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Brave’s Image and Video Search Breaks Free from Google or Bing Dependency

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Brave's New Image and Video Search Doesn't Rely on Google or Bing

Privacy-focused internet browser firm Brave announced on Thursday the launch of its latest feature—a custom image and video search feature that doesn’t rely on Google or Microsoft’s Bing to serve up media.

Brave says search results will now only serve images and video results from its own index, removing the need for users to choose between Bing or Google for such assets when using the crypto-friendly web browser.

“It was always our intent to be 100% independent from Big Tech, but we built this in stages,” Brave Chief of Search Josep Pujol told Decrypt. “When we launched Brave Search in June 2021, about 13% of the queries required the help of third parties. In less than a year after that, we reduced that to only 7%.”

Pujol said that uncertainty over the future of the Bing API accelerated the company’s plans to achieve 100% independence from Google and Microsoft.

Brave’s plans to develop its own image and video search option began two years ago, after Reuters reported that Microsoft Bing served no image results for the iconic image of the “Tank Man” from 1989’s Tiananmen Square protests to users in several countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Singapore.

At the time, Microsoft called the omission an “accidental human error.” But the explanation was not good enough for Brave, which said it removed Bing’s API from its search engine in April.

To offer its services to other developers and companies, Brave said it plans to release its own Search API, saying the move would give it the ability to build search experiences that “compete on quality with Big Tech.”

Pujol said the push to develop Brave Search’s index began in February, focusing on relevant pages and not on indexing every single image or video available, which he said would be unaffordable.

He’s also not concerned with the images on Brave Search being used in AI-generated deepfakes. “There are plenty of Photoshopped images already,” he said.

The news of the native search index is Brave’s latest move in supporting privacy online. In March, Brave announced users could now sell their cryptocurrency for fiat using the integrated Brave Wallet in the browser, removing the need to use third-party services to facilitate crypto cash-outs.

Today’s search move is a significant one, however, and Brave acknowledges that eliminating all Bing API calls might affect some queries for certain regions or languages. The firm will rely on user feedback to help guide future improvements.

“We urge users to provide feedback frequently,” the company said in a statement. “The more individuals utilize Brave Search, the more effective it becomes, and the more we can progress towards our goal of a web that prioritizes users.”

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Google Hanukkah Decorations Are Live For 2023

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Google Hanukkah 2023

Hanukkah (aka Chanukah) starts this coming Thursday night, December 7th. Google has added its Hanukkah decorations to the Google Search results interface to celebrate. Google does this every year and I expect to see the same rollout in the coming weeks for Christmas and Kawanzaa but for now, since Chanukah is in the coming days, we have the Hanukkah decorations live at Google Search.

Here is a screenshot of the Chanukah decorations as they look like on the mobile search results.

Google Hanukkah Decorations 2023

You can see it yourself by searching on Google for [chanukah], [hanukkah], but not yet [חֲנוּכָּה‎] or other spelling variations yet but it should soon. It looks better on mobile than it does on desktop results.

To see the past, the 2023 decorations, 2021 decorations, 2020 Chanukah decorations, 2019 Google holiday decorations, the 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and so on.

Happy Chanukah, everyone!

Forum discussion at X.

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Google Pay Accepted Icons In Google Search Results

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Woman Checking Out Store Google Logo

Google seems to be testing a Google Pay Accepted label or icon in the Google search results. This label has the super G logo followed by the words “Pay accepted” words next to search result snippets that support Google Pay and notate such in their structured data.

This was first spotted by Khushal Bherwani who shared some screenshots of this on X – here is one:

G Pay Accepted Google Search

Here are some more screenshots:

Brodie Clark also posted some screenshots after on X:

Google Pay Accepted Google Search

I tried to replicate this but I came up short.

This is not the first time Google had similar icons like this in its search results.

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Google Discover Showing Older Content Since Follow Feature Arrived

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Dog Astronut Google Logo

Typically, Google Discover shows content that is less than a day old, but it can show content that is weeks, months, or even years old. However, typically, Google will show more recent content in the Discover feed. Well, that may have changed with the new Google follow feature.

Glenn Gabe, who is a very active Google Discover user, noticed that since the Follow feature rolled out, he has been seeing content that is weeks and months old way more often than before the follow feature rolled out. Glenn wrote on X that “this could also be playing a role. i.e. Google isn’t providing as much recent content, but instead, focusing on providing targeted content based on the topics you are following.”

It makes sense that if you follow a specific topic and if Google Discover only shows the most authoritative types of content, it might be hard for Google to find new content on that topic. So it does make sense that Google may show older content more often for that specific topic you follow.

Here are screenshots Glenn shared:

Google Discover Old Stories Follow

Google Discover Old Stories Follow2

Have you noticed this in your Discover feed?

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