Brave browser bravely takes on Google with privacy-focused search

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Brave browser bravely takes on Google with privacy-focused search
Try Brave Search if you’re trying to prevent Google from tracking everything you do online.
Photo: Brave

A public beta of a privacy-preserving search engine from Brave debuted Tuesday. It doesn’t track users, their searches or their clicks.

It is, of course, entering into a David vs. Goliath fight with Google, which dominates the search business with a more than 90% share.

“Brave Search is the industry’s most private search engine, as well as the only independent search engine, giving users the control and confidence they seek in alternatives to big tech,” said Brendan Eich, CEO and co-founder of Brave. “Brave Search fills a clear void in the market today as millions of people have lost trust in the surveillance economy and actively seek solutions to be in control of their data.”

Brave Search won’t track users

The developer promises that the user comes first, not the advertisers. And it uses its own search index. For some jobs, like searching for images, the engine gets results from Microsoft Bing, but that does not result in tracking of users.

It’s built into the Brave privacy-oriented browser for desktop, iOS and Android, but any web browser can access it at search.brave.com

Brave Search is currently free to use and there are no ads. However, that will soon change, with users having a choice between ad-free paid search and ad-supported search.

A privacy-focused search engine that’s already available is DuckDuckGo. It can even be replace Google as the default search engine for Safari.

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