Brave, the browser that has among its founders the former Mozilla Brendan Eich, plans to launch its own search engine. Given that privacy and developing a way to reward content creators without invasive advertising are among the project's goals, the move may prove interesting.
Brave will launch its own search engine
However, the new desktop and mobile browser is not going to be built from scratch. Brave announced the acquisition of an open source search engine originally developed by the team behind a discontinued browser and search engine combo called Cliqz.
Based on this engine, Brave plans to provide its users a search and browsing experience that is not controlled by big technology.
According to the press release:
Under the hood, almost all of today's search engines are built by, or depend on, the results of big tech companies. Instead, the Tailcat search engine is built on a completely independent index, capable of delivering the quality that people expect without compromising their privacy.
Tailcat does not collect IP addresses or use personally identifiable information to improve search results.
The funny thing is that Brave (a browser based on Chromium) will use a project from the developers of Cliqz, a European fork of Mozilla Firefox focused on privacy. The project closed in May last year when the main sponsor withdrew funding due to the pandemic.
It was thus that the developers, now incorporated as employees of Brave) began to work on Tailcat (Cat's Tail). The engineering team is led by Dr. Josep M. Pujol.
The Mozilla leader described his new acquisition:
Tailcat is a totally independent search engine with its own search index built from scratch. As Brave Search will offer the same privacy guarantees that Brave has in its browser.
Eich makes a very interesting promise:
Brave will provide the first browser + private search alternative to Big Tech platforms, and will make users browse and search seamlessly with guaranteed privacy. Additionally, due to its transparent nature, Brave Search will address algorithmic biases and avoid outright censorship.
According to Brave itself, the browser grew from 11 million monthly active users to 25 million. This reflects an increase in interest in privacy, the greatest example of which was the massive migration from WhatsApp to Telegram or Signal ..
Already forgotten the stumble suffered when it was learned that they inserted referred links on certain pages, the company is optimistic about the future
We expect to see even greater demand for Brave in 2021, as more and more users demand real privacy solutions to escape invasive Big Tech practices. Brave's mission is to put the user first, and the integration of privacy. Privacy-preserving search on our platform is a necessary step to ensure that user privacy is not looted to fuel the surveillance economy.
Brave Search will be offered as an option to users along with a list of most popular options (Google, Bing, Qwant, Ecosia, etc.) so that the user can choose their default search engine.
In my experience with alternative search engines (even those of large companies) it is that they do not provide the same results in local searches. Although, as Eich points out, Google is trapped in the fact that advertising is its main source of income and therefore cannot make substantial modifications to its search engine. It becomes annoying when you are looking for information on an item and have to navigate a full page of buying and selling sites.
It is estimated that the search engine will be available in the European summer. But, if you want to try it before, you can write down here.
Of course, Gmail for some reason, sends the confirmation email to the Spam folder.