be a
| brazen fool to spend points on merchandise - when you
| compare the ratio of hotel stays to merchandise point
| cost, you realize that they have a 3-4x markup on the
| merchandise.
| hattmall wrote:
| >don't magically get a better rate when prices are high.
|
| That's when you spend your points. Though it depends
| severely on the brand. Marriott and Hilton are no longer
| great. But Wyndham and Hyatt are pretty amazing.
| Starwood, used to be good until Marriott bought them out.
| gretch wrote:
| > I assume there is less probability of errors since when
| you reserve on a travel agent website, your reservation
| goes through an additional system before it gets to the
| hotel
|
| My intuition says the opposite. More moving pieces in the
| system, more fragility in integration of different systems.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Is that not the same as what I wrote?
| gretch wrote:
| Rereading it I think it's ambiguous, and I definitely
| didn't read what you intended (after clarification).
|
| The problem is that the phrase "I assume there is less
| probability of errors" is not attached to a condition.
|
| It's a bit like that revolving ballerina dancer illusion
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I see, but I was thinking the "Also" at the beginning of
| the second sentence attaches the conditions of the first
| sentence. So the second sentence could also be understood
| to start with "I always buy directly from the hotel..."
|
| Nevertheless, there is clearly a more clear way I could
| have wrote that comment.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| I have yet to find an occasion where directly booking a
| hotel would give a better or even the same price as booking
| through booking and the likes.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| All the big hotel chains will usually give ~5% off for
| reserving directly since they pay ~15% to OTAs. They will
| require you to be a "rewards member", but that is just
| checking a box since you already have to give them your
| personal information.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > They will require you to be a "rewards member", but
| that is just checking a box since you already have to
| give them your personal information.
|
| I became a "rewards member" with a major hotel chain
| once. Never again. The deluge of spam I got was
| intolerable.
| j1elo wrote:
| I got the feeling that it's the opposite. _We_ pay the
| Booking fee. I 've had hotel receptionists give me their
| card and say "If you come back some other time, just call
| to reserve directly with us, so you can save the x% that
| Booking charges for your reservation!"
| Alupis wrote:
| You are both saying the same thing.
|
| The hotel has a room they want to sell for $100 a night.
| They can list it on their website for $100 a night, and
| after paying credit card processing fees, they get to
| keep the remainder.
|
| The hotel now lists the same room on one of the booking
| sites that charges a x% fee for facilitating the
| transaction and providing discovery for the hotel
| (getting the room in front of interested customers). The
| hotel can either take a x% haircut, or charge x% more. So
| that same room might be $110 per night now instead of
| $100.
|
| It's a business decision, and not all operators will make
| the same one, naturally.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| You have to ask for a discount, they can't offer or
| advertise it.
| pythko wrote:
| I agree; I've had multiple instances recently of booking
| through a third party where getting changes or refunds is
| very slow and clunky, if they will even do it at all.
| Contrast that to my experience with booking a hotel
| directly through their website, where I mistakenly booked
| the wrong dates. One phone call to the hotel and 2 minutes
| later they changed it with no hassle.
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| I've tried to do this for years and ultimately been
| disappointed. Even on my latest hotel booking, the direct
| quote was 20% more than Expedia and that's not an isolated
| incident.
|
| I suspect this is partly predatory pricing on behalf of
| Expedia (charge the hotel 30%, discount the price 20%, get
| all the bookings and take the difference.) Yet I really
| can't justify spending the extra $400 to stand the moral
| high ground. Seems like something the hotels need to work
| out.
|
| They used to at least offer the same price and add in
| little things like "free wifi" and breakfast. I haven't
| seen that offer since the pre-covid years.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Google usually does _through the maps place card_. To update
| that card, the hotel manager has to receive a postcard posted
| by google. Obviously expedia etc can 't easily do that.
| jahsome wrote:
| OP is talking about modifying their hotel reservation
| directly, not updating a google maps listing.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| And the comment you replied to is saying that the official
| website will usually be shown on the map card to the side
| of your usual results, which is only editable by verified
| businesses.
| bazmattaz wrote:
| Interesting, my test of a search engine's ability to return
| relevant results is usually some sort of obscure search for
| tech help like;
|
| "Best way to modify the xyz on a raspberry pi 4"
|
| I stopped using DuckDuckGo because it always failed at searches
| like this compared to Google. Brave was ok
| nextmove wrote:
| I love how on mobile Brave browser you can add YouTube videos to
| your Brave playlist and then play them while your screen is
| locked.
|
| Also I switched from StartPage to Brave search, but I do wish
| Brave search had a translator feature. Like on StartPage I just
| search "translate" and get an input box. I find it better than
| most other browsers' translators.
| kashkhan wrote:
| using Brave on an iphone for Youtube is a godsend. Almost as
| good as desktop experience. Youtube app, Safari and Chrome suck
| enough to be unusable
| bazmattaz wrote:
| Can I ask what's so good about YT on Brave? I use the iOS app
| but could change.
|
| Does it block ads?
