The WDP’s privacy-preserving methodology discards search queries that are too long or suspicious looking. For a URL to be sent, it needs to be visited independently by a large number of people this is achieved by using the novel STAR cryptographic protocol. This data helps build the Brave Search independent index, and ensures Brave Search shows results relevant to search queries. The system contributes anonymous search and browsing data made within the Brave browser from users who have opted in. This means there’s no data for Brave to sell to advertisers, or lose to theft or hacking, or hand over to government agencies, allowing us to keep promises through technology rather than slogans. Unlike those search providers, the Web Discovery Project is designed so that a ll data received is unlinkable, making it impossible to build profiles or sessions of Web Discovery Project contributors. This data can be, and often is, associated with users personally by an identifier or linkable records.

Big Tech search providers collect data from users without asking or notifying users, to continuously grow their indexes-the list of billions of web pages they draw from to deliver results-and to ensure results are relevant and never stale. It is a major step forward from the typical server-side aggregation used by the industry. The WDP represents a fundamental shift in how a search index is built to serve relevant results for users. The WDP is a strictly opt-in feature and protects user privacy and anonymity by design, so that contributed data cannot be linked to individuals or their devices, and cannot be linked together for a user or set of users this prevents deanonymization. “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.”īrave Search is also launching the Web Discovery Project (WDP), a privacy-preserving system for users to anonymously contribute data to improve Brave Search coverage and quality, and its independence and competitiveness against Big Tech alternatives. Our users are pleased with the comprehensive privacy solution that Brave Search provides against Big Tech by being integrated into our browser,” said Brendan Eich, CEO and co-founder of Brave. “Brave Search has grown significantly since its release last June, with nearly 80 million queries per month. Brave Search will also offer an ad-free Premium version in the near future. īrave Search is currently not displaying ads, but the free version of Brave Search will soon be ad-supported. Brave Search is also available in any other browser at. Brave users can easily choose a different search option if they prefer by managing their search engine settings. Today’s Brave desktop browser update (version 1.31), as well as the Brave Android app (version 1.31) and the Brave iOS app (version 1.32) all automatically offer Brave Search as the default for new users in these five countries, with fully localized versions in non-English geographies.

Existing Brave users will keep their chosen search engine default, and can set Brave Search as the default search engine in Brave or most other major browsers. Privacy-preserving Brave Search now replaces Google as the default search engine used in the address bar for new Brave users in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom Brave Search as default also replaces Qwant in France, and DuckDuckGo in Germany, with more geographies to be added in the next several months. Brave Search is built on top of an independent index, and doesn’t track users, their searches, or their clicks. Starting today, new Brave users will have the search functionality in the Brave browser powered by Brave Search, giving them the privacy and independence of a search/browser alternative to Big Tech.