This statement (second paragraph)

> Ads are a key part of search engines, helping to facilitate the free and open exchange of information on the Web, and to connect users to helpful products and services related to their search terms.

Is just non sequitur for me. It's said in such a smooth way, in such a gaslight-ish way, that your tempted to just accept it.

But it actually makes no sense to me. I get what ads are key to: revenue, keeping the lights on, that sort of thing. But I don't see how they increase the free and open exchange of information on the web. If I sat down with a troubled couple who was having a hard time communicating, I wouldn't periodically interrupt and say "let's pause a moment for an ad. I think that's going to really open up a better and more free exchange between the both of you."

I also don't understand how it is helpful in helping me connect to products and services in a helpful way. An index (yellow pages) of what's available would help me search for a product. A rating system that wasn't gamed might help me make a selection that was best for me. But ads? We inherently distrust that we're being swayed/manipulated by them. I need to update the insulation in my attic, so I'm in the market to get some newer insulation. To wit, I've called a number of people I know who are in the insulation/builder business to get their information. Not a single one said "well, here's my opinion, but what you really need to do is check the ads, they're going to be your best source of information about how to proceed."

Not the biggest fan of Brave myself, but they seem to actually get extra points in my eyes for adding the paid option. It's not like you can pay $3 to Google to get them to stop surveilling you.

On a bigger note, monetizing search without ads seem to be a pretty tricky business model. Especially if you want to move beyond being a niche product; even an average HN reader would be hard to convince to pay for a regular subscription, so with the general public I can't imaging the hassle.

What are other ways search engines could monetize without taking money either from users or from people that want to show something to them?

After all the Brave controversies [0] I'm not sure why anyone uses Brave anymore. They took creators' money while ostensibly "collecting" it for them, and they inserted their own affiliate links when you visited certain sites. It's just shady behavior all around. I mean, when you have your own "Controversies" section on Wikipedia, you know there's something wrong.

Especially with Manifest v3 looming which would kill modern ad blockers, I see no reason not to use Firefox. Sure, Brave and other Chromium browsers might say they'll fork Chromium, but how long will that last, really? It's no joke to maintain a fork.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Controvers...

I have been enjoying Kagi. Don’t mind the $10 per month to support something that caters to me rather than advertisers.

So, let me get this straight. They will block ads on the internet, only to replace them by their own ads? So the money will go to them instead of the creators of the content you're watching?

Their example screenshot shows their own VPN as the first result for "VPN". Reminds me of this other search engine.

From the article:

During this beta phase, Brave Search users will see text-based ads in search results. However, during the beta period, Brave users who have opted-in to Brave Private Ads and are using the latest version of Brave will not see Search ads, since these new ad units are not yet eligible for BAT earnings. We’re actively working to integrate Brave Rewards with Brave Search, and hope to make Search ads eligible for BAT earnings in the coming months.

Ads seem to be a modern virus that infects everything. Everyone who claims "no ads", eventually turns their back on that once they get big enough, even companies with more than enough money from their own products (e.g. Apple, Netflix). I've never seen anything so powerful. I guess it comes down to "no business would say no to free money", but it really is incredible.

lots of criticism for brave in this thread. they are the best privacy browser at the moment based on leakage tests for default settings. they got a working add-blocker by default. they have privacy preserving ads because of local in browser matching, your data never leaves the browser for the ads, the ads come to you! they even pay you for watching the ads, and enable you to support creators.

I feel we finally have a privacy respecting browser normal people and tech enthousiast can use, and it puzzles me how it's painted here. let's stay objective

if you don't like the web3 stuff or the blockchain based rewards don't use it. But the web3 space is booming and brave has been nice way to interact with it.

I think Brave Ads is sophomoric to say that they don't track users when Apple, not to mention Facebook and Google, understand that the effective operation of Internet advertising is to track users.

Blocking other companies' ads and posting their own ads instead is unbecoming and also reminds me of AdBlock Plus.

