Brave acquires search engine: alternative to Google search planned
Privacy-focused browser Brave has acquired open search engine Tailcat in a bid to launch its own alternative to Google Search.
Privacy-focused browser Brave is getting closer to its goal of offering a data-protected search engine.
Brave announced on Wednesday that the browser provider had acquired Tailcat. That’s an open search engine developed by a group that Bitcoin Union used to work on data-protected search and browser products at Cliqz. Cliqz, which was majority owned by Hubert Burda Media, ended its work on browser and search technologies in May 2020.
According to the announcement, Tailcat will act as the basis for a planned service called Brave Search. This will be a built-in search engine that will enable private and transparent web browsing.
Brave CEO and co-founder Brendan Eich told Cointelegraph that the company expects to launch Brave Search by summer 2021. „Brave is now working to integrate this technology and offer it as Brave Search to everyone. Initially via early access for testers and then by the summer for the general public,“ Eich said.
The Brave browser currently relies on major external search engines, offering users a choice between privacy-friendly search engines DuckDuckGo and Startpage and other mainstream tools such as Google Search.
According to Brave, „almost all of today’s search engines are either built by big-tech companies or draw on their results.“
In contrast, Tailcat is built on a completely independent index and does not collect IP addresses or personal data to improve search results. Eich stated that the Tailcat developers „worked on privacy-friendly search for the last seven years while at Cliqz and then on the Tailcat project after Cliqz closed.“
Shortly before, Brave had recorded a major milestone in its browser adoption, doubling its active user base from 11 million to over 26 million monthly users. At the end of February, Brave published its „BAT Roadmap 2.0“. In it, the company announced that it would investigate the usefulness of its Basic Attention Token (BAT) for search engines. As part of the roadmap, the company is also working on a DEX aggregator and an NFT function.