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

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4 months ago

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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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Bing Chat / Microsoft Copilot Balanced Mode Used 70% Of The Time With Creative & Precise Mode At 15% Each

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3 hours ago

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November 29, 2023

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Bing Robot Doing Math

Mikhail Parakhin from Microsoft shared how often the different modes in Microsoft Copilot, formerly known as Bing Chat, are used. There is Balanced mode, creative mode and precise mode. Balanced mode gets 60-70% of the usages, whereas the other two modes get about 15% each.

Mikhail wrote on X, “Balanced is the most popular, maybe 60-70% of the people (it is the fastest and the default). Creative and Precise are 15%-ish each.”

Bing Chat Copilot Modes

Here are those posts:

Bing Chat Usage Post

I thought creative mode would get more usage than precise mode because of the image generation aspect but I guess I was wrong.

To learn more about these chat modes, read this story.

Forum discussion at X.



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Most SEOs Believe Google’s November Core & Reviews Updates Will Complete In December

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18 hours ago

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November 28, 2023

By

Google Robot Waiting By Computer

The Google November 2023 core update and Google November 2023 reviews update are still both rolling out, and we have no estimated time of when they will finish rolling out. Both are well past their estimated two-week rollout period. I ran a poll yesterday asking SEOs when they think it will be done, and most said in December and not in the next few days left of November.

The poll had just under 600 votes in 24-hours and 79% said the update will be completed in December and 21% said in the last days remaining in November. I posted the poll on X – here it is:

Personally, I thought it would be done by now and I still think it will be done in the next day or so – but I am wrong a lot. 🙂

I do hope it is done today so they can roll out the Christmas holiday update (kidding…).

Forum discussion at X.

Update: I’ll have a story tomorrow but at least one of the updates is done in November:



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Google Search Console Was Down Today

Published

1 day ago

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November 28, 2023

By

Google Robot Hurt Tired

Google Search Console seems to be down right now. If you try to access it, you will get a 500 server error. I suspect Search Console will be back up shortly but right now, if it is down for you, you are not alone.

Update: At 8:52 am ET Google Search Console is back, the tool was offline for about 50 minutes.

Google’s Daniel Waisberg is 100% aware of the issue. He responded to some posts about the issue, saying, “we’re working on it.” John Mueller from Google is also reposting Daniel’s posts on X.

Here is what it looked like when you tried to access it while it was down:

Gsc 500 Error Down

Search Console went down at about 8 am ET and returned at 8:52 am ET.

Here are the posts on X from Daniel Waisberg of Google on this issue:

Who knows, maybe we will have a new Search Console feature when it returns?

Here are some of the complaints:

Update: At 8:52 am ET Google Search Console is back, the tool was offline for about 50 minutes.



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