All of the search engines I’ve used do this and it is infuriating. If my search returns little or no results, then so be it. Don’t populate my results with bullshit you thought I meant; you’ll almost always get it wrong. I didn’t mind the “did you mean”; it was a suggestion, and a choice that I could decide if I wanted or not. Now they just cram results down my throat, whether I want them or not.
I miss the early 2000s Internet.
Brave’s not the only search engine to do this, but it’s just one of a million reasons not to use Brave. They’re a scummy company. From this Reddit post:
In 2016, Brave promised to remove banner ads from websites and replace them with their own, basically trying to extract money directly from websites without the consent of their owners
In the same year, CEO Brendan Eich unilaterally added a fringe, pay-to-win Wikipedia clone into the default search engine list.
In 2018, Tom Scott and other creators noticed Brave was soliciting donations in their names without their knowledge or consent.
In 2020, Brave got caught injecting URLs with affiliate codes when users tried browsing to various websites.
Also in 2020, they silently started injecting ads into their home page backgrounds, pocketing the revenue. There was a lot of pushback: “the sponsored backgrounds give a bad first impression.”
In 2021, Brave’s TOR window was found leaking DNS queries, and a patch was only widely deployed after articles called them out.
In 2022, Brave floated the idea of further discouraging users from disabling sponsored messages.
In 2023, Brave got caught installing a paid VPN service on users’ computers without their consent.
Also in 2023, Brave got caught scraping and reselling people’s data with their custom web crawler, which was designed specifically not to announce itself to website owners.
In 2024, Brave gave up on providing advanced fingerprint protection, citing flawed statistics (people who would enable the protection would likely disable Brave telemetry).
In 2025, Brave staff publish an article endorsing PrivacyTests and say they “work with legitimate testing sites” like them. This article fails to disclose PrivacyTests is run by a Brave Senior Architect.
YIKES
Thank you
Is duckduckgo browser a better alternative? I have An android phone.
The search seemed better
Yeah, DDG have a pretty good reputation for privacy and reliability, although there have been small controversies in the past. They mainly use Bing, plus their own crawler and direct data sources where applicable.
DDG is garbage:
I really hate that search engines feel like they have to return a bunch of results no matter what, like the Google Play Store. Even if they don’t have what you want, they’ll give results for what they think is similar, and just ads. It’s infuriating looking through results trying to find if the thing you’re looking for is buried in a bunch of useless stuff.
I started paying for kagi when I learned it works more like classic (vintage?) search engines. More focused on accurate results, which may be a few or nil, instead of mangling your terms into something they can sell & insert the highest paying advert that matches something close.
I have not been disappointed. They also do AI stuff, if youre into that. Or you can toggle it off, and never use their assistant.
That’s too short to qualify as a rant. Do whatever necessary to get some outrage built up, then come back to us with ~3 or so paragraphs.
If you need help, consider using the “angrier” parameter with 5 peppers on this page: https://goblin.tools/Formalizer
That’s actually kind of fun:
"Why on Earth do you think I go out of my way to use those blasted search operators if you’re just going to completely IGNORE them?! Brave Search is utterly PATHETIC—so incompetent that they just dismiss the operators because they CLAIM there aren’t enough results. THAT’S THE ENTIRE POINT of using search operators in the first place! I DON’T want a ton of junky, irrelevant results; I want just a FEW GOOD ONES! This is basic, essential, COMMON SENSE! Now! Get your act together and SEARCH “spouse husband” PROPERLY for me—do the job right so I finally get the RESULTS I NEED!
Imagine, if you will, telling you to make me a simple sandwich with TWO ingredients, and instead, you go and THROW IN a thousand more just because you think it’s “not enough.” THAT’S NOT WHAT I ASKED FOR!
And tell me—WHAT’S the POINT of having this “search operator” feature if you’re just going to completely FLUB it and IGNORE it at will?! What’s the USE of a tool that the system simply DISRESPECTS and dismisses on a whim?! I am the ONE sitting behind the wheel, I’m the ONE with the goals, and I DEMAND you do what I ask! Stop wasting my time with idiocy!"
“spouse husband”?
OP couldn’t remember the name of the 1980s Canadian rock band “Loverboy”
Someone I met was calling their husband that. I wanted to see if the phrase was a thing.
I am not able to see that though, because I’m not allowed to look for it. It could tell me “no results” and that would be information, but refusing to limit the search to EXACTLY WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR is stupid.
related to that:
do you know any search engine that actually accepts commands in image search?
like every single one i tried ignores the “-”
i want to exclude certain tags goddammit
was it always like this?
