In brief
- Brave, the privacy-first web browser, is launching a search engine later this year.
- The browser’s Basic Attention Token system asks users to view ads in exchange for crypto.
Brave, the privacy-first, crypto-friendly web browser, is gearing up to launch a search engine later this year.
Brave Search is the company’s attempt to take a bite out of Google’s dominance—currently, Google’s search engine has 92% market share.
In a press release, the company said it’s building the search function around a recent acquisition: a project called Tailcat, which was developed by the team behind the now-defunct Cliqz search engine. Brave Search will be powered by Tailcat’s own independent index of websites, and won’t collect IP addresses or personalize results based on identifying information, as Google does.
Per Wired, Brave Search is also developing a “Goggles” function, which can filter out certain kinds of results.
The Brave browser launched in 2019 under the auspices of Brendan Eich, a co-founder of Mozilla. The project is geared toward protecting user privacy, and is built around crypto; it’s ad-free, but opting into ads will reward you with BAT, or the Basic Attention Token—a cryptocurrency meant to incentivize use of the browser.
In another sign that Brave is interested in catering to the crypto-conscious, the company recently announced its own aggregator for so-called “decentralized” crypto exchanges. Where a centralized exchange like Coinbase holds your keys for you, on decentralized exchanges, crypto is never actually held by anyone but the users.
Brave Search is coming in the first half of 2021; you can join the waitlist here.