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You know what, I welcome a new search provider, even if it's by a cryptocurrency company. I'd rather see Qwant succeed, but their search is having trouble competing with even duckduckgo.

What I don't see is where Brave gets its image search results from. After Microsoft blatantly started serving the CCP by blocking queries for "tank man", which as far as I know they've never actually apologised for, just explained it as "a filter with more impact than expected" or some BS like that, I found out that most "competing" search engines bought all of their image search from Microsoft, leading to the same kind of censorship on platforms such as duckduckgo.

Brave says it's using "third parties" to generate the results but I can't easily see which third party that would be. If they are using Bing like all the others, I wouldn't trust their image search engine in the slightest.

Personally, I'll just assume they are for now, because they don't seem to clarify this further anywhere else.

From what I can tell, there are four image/video search providers in the world: Google, Bing, Yandex and Baidu. The rest all seem to license their results from one of the big four, mostly from Bing. When I need to pick from those four, I'll stick with Google; their censorship is relatively mild. I was hoping Brave Search would prove to be an alternative in this area, but that doesn't seem to be the case.



Brave has bought a search company that became what is now "Brave Search". They are using their own index.

The "third-parties" bit, IIUIC, is the part when their index does not give good results and it falls back to working like startpage: they send the anonymized query to Google/Bing and take the results to send to the user. I believe that the idea is that they can use this as a way to improve their own index.

They also show on the results page how much of the results are coming from them vs from third-parties [0]

[0]: https://search.brave.com/help/independence


This is true for their normal search, but for their image search they always seem to say "results from third parties" if you click the info button.

Maybe their image search just hasn't encountered enough websites featuring the word "bird" or maybe their disclaimer is shown more often than intended, but I get the idea that image search is always done externally.


For me, Brave being a crypto company is a plus.

While I don't think much about BAT, having a browser with a nice wallet integration is a huge step forward in making Web3/DApps more useable for non-technical people.

It's still a long way, but I think this is one of the first big steps in the right direction.


> I'd rather see Qwant succeed, but their search is having trouble competing with even duckduckgo

Weird. I have found Qwant giving better results than ddg. (No affiliation)

What is weird is that there is one small change that would likely make any of these engines outperform others in everyday usage. Just let me (easily) blacklist domains in my results.


I often want to block domains. If you give me one more pinterest link...


They are indeed using Bing:

>However for some features, like searching for images, Brave Search will fetch results from Microsoft Bing.

Source: https://brave.com/brave-search-beta/


https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tank+man&atb=v156-1&iax=images&ia=... seems fine to me.

If you are referring to it being blocked in China, well, are we at all surprised that private companies kowtow to autocratic regimes in favor of making more money?


It seems fine now.

But the tank man image was blocked for the whole world and not just china. So they fixed this after an public outcry.

But you do not know, what is missing now. Thats a reason for me to not trust them anymore.


> the tank man image was blocked for the whole world

The top story at the time https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395635


No, we're not referring to it being blocked only in China. It was blocked on 4th June worldwide by all search engines that rely on Bing (DDG, Qwant, Ecosia, ...)

You can see them returning no results for "tank man" from the web archive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398376


> I'd rather see Qwant succeed, but their search is having trouble competing with even duckduckgo.

Why? (I use the latter.)

> Microsoft blatantly started serving the CCP by blocking queries for "tank man"

Works fine for me [1].

[1] https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=tank+man&form=HDRSC2&fi...


DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Ecosia, Yahoo, etc. they all rely on Bing (Some only for images)[1].

> Works fine for me

Not on June 4th[2] (the date when the Tiananmen Square massacre ended). Microsoft "fixed" it after the backlash.

[1]: https://www.searchenginemap.com/

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398376


It was temporarily censored around a critical time, and there was also some bullshit explanation floating around.

See the last paragraph in the Censorship section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man#Censorship


I thought Yandex also used Bing for image search?

Ya when I do image search in Yandex at the bottom it says Search: Bing Google


I think they stopped doing it long time ago (and I cannot see these links now), but if my memory serves me well basically these links were taking you to Google and Bing with the same query, respectively. I.e. they were directly linking to competitors, just in case your original search at Yandex was not satisfactory.


Oh, possible, they weirdly disappear as I scroll down and don't have time to click them.


Do you welcome a search provider run by a bigoted anti-mask anti-vaxx nutjob?

Because that's what Brave is.


I'd honestly rather have a search provider run by the CPC than by a cryptocurrency company, though naturally I'd prefer neither.


> I'd honestly rather have a search provider run by the CPC

Any reason behind your preference? It baffles me to hear you'd rather use a heavily censored and CCP-controlled search provider than a search provider from a free market with an alternative business model.


As @skyfaller posted elsewhere in this discussion:

> Cryptocurrency isn't just a disaster, it's several disasters bundled together. Anyone working with it in any way, anyone who has a stake in cryptocurrency, has been compromised, and can no longer be trusted, just as your neighbor who is trying to sell you on their multilevel marketing scheme can no longer be trusted. (Did they invite you to dinner? Oh, surprise, it's just to sell you on their MLM again.) They are ignoring multiple dire ethical problems as they sell their relationship with you for funny money.

Basically, any involvement with cryptocurrency is a strong signal of untrustworthiness and lack of scruples. Mere political censorship isn't in the same league.




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