Brave Privacy Browser Ditches Google In Favor Of Its Own Search Engine

Brave, the company behind the privacy-centric web browser by the same name, is betting big on its own search engine. Brave browser now defaults to the company's search engine, offering it in the place of Google for users in select markets like the US, Canada, and the UK. Users in other countries will also see the change soon.

Brave announced the big change today, one that comes only a few months after the company rolled out its privacy search engine for anyone to use. Unlike the major search engine, Brave's search engine doesn't include user tracking, making it a more appealing option for the company's users. Users in the US, UK, and Canada will now default to Brave Search instead of Google.

In addition, users in Germany will now default to Brave Search instead of DuckDuckGo and users in France will default to the privacy search engine instead of Qwant. Brave says it plans to rollout this default search engine change in other countries over "the next several months." If you don't want to wait, you can also manually change the Brave Browser's default search engine to Brave Search.

The change applies to the latest versions of Brave browser on desktop, Android, and iOS, assuming you live in one of the aforementioned countries. As expected, users can still manually change the default search engine, so if you'd prefer to stick with Google, DuckDuckGo, or one of the alternatives, that remains an option.

In addition to the default browser change, Brave says it is also launching the Web Discovery Project for users who want to contribute to Brave Search. Under this, users can anonymously share data with the company for improving the search engine's quality and coverage, Brave says, without the risk of the data being linked back to specific devices or users.