| nostromo wrote:
| Yes.
|
| If you browse YouTube on mobile via the Brave browser it
| blocks all YouTube ads.
|
| I haven't used the YouTube app in a year...
| wazzer wrote:
| same here, couldn't live without it.
|
| btw: it's also possible to go to fullscreen mode, then go
| directly to the home screen so that the pop-over player
| is activated, then the video keeps playing while the
| screen is looked, with controls working from the
| lockscreen.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| Unrelated, but the same result is achievable by using
| Safari and 1Blocker for the people who don't feel like
| installing another browser but are tempted by the mobile,
| ads free YouTube experience on iOS
| ricardo81 wrote:
| Great to have alternative entry points into the web.
|
| DDG seem to do quite well in that a lot of their users will deem
| the relevance good enough, perhaps not aware of its 100% reliance
| on Bing. More often than not new search engine skins with
| comparable results to Google and Bing do tend to be the actual
| results of Google and Bing. Apparently the average searcher
| doesn't know nor care.
|
| If everyone 'donated' at least a few searches a day to true
| alternative engines, it'd help diversify search, surely. The fact
| that Google has such a high amount of revenue per search has
| helped them price out competitors e.g. being defaults on browsers
| and devices. Can see why Brave would launch a browser to
| assist/complement search.
| yamtown wrote:
| Is there search independent? They have no page talking about
| their robot. The Cliqz index they acquired was a database of
| query url pairs scraped from Google. It is not obvious how true
| their claims of independence are or how they are building an
| index beyond further scraping of Google and opaque Brave browser
| add-ons
| jahewson wrote:
| Do you have a citation for this? I can't find any sources to
| back this claim.
| yamtown wrote:
| https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-05/a-new-search-engine.html
|
| Kudos if you can find their 2023 crawler in logs....
| JohnFen wrote:
| OK, I'll have to give Brave search a try now!
| nocommandline wrote:
| Read the announcement and it looks like there isn't an option to
| submit a site for crawling. If that's true, how do they discover
| new sites? My understanding of the 'the Web Discovery project' is
| that they're indexing your search and the results you click,
| anonymously but you won't see new sites in your search results
| which in turn means the new site won't be indexed by them
| IMSAI8080 wrote:
| Probably watching for new DNS entries gets you most of the way
| there. When you fire up any new website you usually get a pile
| of visits from mysterious cloud boxes in the first 24 hours
| before you are listed on any search engine. I assume that's how
| they find you.
| Flimm wrote:
| If you turn on "the Web Discovery Project" in the Brave
| browser, then a fraction of the web addresses you visit will be
| sent to Brave, even if the web pages weren't from a Brave
| Search SERP.
|
| Source: https://support.brave.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/4409406835469-Wh...
|
| > If you opt-in to the Web Discovery Project, your browser will
| process the following data on your device, and securely send it
| to Brave's servers:
|
| > - A fraction of the addresses (URLs) of the web pages visited
| in the Brave Browser, along with engagement metrics (how much
| time is spent on the page)
|
| > - [...]
| nocommandline wrote:
| > then a fraction of the web addresses you visit will be sent
| to Brave
|
| I get that but if it's a new site, the number of people
| visiting will be extremely small if not non-existent. The
| possibilities that I see are
|
| a) The new website is first noted on something like social
| media and you found it from there and then accessed it via
| Brave browser
|
| b) You use Google search or Bing within Brave browser and you
| find the site (because it was submitted to Google or Bing)
| moint wrote:
| [flagged]
| aacid wrote:
| I would really like to move away from google search, but
| unfortunately every other engine I tried sucks for localized
| searching... I get it that I come from small central europe
| country which is not that interesting market wise but it looks
| like google is able to provide relevant results while any other
| engine does not.
|
| For example I tried brave to search for watch I'm currently
| considering buying. When using site:sk it gives me 3 results...
| Same google search returns thousands results...
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Kagi really aces it on local search. Honestly Brave was also
| fine now when I tried it.
| slig wrote:
| Suggestion: use Brave Search as default, and g! for localized
| queries. I did that with DDG and for a while with Brave Search,
| but now it's surprisingly good enough even for my country.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| Sadly it failed my test. When I search for "Python str split" it
| includes trash results and midway down the first page of results
| is the python API documentation after some YouTube videos,
| W3Schools and "GeeksForGeeks" spam garbage. DuckDuckGo at least
| has the results correct for this case and an infocard on the side
| that understands it's a Python related API question with relevant
| examples and links.
| ementally wrote:
| I actually find their Goggles [0] feature really interesting.
|
| [0] https://search.brave.com/help/goggles
| topspin wrote:
| "Goggles enable any individual--or community of people--to
| alter the ranking of Brave Search by using a set of
| instructions (rules and filters). Anyone can create, apply, or
| extend a Goggle. Essentially Goggles act as a custom re-ranking
| on top of the Brave search index."
