Brave, the development firm behind the Basic Attention Token and Brave Browser, a crypto-powered browser, has announced the launch of Brave Search, a privacy-focused search engine.
The announcement follows Brave’s announcement earlier this year in February that it will be building a suite of products to complement the current Brave Browser’s crypto features, among them an in-browser crypto wallet, a start page featuring crypto pricing highlights, a decentralized exchange with its Basic Attention Token serving as native utility token, and now the Brave Search engine that will be built natively into Brave Browser.
The search engine project was first announced in March 2021, and was based on the Tailcat project originally developed by the team Cliqz. The project was acquired by Brave and given a new direction that would not include “secret methods or algorithms to bias results,” according to the firm.
Starting today, the beta version of Brave Search is now available to all Brave users on desktop, Android, and iOS. Other browsers and users may now also use search.brave.com to use the web application.
Mirroring the same ethos of cryptocurrencies and the crypto movement, the privacy-first search engine will feature a “fully anonymous search” in which user IP addresses will not be collected. This implies that the search engine cannot personalize results based on identifying information collected from tracking pixels or cookies, a method that is infamously done by Google by default. The search engine instead offers a new philosophy: “the user comes first, not the advertising and data industries” thus using an independent index of sites and aggregating data based on the index.
According to Brave CEO Brendan Eich, Brave Search is “the industry’s most private search engine, as well as the only independent search engine,” such that the project offers “a new way to get relevant results with a community-powered index, while guaranteeing privacy.”
In recent years, major search engines such as Google have blocked cryptocurrency advertising on its results. It has since backtracked on this decision albeit with tighter rules: only cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets are allowed, while ICOs and other types of token sales will remain banned. This new decision from the major search engine will be implemented starting August 3.
Brave Search will later launch an ad-free paid search option alongside the current ad-supported free offering. The search engine will follow through Brave Browser’s tokenized advertising model wherein users may earn Basic Attention Tokens ($BAT) for choosing to receive and view pre-listed advertisements regulated according to Brave’s privacy-preserving rules.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
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