However, as impressive as that is, Brave Search (and the other privacy search engine, DuckDuckGo) are still lightyears away from challenging Google's hegemony. That was a staggering increase in a year, from 8.1 million search queries to 411.7M by May 2022. In a recent announcement, the company said its search engine had passed 2.5 billion queries since its release a year earlier. In March 2021, the company launched Brave Search so it could use its own index to generate search results. Its first product was the Brave Browser, a privacy-friendly, Chromium-based internet browser that automatically blocks ads and site trackers. In May 2015, Mozilla alumni Brendan Eich and Brian Bondy launched Brave Software.

To celebrate, the company says it is moving the search engine out of its beta phase to become the default search engine for all Brave browser users. The opt-in nature will limit WDP's usefulness, but Brave is clearly hoping to find enough participants that it narrows gaps with heavyweight rivals.Brave Search, Brave Software's privacy search engine, just turned one. The feature is anonymous and makes the data 'unlinkable,' rendering it useless to ad customers or hackers. Brave has launched a Web Discovery Project that lets volunteers contribute data to improve Brave Search's overall quality. While its independent index won't necessarily be robust as Google's, Brave is betting that the default position will significantly boost adoption. It doesn't track you, your search history or what you've clicked. The change in defaults is available across desktop releases as well as Android and iOS.īrave Search is effectively billed as the anti-Google engine.

Your browser will keep its existing search engine settings, and you can always pick Google or another competitor if you're so inclined. It'll also supplant DuckDuckGo in Germany and Qwant in France, with more countries seeing the switch in the 'next several months.' As of today (October 19th), Brave will use the engine as its browser's default search tool, replacing Google in the US, UK and Canada. Brave is very confident in its privacy-centric search engine - so much so that it's giving Google the boot.

Brave browser vs duckduckgo