|
| Wow.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Good because I've about had it with DuckDuckGo. Bing has
| downmodded a ton of Wikipedia (probably to trick people into
| using their stupid AI). Feeling trapped with both Google and Bing
| being terrible.
|
| What's the business plan though?
| bmarquez wrote:
| Brave search is surprisingly good. In the past I've often clicked
| the "fallback to Google Search" option but these days I rarely do
| that.
|
| It could be that Brave is getting better, or Google search is
| getting worse, or both.
| penjelly wrote:
| as a brave user on my personal devices its nice to see that
| theyre continually working towards independence. brave browser
| with brave search has worked fine for me, i barely notice the
| difference having switched from chrome/google.
| [deleted]
| schmorptron wrote:
| I've been using brave search since it became public and it was
| known they bought tailcat.
|
| Have been very happy with the search results, and for people who
| don't like the simpler programming tutorial sites you can even
| make a custom "goggle" to block those from the results
| completely.
| thefourthchime wrote:
| My standard test for a search engine: "California style burrito
| in Austin" I got mixed results.
|
| The "BraveAI" result was halfway decent, recommending a place
| I've never heard of, but not listing any of the other top ones I
| know of.
|
| On the sidebar map, it listed a restaurant in New Hampshire.
| Hilarious, but not what I was looking for.
| pachico wrote:
| Just the fastest and most ergonomic browser I've tried.
|
| I wish Firefox was like Brave, to be honest. Until that happens,
| I'll stick to Brave for both mobile and desktop.
| [deleted]
| rvz wrote:
| The Mozilla CEO is to blame for the chaos they caused around
| Firefox, and them losing market share to Chrome for the past 14
| years.
|
| Mozilla is so dysfunctional that the CEO is rewarded a massive
| bonus for running the company to the ground and laying off
| their employees.
|
| They are not interested in competing against Chrome; instead
| they are chronically dependent on Google's money and on life
| support, making over 80% of their revenue despite the Mozilla
| CEO saying that they would not fully depend on Google's money.
| in the future. [0]
|
| I hope Brave makes Firefox (and Mozilla) even more irrelevant.
|
| [0]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://www.compu...
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| This ignores the fact that Google is the/a dominant player in
| at least mail, search, ads, and mobile. That both funds
| Google's browser and they can nag users to switch.
|
| It's more surprising that Mozilla survives at all (and likely
| at Google's mercy with default placement payment) since the
| only other browsers who can hope to compete have massive
| subsidies from a larger business.
| rchaud wrote:
| How would a nonprofit expect to compete against Google? It's
| not exactly evenly matched is it?
|
| Firefox on desktop has been more than good enough anyway.
| nostromo wrote:
| Firefox competed against fairly successfully against
| Microsoft for a decade.
|
| They still spin off massive amounts of cash -- they just
| piss it away on their foundation, and not improving the
| product.
| function_seven wrote:
| > _Firefox competed against fairly successfully against
| Microsoft for a decade._
|
| My recollection was that Microsoft had stopped innovating
| on IE6 almost entirely during that decade, right? Or at
| least for the few years that enabled Firefox to get a
| foothold.
|
| > _They still spin off massive amounts of cash -- they
| just piss it away on their foundation, and not improving
| the product._
|
| Hard agree on this. So many side quests when the main
| quest is not done.
| slig wrote:
| Firefox usage is abysmal on Desktop (from the Cloudflare
| usage stats which doesn't depend on JavaScript being enabled)
| and practically inexistent on mobile. My tech friends gave
| up, and normal users just use the defaults: Edge (which is
| good enough for them), Safari or whatever browser default
| browser comes with their smartphone. Mozilla needs to figure
| out how to attract new users, and focus.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| A lot of us are running with modified UA strings to combat
| fingerprinting.
| cubefox wrote:
| Mitchell Baker's salary is outrageous.
| autoexec wrote:
| Wow, think of what just a little of that 5 million could
| buy in terms of bug fixes!
| robocat wrote:
| Mozilla Foundation Total revenue: 600 million
|
| Salaries and benefits - management & general: 81 million
|
| https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-
| fdn-202...
| usefulcat wrote:
| > I hope Brave makes Firefox (and Mozilla) even more
| irrelevant.
|
| I get that you hate Mozilla, but from the perspective of an
| end user of browsers, this is a deeply irrational position.
| Less competition in the browser space is uniformly bad for
| end users, as we've seen very clearly in the past.
| skinkestek wrote:
| My dislike for Mozilla the non profit is rather intense but
| I still agree with you: nothing good comes out of playing
| into Googles hand here and shortening and simplifying the
| path they have to try to go to corner the browser market
| and become really problematic.
|
| I still hope we can manage to break up Google before that
| happens so anything that delays Googles cornering of the
| browser market is a win in my eyes.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| It is ergonomic until you want to send more than one tab using
| Brave sync.
|
| Also Ctrl + B to show the bookmarks sidebar would be nice, for
| those of us who nest their web clippings deeply.
