Brave is one ofour favorite browsers on Android, and it’s been slowly expanding into different ventures like a VPN service and its own Google alternative Brave Search. While the goal with the latter has always been to provide a self-sufficient service without data from Microsoft or Google, Brave had to rely on some licensed results in the past. That’s changing this week, as Brave Searchhas finally announcedthat its image and video search results will also be indexed fully independently now, with the full search experience now independent.
Brave Searchis the default search engine on Brave Browser, but it is also a popular Google Search alternative, much like DuckDuckGo. Underneath the custom UI, Brave Search was dependent on Microsoft’s Bing search API to handle image and video related search queries for a long time. This made Brave Search an unintentional complice for some questionable censorship decisions made by Microsoft, with Brave pointing to a period when Bing was found showing zero image search results for theTiananmen Square “tank man."
While developing a system to circumvent Big Tech’s forced choices, Brave focused on offering a reliable alternative to Google Search, instead of ensuring feature parity first. To this effect, you could choose to be redirected to Google or Bing during the transition to a custom image indexing system.
Now, though, Brave Search queries for images and video are served directly through the company’s own index. This gets Brave Search closer to becoming a reliable Google alternative, but the company says we will have to wait a little longer for feature parity with options like search filters for image license type and aspect ratio. With that in mind, it retains quick links to Google and Bing for convenience.
Just becauseGoogle Chromeis your browser of choice doesn’t mean Google has to be your go-to option. While Brave Search isn’t among the default search engines, you can still easilymake it the search engine of your choice. Independent indexing makes Brave Search a viable Google alternative if you’re worried about your privacy and how much information is censored before it even gets to you. The search engine is free to use but comes with ads, which you can remove with a $3-per-month premium version.
