Never knew that, thanks for the correction.

I stand corrected!

Brave products are not open source. Not their search, and not the browser. Your post wording seems to imply that it is.

I don't think they tried to hide that they were using Google, but rather than they are using Brave, because many people were upset about that. They probably just decided to stop naming specific indexes.

Apologies, it was added by the article author.

I tried Kagi, but the results just seem like Google being re-sold, and there’s no way I could get away with anything other than the unlimited plan which is $25/month. Also I’m pretty sure it’s a company of one guy - I’m not sure if this is anything other than a pet project or how they would actually improve the results or become independent of google. Also not sure how I could trust their privacy claims as you literally need to be signed in to search. It’s frustrating though because I want to love their business model, and the presentation is very clean.

I’m not sure failing is the right word, it’s just that privacy is not prioritized. They don’t sell your data or sell ads, but they are based in Australia which has very anti-privacy laws regarding govt access to user data that they presumably comply with. They don’t offer built-in message encryption, and they don’t have anonymous signups. I’ve also read a few anecdotes about customer service being able to access your messages or at least certain configuration details about your account that you expect to be private.

All that said, this I’ve been using them for years now. They offer a better user experience than something like Proton without data mining and ads. I’m not sure there’s a best-of-all-worlds option.

Fastmail is fantastic from a user experience perspective, though depending on your privacy demands it may not pass the test.

Do the demos generally become unavailable after the fest is over?