|
| On the iOS app, it also forgets usernames I've stored using
| password sync. For _some_ sites (criteria unclear) I have to
| type the username before it inserts the password, which is
| frustrating to a privacy conscious user who will not use the
| same email address everywhere.
|
| I want to like it but there are power user pleasing areas where
| it certainly lags behind Firefox.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| In Brave, you can select the Bookmarks panel from the side
| bar, and then toggle it open/closed from then on with Ctrl+B.
|
| Regarding iOS, it's entirely possible there's a bug in our
| code. I'll definitely take a closer look and speak with the
| team regarding this report. That said, it's also not entirely
| uncommon for users to enter a site through a slightly
| different URL, or form, which complicates the credential-
| autofill logic. If you have an example or two of sites where
| this behavior is consistently observed, that would be much
| appreciated.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| Ah, tried Ctrl+B with the mini side bar already open and
| found it works. Thanks.
|
| The two recent culprits that didn't toggle password
| autofill were eBay.co.uk and Gumtree.co.uk. I'd be grateful
| it if this could be investigated; the latter prevented me
| from checking an address in the Gumtree PMs whilst on the
| road delivering a purchase.
|
| On the issue of sending multiple tabs, it is frustrating
| enough that it prevents me from adopting Brave as my main
| browser. I often open a few sites that interest me on
| mobile then decide to read more on my desktop. If you could
| pass the word along for someone to investigate that, all
| the better.
|
| With that said, it's commendable being the only browser on
| iOS with first class advert blocking & sync with every
| other platform.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| My experience has been the opposite. I wish Brave was more like
| Firefox.
|
| I have Brave installed as an alternate browser (originally
| because sites like Twitch and Netflix performed poorly on
| Firefox, not so much the case anymore). And there's a
| noticeable lag when switching tabs that's absent in Firefox.
| And the memory usage - Brave uses as much memory with 10 tabs
| open as Firefox does with 100. It seems like "unloaded" tabs
| are not really unloaded at all, and continue to take up memory
| (which makes you question what unloading does) as long as the
| browser remains open.
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by ergonomic, but I've been spoiled
| by Firefox's openness to customization, it was shocking to find
| that you can't even customize the toolbar on Brave to have your
| frequently used features handy.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| You can always check the internal task manager to see which
| tabs/extensions/child-processes are using the most resources.
| To do so, visit > More Tools > Task Manager in the browser,
| or press Shift+Esc.
| bigtex wrote:
| Well the guy who started Brave used to head up Firefox before
| the employees revolted and demanded he be fired over politics.
| PpEY4fu85hkQpn wrote:
| "politics" is one way to describe him donating a large sum of
| money to a bigoted anti-gay cause and losing the trust of his
| employees.
| jraph wrote:
| This submission is about a search engine, not a browser.
|
| What's to be like the Brave browser for you? You don't say
| much.
| darreninthenet wrote:
| Have they sorted out the bookmark syncing? When I tried Brave a
| few years ago I went back to Chrome (and now FF) as the
| bookmark syncing functionality would frequently go out of sync
| for hours on different browser installs.
| causi wrote:
| I don't see why anyone would pick Brave over Vivaldi,
| especially on mobile.
| sphars wrote:
| I used Vivaldi for a good year or two on my machines, but
| after some point Vivaldi was so slow to launch and to
| navigate. Maybe it was my setup, but other browsers were
| quick launch and use. Been using FF for several months now,
| maybe they fixed the issues in Vivaldi since.
| eviks wrote:
| Vivaldi has this issue with many tabs slowing down the
| whole UI, but the new v6 feature of workspaces allows you
| to move some tabs to a WS group, that improves UI
| performance
|
| But yeah, that's one of their biggest issues
| colordrops wrote:
| Because brave is open source and Vivaldi is not.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Vivaldi user here. Excellent browser.
|
| But I still really miss Opera from the old days. Vivaldi is
| the next best thing.
| eviks wrote:
| Vivaldi is not available on mobile (ios)
| UberFly wrote:
| I do really like Vivaldi on mobile - customizes perfectly for
| my needs. Have no reason to mistrust them regarding their
| proprietary chromium gui.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| Vivaldi on android still does not support adding custom
| search engines.
| caycep wrote:
| I use both. Brave is better for the "chromium only" wonky
| websites/webapps. But the whole altruistic privacy thing is
| kind of undercut, at least optics-wise, by all the
| crypto/gamification upsell present by default. Not good when
| your supposedly privacy-focused browser requires extensive
| fiddling in the settings to shut everything off on initial
| install a-la Windows 11...
| jacooper wrote:
| Honestly its very easy to ignore all the crypto crap. And its
| much better for your average user, since he/she will be
| private by just using brave, without any tinkering.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| It's a little odd to be concerned about privacy focus on a
| post-Windows 10 os.
| slig wrote:
| Using Brave Search feels like the Google Search from mid 2000s.
| Anyone tired of Google should give it a try.
| gumballindie wrote:
| I know brave is basically chrome but i am very pleased with the
| experience. Works a charm on linux and is good enough at blocking
| ads that i dont really need pihole. The only thing i miss is
| syncing between devices, i mess that up and cant get it right.
