Privacy-focused Brave browser has rolled out a new in-house search engine, Brave Search, which will replace Google as the default search engine on the browser.
According to the company, their search engine is “built on top of an independent index” and won’t track people’s searches and clicks. Brave Search will now be the default search engine used by the address bar in USA, Canada, UK, France and Germany.
Existing Brave browser users will keep their current default browser, but can choose Brave Search from the options. Any new installation comes with Brave Search as default.
This change will reflect on the Brave desktop browser (version 1.31), Android app (version 1.31) and iOS app (version 1.32). People in France and Germany, where Brave Search replaces Qwant and DuckDuckGo as the default, can access the localised non-English version of Brave Search.
At the moment, Brave Search doesn’t display any ads but it will soon be ad-supported as the company gears up to offer an ad-free Premium version of the search engine in the future.
The company is also launching Web Discover Project (WDP), which is an opt-in system that users can use to anonymously contribute data to enhance the search engine’s coverage.
“As we know from experience in many browsers, the default setting is crucial for adoption, and Brave Search has reached the quality and critical mass needed to become our default search option, and to offer our users a seamless privacy-by-default online experience,” said Brendan Eich, CEO and co-founder of Brave.
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