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Document Ghostery's reliance on Brave results.

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content/posts/search-engines-with-own-indexes.gmi
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@ -180,8 +180,8 @@ Engines in this category fall back to GBY when their own indexes don't have enou
* Brave Search: Many tests (including all the tests I listed in the "Methodology" section) resulted results identical to Google, revealed by a side-by-side comparison with Google, Startpage, and a Searx instance with only Google enabled. Brave claims that this is due to how Cliqz (the discontinued engine acquired by Brave) used query logs to build its page models and was optimized to match Google.¹⁰ The index is independent, but optimizing against Google resulted in too much similarity for the real benefit of an independent index to show. Furthermore, many queries have Bing results mixed in; users can click an "info" button to see the percentage of results that came from its own index. The independent percentage is typically quite high (often close to 100%) but can drop for advanced queries. (update: Brave's Bing contract appears to have expired as of April 2023). * Brave Search: Many tests (including all the tests I listed in the "Methodology" section) resulted results identical to Google, revealed by a side-by-side comparison with Google, Startpage, and a Searx instance with only Google enabled. Brave claims that this is due to how Cliqz (the discontinued engine acquired by Brave) used query logs to build its page models and was optimized to match Google.¹⁰ The index is independent, but optimizing against Google resulted in too much similarity for the real benefit of an independent index to show. Furthermore, many queries have Bing results mixed in; users can click an "info" button to see the percentage of results that came from its own index. The independent percentage is typically quite high (often close to 100%) but can drop for advanced queries. (update: Brave's Bing contract appears to have expired as of April 2023).
I can't in good conscience recommend using Brave Search, as the company runs cryptocurrency, has held payments to creators without disclosing that creators couldn't receive rewards, has made dangerously misleading claims about fingerprinting resistance (will update with a link to my thoughts on the matter), is run by a CEO who spent thousands of dollars opposing gay marriage, and has rewritten typed URLs with affiliate links. I can't in good conscience recommend using Brave Search, as the company runs cryptocurrency, has held payments to creators without disclosing that creators couldn't receive rewards, has made dangerously misleading claims about fingerprinting resistance (will update with a link to my thoughts on the matter), is run by a CEO who spent thousands of dollars opposing gay marriage, and has rewritten typed URLs with affiliate links.
Brave offers a Tor onion service and doesn't require JS. Brave Search offers a Tor onion service and doesn't require JS.
Brave Search partially powers Kagi (documented in 2023, unclear after docs removed primary sources in 2024-05-01) and powers Ghostery Private Search (identical results in my tests).
=> https://search.brave.com/ Brave Search => https://search.brave.com/ Brave Search
* Plumb: Almost all queries return no results; when this happens, it falls back to Google. It's fairly transparent about the fallback process, but I'm concerned about *how* it does this: it loads Google's Custom Search scripts from "cse.google.com" onto the page to do a client-side Google search. This can be mitigated by using a browser addon to block "cse.google.com" from loading any scripts. Plumb claims that this is a temporary measure while its index grows, and they're planning on getting rid of this. Allows submitting URLs, but requires solving an hCaptcha. This engine is very new; hopefully as it improves, it could graduate from this section. Its Chief Product Officer previously founded the Gibiru search engine which shares the same affiliates and (for now) the same index; the indexes will diverge with time. * Plumb: Almost all queries return no results; when this happens, it falls back to Google. It's fairly transparent about the fallback process, but I'm concerned about *how* it does this: it loads Google's Custom Search scripts from "cse.google.com" onto the page to do a client-side Google search. This can be mitigated by using a browser addon to block "cse.google.com" from loading any scripts. Plumb claims that this is a temporary measure while its index grows, and they're planning on getting rid of this. Allows submitting URLs, but requires solving an hCaptcha. This engine is very new; hopefully as it improves, it could graduate from this section. Its Chief Product Officer previously founded the Gibiru search engine which shares the same affiliates and (for now) the same index; the indexes will diverge with time.

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content/posts/search-engines-with-own-indexes.md
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@ -212,7 +212,11 @@ Engines in this category fall back to GBY when their own indexes don't have enou
I can't in good conscience recommend using Brave Search, as the company runs cryptocurrency, has [held payments to creators without disclosing that creators couldn't receive rewards](https://brave.com/rewards-update/), has made dangerously misleading claims about fingerprinting resistance,[^10] is run by a CEO who [spent thousands of dollars opposing gay marriage](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/new-mozilla-ceo-issues-statement-expresses-sorrow-for-causing-pain/), and [has rewritten typed URLs with affiliate links](https://www.pcmag.com/news/brave-browser-caught-redirecting-users-through-affiliate-links). I can't in good conscience recommend using Brave Search, as the company runs cryptocurrency, has [held payments to creators without disclosing that creators couldn't receive rewards](https://brave.com/rewards-update/), has made dangerously misleading claims about fingerprinting resistance,[^10] is run by a CEO who [spent thousands of dollars opposing gay marriage](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/new-mozilla-ceo-issues-statement-expresses-sorrow-for-causing-pain/), and [has rewritten typed URLs with affiliate links](https://www.pcmag.com/news/brave-browser-caught-redirecting-users-through-affiliate-links).
Brave offers a Tor onion service and doesn't require JS. Brave Search offers a Tor onion service and doesn't require JS. Powers:
- Ghostery Private Search (identical results in my tests).
- Partially powers Kagi ([documented in 2023](https://web.archive.org/web/20231105004927/https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.html), [unclear after docs removed main sources after <time>2024-05-01</time>](https://github.com/kagisearch/kagi-docs/commit/6baff1c066db9b3d804653ea19bc9d1c076a710b)).
[Plumb](https://plumb.one/) [Plumb](https://plumb.one/)
: Almost all queries return no results; when this happens, it falls back to Google. It's fairly transparent about the fallback process, but I'm concerned about _how_ it does this: it loads Google's Custom Search scripts from `cse.google.com` onto the page to do a client-side Google search. This can be mitigated by using a browser addon to block `cse.google.com` from loading any scripts. Plumb claims that this is a temporary measure while its index grows, and they're planning on getting rid of this. Allows submitting URLs, but requires solving an hCaptcha. This engine is very new; hopefully as it improves, it could graduate from this section. Its Chief Product Officer [previously founded](https://archive.is/oVAre) the Gibiru search engine which shares the same affiliates and (for now) the same index; the indexes will diverge with time. : Almost all queries return no results; when this happens, it falls back to Google. It's fairly transparent about the fallback process, but I'm concerned about _how_ it does this: it loads Google's Custom Search scripts from `cse.google.com` onto the page to do a client-side Google search. This can be mitigated by using a browser addon to block `cse.google.com` from loading any scripts. Plumb claims that this is a temporary measure while its index grows, and they're planning on getting rid of this. Allows submitting URLs, but requires solving an hCaptcha. This engine is very new; hopefully as it improves, it could graduate from this section. Its Chief Product Officer [previously founded](https://archive.is/oVAre) the Gibiru search engine which shares the same affiliates and (for now) the same index; the indexes will diverge with time.