| All in all is quite good.
| devmunchies wrote:
| I have brave search as default but always do a google bang "!g".
| I do this for every search but figure I'm giving brave some data
| on all my searches to help improve it. I guess it's be better if
| I clicked a link on their results too for reinforcement learning.
| fardo wrote:
| Once you've doing this, is there a value-add Brave is providing
| over just using Google through a VPN?
|
| As someone without much familiarity, this alternative seems
| circuitous if Google results are what you actually want.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| <meta property="og:description" content="Search the web
| privately ...">
|
| Would be nice if Brave did not require SNI since this is
| considered a privacy concern by some folks.^1 Anyone sniffing the
| wire can see all the domain names to which the SNI user is
| connecting.^3 The other search engines do not require SNI, e.g.,
| Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, GigaBlast, Qwant, etc.
|
| 1. One example would be Cloudflare. Because some folks see SNI as
| a privacy concern, Cloudflare used to offer ESNI which was a way
| to encrypt SNI. It has since been discontinued while we wait for
| ECH. Some HN commenters will often try to argue that SNI is
| irrelevant to users without offering any evidence to support.
| Watch for it. For example, China found SNI was relevant enough to
| block ESNI. Apparently, China found it preferable to use SNI than
| to use only IP addresses, which of course are easy for websites
| to change. Go figure.
|
| https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/Dae-cukKMqfzmTT4Ks...
|
| SNI can be used for censorship purposes, among other things. Many
| search engines work without SNI. But not Brave.
|
| NB. As I understand it, these browsers do not allow the user to
| enable/disable SNI on a per site basis; in some of them it is not
| even possible to disable SNI at all.^2 TLS might enable the user
| to hide web _pages_ from the proverbial "MITM", but with SNI
| enabled it will not allow them to hide web _sites_.
|
| 2. Thus, even when Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, GigaBlast, Qwant,
| Mojeek, etc., and millions of other websites do not require the
| user to send SNI in order to return SERPs or other pages, these
| browsers send it anyway. Brilliant.
|
| 3. SNI is different than DNS. DNS lookups can be done at a
| different time from when a user connects, if the user ever does
| connect. (Popular browsers are not good for this, of course.)
| Whereas SNI shows the user actually connected. Strangely, much
| effort has gone into encrypting DNS, while SNI, and to some
| extent TLS prior to version 1.3, leaks these same domain names on
| the wire, unencrypted.
| k__ wrote:
| Interesting timing.
|
| Just today, it told me to use Bing or Google for image search.
|
| I understand the reasoning, but it felt a bit like "whelp, we
| give up"
| jcadam wrote:
| I use chromium for work/dev. Brave for personal stuff (including
| on my phone). It's actually been a while since I've used Firefox.
| chad1n wrote:
| While they did some shady stuff with their browser in the past,
| the search engine is surprisingly good and their relation with
| the community is pretty decent, I wish more search providers
| start providing their own results instead of using Bing API.
| INeedMoreRam wrote:
| [dead]
| asimpletune wrote:
| Surprisingly good. I tried "what is a monad" and got reasonable
| results. Searching my own name resulted in socials instead of my
| personal website, but that seems reasonable since my personal
| website isn't super popular. I guess I'll have to try it out for
| a few days or even weeks to really know, but a completely new
| search engine would be amazing.
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| I guess that explains why the quality in its search results has
| been trending downward for me.
| IceWreck wrote:
| How is it that Brave managed to build an indexer and remove
| dependence on Bing in less than two years but DuckDuckGo hasn't
| been able to do it in a decade.
| potatofrenzy wrote:
| DDG probably doesn't want to? On the time horizons they're
| thinking about, it's probably more expensive to develop
| competitive tech and keep it working than it is to pay for API
| access.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| DDG is too busy adopting the censorship policies of Big Tech to
| innovate against them.
| lisasays wrote:
| You mean in not caving to conservative-friendly "free speech"
| preferences? Its decision to downrank state-sponsored
| disinformation?
|
| One can question the wisdom of these decisions - but
| ultimately it's a matter of editorial control, not
| censorship.
| eYrKEC2 wrote:
| I want search, not editorial guidance from a search engine.
| lisasays wrote:
| Then use a different search engine.
|
| To call what DDG is doing (or what a newspaper does when
| it chooses not to print your foaming, incoherent editor
| to the letter -- as is, you know, its right) "censorship"
| is just silly.
| arp242 wrote:
| It's a search engine's job to rank results; there is no
| other way to do it: only one link can be in position #1,
| only one link can be in position #2, etc.
|
| Or in other words: "editorial guidance" is pretty much
| the entirety of a search engine's job: you give it a
| large set of documents (the internet), some user input
| (what you typed in the search box), and it ranks - or
| "editorializes" - the set of documents to something
| useful for you.
|
| And at the same time you also have to account for SEO
| haxx0rs and outright malicious actors who will try to
| phish your CC details.
