Brave Is Developing a Privacy-Preserving Search Engine

FAQ

If you’ve been wondering whether the market has the appetite for a privacy-first web search engine, we should find out later this year when Brave is scheduled to release theirs. The company, known for its privacy-first browser, is hoping to challenge Google’s current dominance– estimated to be over 90 percent market share. 

In order to do this, the company acquired the open-source search engine Tailcat to begin working on an alternative search engine. This combo would allow Brave to have a privacy-first alternative to Google Chrome and Google Search. Brave’s solution will let users choose between a paid ad-free search experience and a free ad-supported format.

To be fair, I have to give Google some credit for what they’ve done with Google Chrome and other services.  Google Chrome allows you to browse privately in its incognito mode. Also, you have the option to delete your whole browsing history or just a single item.

In general, you can go to myactivity.google.com to review and delete your activity gathered from a variety of Google products. Under ‘My Activity,’ you should see a number of entries. Most of them more than likely are what Google calls web & app activity. This includes browsing data like the sites you visited and the search queries used in Google searches. 

If you want to delete all or part of your search history, there on the left sidebar you can click ‘Delete activity by’, fill out the form that comes up, and click ‘Delete’. On the main page, if you click on ‘Web & App Activity’, you should be able to configure how your activity data is automatically deleted.

The question for Google has been whether they have done enough? In fairness, if you’re going to use the most popular of all the web browsers for free you can reasonably expect there will be a cost associated with that. In this instance, the cost has to do with your personal information.

References

1. The folks behind privacy-focused Brave browser are now making a search engine. Pocketnow. Last accessed: 2021-03-07.
2. Delete your Chrome browsing history. Google Chrome Help. Last accessed: 2021-03-07.
3. Brave Takes Aim at Google, Set to Launch Privacy-First Search Engine. Decrypt. Last accessed: 2021-03-07.
4. How to review and delete your Google search history. The Next Web. Last accessed: 2021-03-07.
5. Brave acquires search engine to offer the first private alternative to Google Search and Google Chrome on both mobile and desktop. Brave. Last Accessed: 2021-03-08.