Most of us probably still use Google or at the very least Bing for our search needs but the past few years, we’re seeing some users becoming concerned about the data they’re giving up to big tech. So it’s an opportunity for search engines that have privacy in mind to make a move and get a portion of the market that may be looking for an alternative browser. Brave Search is now available as a public beta which you can access from the Brave browser or through any other browser by going to search.brave.com.
The main selling point of Brave Search is that its priority is the privacy of its users. It won’t track user data even during search queries and it won’t profile its users for advertisers as well. Brave says they have their own search index that can answer queries privately so they don’t need to use third-party providers. Brave’s acquisition of open search engine Tailcat earlier this year serves as the foundation for their own.
They will also have some upcoming features probably when it gets out of beta or at least in its latter stages. Users can choose between ad-free paid search and ad-supported search. They will also eventually use community-curated open ranking models so that your results will be free from algorithmic biases and censorship and will give you diverse results when you use the search engine.
Brave Search will also soon be available for other search engines that would want to use its privacy-focused engine. There’s also seamless integration between the Brave browser and the Brave Search engine. Basically, they say that all these features and decisions aims to put the user first, above the advertising and data industries. And with growing concerns over Big Tech’s data tracking, this will probably be welcome news for privacy-focused users.
You can access Brave Search from the Brave browser and make it your default search engine, even in other browsers. Just a reminder that it is still in open beta and so may not function as perfectly as you would want to.