|
| Do you want some crackpot website if you search for
| "Barrack Obama" which claims that he is _literally_ the
| anti-Christ to be at #1? Or even on the first page at
| all? Or rolexxxx.com if you search for "buy rolex"? Or
| bank-of-amerrrica.ru if you search for "Bank of America"?
| Probably not. A naive ranking algorithm will end up with
| that.
|
| There is no perfect way to do this; it's a hard problem.
| Platitudes like this make it sound easy, but it's not.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| There is a massive difference between ranking stuff based
| on relevance and not getting RT articles when...
| searching for RT. (They rolled back the block pretty
| quickly, so they seem to agree with that too)
|
| You are basically arguing for a slippery slope argument.
| Because they already need some editorial control to
| filter spam and obviously irrelevant material does not
| mean that every type of filtering/block listing is ok.
|
| I personally totally get how it can be offputting to
| people if a search engine starts hiding websites while
| openly saying that they do it for a political reason.
| Downranking would be fine, but blocking a news source (as
| bad as RT is at being that) that isn't spammy or playing
| with SEO is just different.
|
| Yes, I know, everything is political and all. But that's
| the point! Blocking RT was obviously more so about
| politics than filtering fake news or trash results.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I don't think what you want exists or has ever existed. A
| search engine that does not exercise judgement about
| relevance and quality will just return noise.
| poszlem wrote:
| > but ultimately it's a matter of editorial control, not
| censorship.
|
| So is all censorship.
|
| No censor calls censorship "Censorship". An example from my
| country of birth:
|
| Main Office of Control over the Press, Publications and
| Performances, since 1981 the Main Office of Control over
| Publications and Performances - the central office of state
| censorship in the Polish People's Republic. It was a
| censorship body (analogous institutions were present in all
| countries of the so-called Eastern Bloc) examining all
| forms of official information communication from the
| perspective of their compliance with the current state
| policy, and prohibiting the dissemination of unwanted
| information and content by the ruling communist party.
|
| The name "The Censors" was only adopted after the collapse
| of communism.
|
| I rub my eyes in amazement every time I read people on HN
| praising censorship and rejoicing that someone will decide
| for them what they can read and what they can't.
|
| I am not able to understand how foolish one has to be to
| not realize that eventually the censorship organs will be
| used against you too.
|
| Perhaps you think you will always hold the "correct"
| beliefs in which case I admire your lack of imagination.
|
| I miss "hackers" from the 90s with some actual backbone.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| > I miss "hackers" from the 90s with some actual
| backbone.
|
| https://philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/WhyIWrotePGP.html
|
| It was a good time indeed.
| lisasays wrote:
| _So is all censorship._
|
| Sorry, but that's not what the word means. By definition,
| it refers to the interception of communications _between
| others_. That 's now what's happening here.
| torial wrote:
| That isn't the only definition. For example Cambridge's
| definition of censorship (https://dictionary.cambridge.or
| g/us/dictionary/english/censo... )
|
| "the action of preventing part or the whole of a book,
| movie, work of art, document, or other kind of
| communication from being seen or made available to the
| public, because it is considered to be offensive or
| harmful, or because it contains information that someone
| wishes to keep secret, often for political reasons:"
| metalliqaz wrote:
| what do they censor?
| nostromo wrote:
| After the invasion of Ukraine they announced they would be
| removing sites "associated with Russian disinformation."
| They haven't provided a definition of what that includes.
|
| Lots of DDG users were upset because this is the type of
| thing they objected to with Google.
| nugget wrote:
| The search index is relatively easy, the ad marketplace is
| hard. DDG is likely hooked on tens or hundreds of millions of
| dollars in Bing revenue which is a tough habit to kick.
| jacooper wrote:
| They bought the search engine when it went bankrupt. Still
| quite a feat and its results are actually better than ddg and
| bing.
| KomoD wrote:
| Interesting, any links to info about that?
| tyingq wrote:
| https://brave.com/brave-search/
|
| _" Today Brave announced the acquisition of Tailcat, the
| open search engine developed by the team formerly
| responsible for the privacy search and browser products at
| Cliqz, a holding of Hubert Burda Media. Tailcat will become
| the foundation of Brave Search..."_
| ticoombs wrote:
| The same cliqz [0] that got shipped to Germany Firefox
| users?
|
| [0] https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-
| cliqz-i...
| cush wrote:
| Why assume that's one of DDG's goals?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Their cut of BAT tokens is probably pretty significant. The
| number of people I met who thought they were "beating" the
| system by paying Brave 30% of their ad revenue was surprisingly
| high. I wouldn't be surprised if that surpassed whatever
| funding DuckDuckGo is able to raise.
|
| If you want a personal indexer, host Searx.
| cacozen wrote:
| [flagged]
| doodlesdev wrote:
| [flagged]
| mempko wrote:
| [flagged]
| KomoD wrote:
| [flagged]
| mempko wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Wanting to avoid tedious repetitive flamewars, of the
| sort that destroy an internet forum, is hardly to favor
| Hitler.
|
| Internet forums have a strong default tendency to burn
| themselves to a crisp. The idea of HN, for 15+ years now,
| has been to try to stave that outcome off as long as
| possible.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| que...
