Brave Browser announces Brave Search: a privacy conscious alternative to Google

Brave Browser, the secure and private browser launched by Brendan Eich in 2018, has recently announced the acquisition of Tailcat and the release of their Google Search alternative: Brave Search. Google Chrome is the most used web browser in the world with 70% market share. Similarly, Google Search is the most used search engine in the world with a whopping 92% market share. Brave bought Tailcat from Cliqz – a holding of Hubert Durba Media.

Brave Search is the latest private alternative to Google Search

Brendan Eich emphasizes that Brave Search (and the Browser behind it) will not treat its users or its users’ data the way that Google does. Eich emphasized:

“Brave already has a default anonymous user model with no data collection at all.”

The popularity of Google Search is in large part due to the massive index of the internet that Google regularly crawls out of the web. Eich explained to Wired how Tailcat will power Brave Search and provide a large enough index to provide useful search results to Brave users:

“What Tailcat does is it looks at a query log and a click log anonymously. These allow it to build an index, which Tailcat has done and already did at Cliqz, and it’s getting bigger.”

Another feature planned by the Brave Search team is allowing users to set trusted sources that search results would pull from. This feature would be called “Goggles” and could even allow users to filter out search results that contain affiliate links. Brave is making another move that may seem weird to Google. To start with, Brave Search will not be the default search engine on Brave Browser. Eich stated:

“We will have it as an alternative not as a default because we’ll still feel like there’s more work to do. As it gets good enough, I think we will try to make it the default engine in Brave.”