Brave, the privacy-focused browser co-founded by ex-Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, is getting ready to launch an own-brand search engine for desktop and mobile.
Today it’s announced the acquisition of an open source search engine developed by the team behind the (now defunct) Cliqz anti-tracking search-browser combo. The tech will underpin the forthcoming Brave Search engine — meaning it will soon be pitching its millions of users on an entirely ‘big tech’-free search and browsing experience.
“Under the hood, nearly all of today’s search engines are either built by, or rely on, results from Big Tech companies. In contrast, the Tailcat search engine is built on top of a completely independent index, capable of delivering the quality people expect but without compromising their privacy,” Brave writes in a press release announcing the acquisition.
“Tailcat does not collect IP addresses or use personally identifiable information to improve search results.”
Cliqz, which was a privacy-focused European fork of Mozilla’s Firefox browser, got shuttered last May after its majority investor, Hubert Burda Media, called time on the multi-year effort to build momentum for an alternative to Google — blaming tougher trading conditions during the pandemic for forcing it to pull the plug sooner than it would have liked.
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The former Cliqz dev team, who had subsequently been working on Tailcat, are moving to Brave as part of the acquisition. The engineering team is led by Dr Josep M Pujol — who is quoted in Brave’s PR saying it’s “excited to be working on the only real private search/browser alternative to Big Tech”.
“Tailcat is a fully independent search engine with its own search index built from scratch,” Eich told TechCrunch. “Tailcat as Brave Search will offer the same privacy guarantees that Brave has in its browser.
“Brave will provide the first private browser+search alternative to the Big Tech platforms, and will make it seamless for users to browse and search with guaranteed privacy. Also, owing to its transparent nature, Brave Search will address algorithmic biases and prevent outright censorship.”
Brave getting into the search business is a reflection of its confidence that privacy is becoming mainstream, per Eich. He points to “unprecedented” growth in usage of its browser over the past year — up from 11M monthly active users to 26M+ — which he says has mirrored the surge in usage earlier this year seen by the (not-for-profit) e2e encrypted messaging app Signal (after Facebook-owned WhatsApp announced a change to its privacy policies to allow for increased data-sharing with Facebook through WhatsApp business accounts).
“We expect to see even greater demand for Brave in 2021 as more and more users demand real privacy solutions to escape Big Tech’s invasive practices,” he added in a statement. “Brave’s mission is to put the user first, and integrating privacy-preserving search into our platform is a necessary step to ensure that user privacy is not plundered to fuel the surveillance economy.”
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Brave Search will be offered as a choice to users alongside a roster of more established third parties (Google, Bing, Qwant, Ecosia etc) which they can select as their browser default.
It will also potentially become the default (i.e. if users don’t pick their own) in future, per Eich.
“We will continue to support ‘open search’ with multiple alternative engines,” he confirmed. “User choice is a permanent principle at Brave. Brave will continue to offer multiple alternative choices for the user’s default search engine, and we think our users will seek unmatched privacy with Brave Search. When ready, we hope to make Brave Search the default engine in Brave.”
Asked how the quality of Tailcat-powered results vs Google Eich described it as “quite good”, adding that it “will only get better with adoption”.
“Google’s ‘long tail’ is hard for any engine to beat but we have a plan to compete on that front too, once integrated into the Brave browser,” he told us in an email interview, arguing that Google’s massive size does offer some competitive opportunities for a search rival. “There are aspects where Google is falling behind. It is difficult for them to innovate in search when that’s the main source of their revenue.
“They are risk-averse against experimenting with new techniques and transparency, while under pressure from shareholders to tie their own businesses into scarce search engine results page (SERP) area, and pressure from search engine optimization (SEO).”
“On questions such as censorship, community feedback, and algorithmic transparency, we think we can do better from the get-go. Unlike other search engines, we believe that the only way to make big improvements is to build afresh, with the know-how that comes from building,” he added. “The option of using Bing (as other search offerings do) instead of building the index exists but it will get you only as far as Bing in terms of quality (and as with such offerings, you’ll be wholly dependent on Bing).”
Brave is aiming for general availability of Brave Search by the summer — if not late spring, per Eich. Users interested in testing an early iteration can sign up for a waitlist here. (A test version is slated as coming in “the next few weeks”.)
The name Tailcat is unlikely to be widely familiar as it was an internal project that Cliqz had not implemented into its browser before it was shut down.
Eich says development had been continuing at Burda — “in order to develop a full-fledged search engine”. (When the holding company announced the shuttering of Cliqz, last April, it stated that Cliqz’s browser and search technologies would be shut down but also said it would draw out a team of experts — to work on technical issues in areas like AI and search.)
“Cliqz offered the SERP-based search engine but had not implemented Tailcat in its browser yet,” said Eich. “After Cliqz shut down last April, a development team at Burda continued to work on the search technology under the new project name Tailcat in order to develop a full-fledged search engine. The team hoped to find a long-term home for their work to continue their mission, and are thrilled to be part of Brave.”
The financial terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed — but we’ve confirmed that Burda is becoming a Brave shareholder as part of the deal.
“We are very happy that our technology is being used at Brave and that, as a result, a genuine, privacy-friendly alternative to Google is being created in the core web functions of browsing and searching,” said Paul-Bernhard Kallen, CEO of Hubert Burda Media, in a supporting statement. “As a Brave stakeholder we will continue to be involved in this exciting project.”
While Brave started out focused on building an alternative browser — with the idea of rethinking the predominate ad-funded Internet business model by baking in a cryptocurrency rewards system to generate payments for content creators (and pay users for their attention) — it now talks about itself as a pro-privacy “super app”.
Currently, the Brave Browser bundles a privacy-preserving ad platform (Brave Ads); news reader (Brave Today); and offers a Firewall+VPN service — which it will be further adding to with the forthcoming search engine (Brave Search), and a privacy-preserving video-conferencing service (Brave Together) that’s also in the pipeline.
The unifying brand proposition for its ‘super app’ is a pledge to provide users with genuine control over their online experience — in contrast to mainstream alternatives.
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