If you haven't checked out Kagi, it has been a pleasure to use.

I've been testing Brave search for some time now (switched from DDG after 2y) and I have to say that I'm very impressed with the quality of results to the degree that I'm wondering if they are simply scraping Google.

What's the idea here? I was under the impression that one of the selling points of Brave is that you don't get ads when browsing. Doesn't this go against that?

> Brave Search only uses your search query, country, and device type to show you ads

This, by definition, is not "fully private."

Everything free, becomes ad-infested. Nothing is free, and it's really annoying seeing company after company make empty promises about privacy and "being different", then switching up when their investors start breathing down their necks. Just be honest from the start.

Genuinely interested why do people keep using Brave instead of LibreWolf or ungoogled-chromium?

EDIT: LibreWolf Browser: A custom version of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom. https://librewolf.net/

ungoogled-chromium: A lightweight approach to removing Google web service dependency https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium

Possibly a completely dumb idea, but I’ve wondered for a while if there would be value in building an open data web index, something which would allow competing providers to offer different search algorithms on top of.

I don’t know enough about the technical details about building a search engine, so perhaps this isn’t feasible because the algorithm and the index need to be tightly coupled to each other, but my hunch is that it would be beneficial for the web if there were an open street map of search indexes.

Would you trust Google's ( or other search provider's) ads more, if they had a separately browsable "classifieds" site, not unlike Craigslist, that the search ads would be search results from (reach modified by how much the ads were paid with, ofc.). Anyway, when you saw an add, you could click through it like now, or click to browse a relevant section of the classifieds site. Which would also work as a catalog of all paid and also unpaid ads the search provider carried?

I'm not a fan of ads at all. But I am curious, is there an alternative way to provide a free service while still making money?

Unrelated, it would be cool to be able to self host an actual search engine (not talking about privacy-focused front ends like Searx -- but I'm grateful for projects like it) without having to store petabytes of data. Is there a self-hostable search engine alternative that doesn't just use another backend search engine service like Bing?

HN could do a better title, it seems almost like it's clickbait. The original article title is "Brave debuts privacy-preserving ads in its search engine" - so the HN title kind of implies the opposite.

I think paying for content / services is the only way out of.. this. This thing we're in where Advertiser is King. This ecosystem that breeds dark patterns and skews all discourse towards the uninformed and adversarial.

I've rarely seen a product become so bad so quickly. Brave started out with great promises and has consistently under-delivered since.

Do you work for free? A company has to make money to survive and pay its employees.

Brave blocks third-party ads, not all ads.

If you don't like the ads I'm sure there will be ways to block them. Every search engine has ads, StartPage, DDG, Google, etc... None have an option to pay. I don't see what's wrong with them keeping the lights on, every startup can't burn money forever.

I prefer paying for services, e.g. Tutanota, Anonaddy, Bitwarden, Guardian. Why do people take everything on the web for free? Of course, companies need to make money - if not with subs, then with ads. What else should they do?

Or, use DuckDuckGo which allows you to turn off ads without paying.

> ads that [don’t] track them

Does that mean “can’t” or “promise not to”.

Ads from the browser itself? Do not want.

I haven't seen any ads so far. Must be early.

As private as their tor

A lot of angry comments in here, but the post says there's an ad-free paid version,

> Ads will give users the option to use our independent search engine with ads that don’t track them, or to sign up for ad-free paid search

Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is? Or do you expect software companies to work for free? (Presumably not the companies you work for).

Can Brave ad blocker block Brave ads?

Brave, the FTX of browsers.

Is anyone surprised? Brave was trying to push their own ad network years ago with the BAT (Brave Attention Token) to "pay" websites for eyes on their page. And guess how they paid for it? By running their own ads over native web content.

Edit: Not sure why people are downvoting this. Brave announced the BAT in 2017 and they outlined their plans for an alternative ad network then. https://twitter.com/AttentionToken/status/844929203438964736...