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| As if every product you use isn't run/developed/maintained by
| legions of people you disagree with on at least one political
| issue.
|
| This is brought up every time there is a post on Brave. It's
| rather tiresome.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Also an ancient quote by Buchanan is a lousy way to
| criticize Eich. I expect more from HN.
| doodlesdev wrote:
| > As if every product you use isn't
| run/developed/maintained by legions of people you disagree
| with on at least one political issue.
|
| That's true. I still use Brave Search. >
| This is brought up every time there is a post on Brave.
| It's rather tiresome.
|
| And yet a lot of people still don't know about it.
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| There's absolutely nothing wrong with choosing products and
| services that don't align with your views either. Just look
| at conservatives trying to cancel budweiser & disney.
|
| I wasn't aware of Ein's outspoken and proactive homophobia,
| so this is still news to some.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Outspoken and proactive? Now you're reaching.
| negidius wrote:
| I don't care if people disagree with me, and I wouldn't
| have anything against him if he was just personally bigoted
| and wrote about how much he hates gay people on his blog or
| something.
|
| I don't think people should be canceled for expressing
| opinions, but that's not the same as funding an effort to
| actively harm people. He is entitled to his opinions, but
| he is not entitled to enforce them on other people.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| People have opinions and inevitably their offspring
| usually adopt their opinions. There will be exceptions
| obviously but exceptions make the rule. For the most part
| that is probably how society changes over time. A high
| birthrate of Amish compared to the rest of the population
| could completely change the political landscape.
|
| Anyway, there isn't any proof that Eich hates gay people
| in the way you imply. He didn't lead any anti-LGBT
| changes at Mozilla and there haven't been any at Brave.
| The commentary is that he did one thing that really
| offended a bunch of people. There just aren't compelling
| reasons to think he's a monster.
| bmarquez wrote:
| > he is not entitled to enforce them on other people
|
| In 2008 when Proposition 8 was on the ballot, that Eich
| privately supported, even President Obama (candidate at
| the time) was publicly against gay marriage.
|
| There needs to be some historical cultural context,
| supporting Prop 8 in 2008 is different than supporting
| Prop 8 in 2023. Now if Eich said he would support it in
| 2023, that's a different matter.
|
| But I would still use Brave browser and search since it's
| a good product.
| negidius wrote:
| I don't think there need to be any historical cultural
| context. It was just as wrong and bigoted then as now.
| It's not an excuse that most people agreed with him at
| the time.
|
| If I accepted that agreeing with the majority makes
| everything okay, I couldn't criticize the many horridly
| immoral things the majority still agree with today.
|
| I still use Brave sometimes, and I would probably still
| use it if he did the same thing today, but I will
| continue to think he is a bad person unless he at least
| donates the same amount (adjusted for inflation) to a
| charity that supports LGBTQ+ people.
| KomoD wrote:
| I tried it, and honestly it sucks, all the rankings are terrible,
| I searched stackoverflow and I got seo spam as one of the top
| results, the title or meta didn't even include "stackoverflow".
|
| I also hate how it's not full width.
| pythux wrote:
| Hi, Brave engineer here,
|
| We're always on the look-out to improve our search ranking.
| Would you be able to share some of the queries you made that
| did not return satisfying results? (or use in-page feedback to
| report them automatically to us). It would be very useful.
|
| Thanks!
| brianbreslin wrote:
| How does Brave monetize this? How do they monetize their app in
| general? Is there a ppc ad platform they're offering?
| riskycodes wrote:
| Yeah, but you opt in, and you receive a share of it (in their
| altcoin) if you do.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| they lost me at "altcoin"
| Method-X wrote:
| Yes, it was launched at the beginning of April (I signed up).
| Also, they offer a subscription plan for $3 per month.
| Flimm wrote:
| I've set Brave Search to be my default search engine for private
| windows (incognito mode). I've grown annoyed by the cookie
| consent dialogs and captchas that are presented to me by Google
| when I open Google's search engine in a private window. Brave
| Search doesn't have those annoyances.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| It's been my default search for months. I go to Google for
| images and maps, but Brave search serves most of my needs quite
| well.
|
| But throwing a monkey wrench into the whole thing is my
| increasing use of Bing Chat. It's not really a general purpose
| search replacement, but it does do a more efficient job of
| answering basic questions succinctly.
| artificial wrote:
| Have you tried Yandex for image search? It supports searching
| by specific sizes like the Google search of yore.
| moremetadata wrote:
| [dead]
| bogtog wrote:
| Sadly didn't pass my test, looking up sports info like "UFC
| Schedule" and getting a custom built interface. For example,
|
| Google's:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=ufc+schedule&rlz=1C1GCEU_en&...
|
| Bing's (doesn't have UFC Schedules but has "NFL Standings"):
| https://www.bing.com/search?q=NFL+standings&qs=n&form=QBRE&s...
