Illustration by Stephen Shankland / CNET
Browser manufacturer Brave has acquired a search engine project that prioritizes user privacy, a distinction he hopes will differentiate it from Google, the undisputed leader on the Internet.
Brave said on Wednesday that it had bought Tailcat, developed by Cliqz, a private subsidiary of German Hubert Burda Media. Tailcat, which closed Burda in 2020, is designed to show results without recording users’ search activities or building a profile. The terms of the deal have not been announced, but Burda is now a brave shareholder.
Brave is finally planning to show search ads through Brave Search, as Tailcat technology is now called. Brave opened a waiting list on Wednesday so beta testers can try it out in the coming weeks, with general availability for late spring or summer.
The bootloader hopes to pay users for viewing the ads, as with the flagship browser. Brave’s existing browser advertising system pays 70% of the advertising revenue to brave users who choose the system, called Brave Rewards.
“When we get to the promised land of our own automated search advertising system, we’ll at least give the user what we make,” said CEO Brendan Eich.
Brave is unlikely to dethrone Google searches anytime soon. But Tailcat can show there is room for financial success with a business that puts privacy first. The Brave browser has grown steadily since its initial release in 2016. Eich predicts that by the end of the year, Brave will have as many as 50 million users per month, which now doubles the 25 million users. It does not disclose financial information, but revenue has grown by a factor of 28 over the past 16 months and now employs 115 people.
Of course, it’s a huge undertaking to take action against Google. According to the analysis firm StatCounter, more than 90% of the searches are responsible. Microsoft’s Bing is a distant second with less than 3%. Other companies like Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and StartPage repackaged Bing and Google search results.
Two decades ago, Google took the lead because the algorithms, including the important PageRank technology created by Google co-founder Larry Page, provide fast and relevant results. The AdWords system, which shows ads along with search results, remains a money-mining machine.
Brave Search starts with a downside because it has a smaller index of the internet than that of Google. Brave will try to overcome that hurdle by supplementing relevancy-enhancing algorithms with anonymous data from Brave users themselves.
Brave can do this by analyzing the browser’s data about users’ searches and the links they click on, information that can be shared anonymously. Cliqz has hired external security investigators to test the system, Eich said, and is confident that search data cannot be traced to any individual.
The company’s new search service will still rely to some extent on Google’s expertise. According to Eich, large-scale copying of Google’s full search results for a given search is not inappropriate. But detecting the link that people click from the results is “OK” he said, as long as it is done anonymously and with the consent of users. Brave Search will only collect data from users who log in, Eich said.
Many companies use privacy as part of their point of sale, and Google is a regular target. However, with changes to people’s privacy priorities and regulatory pressures, Google is changing its ways. Wednesday it said it will start from next year stop tracking individuals while visiting different websites. The CEO who made the announcement was David Temkin, director of product management for the privacy and trust of ads at Google. Previously, he was Brave’s chief product officer.