In its quest for a user-first Web, Brave Search users will now receive 100% of results from the Brave Index, which will give users fully independent results and preserve user privacy. The move will result in less reliance on Big Tech options:
“Every Web search result seen in Brave Search is now served by our own index. We’ve removed all search API calls to Bing, which previously represented about 7% of query results.”
Google Fallback mixing will still be available to access Google results for search comparison. Users can help improve Brave Search by participating in the Web Discovery Project, and submitting feedback for improvement. Goggles can also be employed by users to re-rank and filter results from the Brave Search index.
Although Brave Search via text works well, users will be redirected to Bing or Google for image and video searches:
“Brave Search won’t serve image or video results from its own index, as we work to improve quality.”
Brave Search’s motivation for removing its Bing’s API is the recent Microsoft and OpenAI partnership. An unprecedented increase in its API pricing was one influencing factor.