| jacooper wrote:
| > Announcing the Brave Search API
|
| > In continuing our mission to offer alternatives to Big Tech,
| Brave is planning to release the Brave Search API. Through it,
| developers and companies will be able to build search experiences
| that compete on quality with Big Tech. Those interested should
| stay tuned for more details, or contact us at bizdev@brave.com.
|
| That's going to be very important for search engines like phind
| which rely on the bing index service.
| riku_iki wrote:
| they have 200 employees on linkedin, many of whom are not
| engineers. How they can carry two such major and complicated
| projects(browser and search) with such headcount?
| jraph wrote:
| Can't say for search (it seems like massive work indeed - or
| maybe you can actually build a decent and comprehensive
| search engine with few people but with a massive amount of
| money), but for the browser they really provide a browser
| _UI_ (and I 'd guess most of it is actually built by Google
| too). It requires work, but it's not _massive_ like a
| browser.
|
| There are many browsers out there, maintained by a few devs,
| sometimes in their free time.
|
| Konqueror, Gnome Web, qutebrowser, WebPositive...
|
| Whatever the SerinityOS is doing, reimplementing a browser
| engine from scratch for their browser Ladybird [1], is vastly
| more impressive.
|
| [1]
| https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Ladybird
| eitland wrote:
| search.marginalia.nu consisted of 1 Swedish engineer and 1
| server last I heard and still managed to outclass DDG in a
| number of query types relevant to me.
|
| In fact, back when I used DDG I think I fell back to
| marginalia more often than I fell back to Google, partly
| because of my dislike for Google and partly because Google
| doesn't respect my queries - which of course is a
| contributing reason for my dislike for them.
|
| Let's say 100 of the Brave employees are engineers and 50 of
| them work on the Chromium skin, that still leaves 50 to work
| on search and related efforts. If 5 of them are as good as
| the marginalia guy and they are allowed to work with equally
| clear direction, lack of interruptions and more funding, I
| think that could almost explain a working search engine.
|
| Remember: In the first 20 years of Google existence (or in
| any 20 years of the semiconductor age until recently) Moores
| law had over 13 cycles. A lot of what used to be hard
| problems before isn't anynore.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > search.marginalia.nu consisted of 1 Swedish engineer and
| 1 server last I heard and still managed to outclass DDG in
| a number of query types relevant to me.
|
| Still just 1 dinky lil' consumer hardware server in my
| living room. I think what is limiting the project the most
| is the hardware. Like I can definitely squeeze more out of
| it, but I could probably do 100 times more if I had any
| sort of operational budget.
|
| But at least the development is funded for the moment.
| We'll see where I am when the NLnet money runs out...
| jraph wrote:
| > Remember: In the first 20 years of Google existence (or
| in any 20 years of the semiconductor age until recently)
| Moores law had over 13 cycles. A lot of what used to be
| hard problems before isn't anynore.
|
| The web also grow tremendously, and probably user
| expectations too (in the beginning of the century we were
| told in school not to speak to search engine like we would
| to a human, but with keywords and operators). We also do
| and search for many more kinds of things
| eitland wrote:
| If anything my expectations sunk massively between 2009
| and the introduction of Kagi.
|
| To be blunt: for me, mainstream search engines Google and
| Bing very much feel like the things they replaced,
| Altavista and Yahoo, just with some fancy bolt ons like
| maps etc.
|
| I understand some people like to be able to write
| sentences to their search engines, but as long as the
| results have worse quality than they had 15 - 20 years
| ago, that "understanding" is just another fancy bolt on
| feature.
|
| The only things that exist today that could threaten
| Google quality is Kagi which has gone all in on quality
| and ChatGPT (and other similar solutions) which finally
| have produced a working "answer machine" instead of
| breaking perfect or at least working search engines.
| slig wrote:
| Meanwhile, Twitter had 7500 and Dropbox, 3000.
| rushingcreek wrote:
| Yep, we're definitely interested in this here at Phind.com :)
| xarthna wrote:
| I have been using Brave Search for a year now. It has been great.
| It provides relevant results and I love how Brave AI floats a
| summarizer to the top with cited and hyperlinked material when
| applicable.
|
| Very rarely I will need to hit the Find Elsewhere 'Google'
| button. This is usually done for niche technical searches where
| Google prioritizes some forums dedicated to the topic like Reddit
| or Stack Overflow. I _could_ re-search with the site operator,
| but after scrolling down with the Google escape hatch there, the
| flow just seems more natural.
|
| Just as an aside, I have also been experimenting with SearX
| searches. The experience isn't as streamlined as Brave Search,
| but I can incorporate Brave Search into my results. I find the
| value proposition interesting for SearX, but implementation still
| lacking.
| Flimm wrote:
| This is about the Brave Search engine, which you can use in any
| browser:
|
| https://search.brave.com/
| alx__ wrote:
| Glad there are more options for search tools. Seems pretty good!
|
| But still very happy with how Kagi works
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