I first used Firefox when it was Phoenix, back in 2002. You downloaded a zip file, extracted it and ran it.

For the next 20 years I used Firefox. But I could feel the performance difference from Chromium browsers.

I finally threw in the towel and switched to Brave out of the collection of them now. I hated switching because it meant yet another user lost to one of the remaining handful of unique engines for browsing the web. I like competition and standards, and the more the better with browsing engines. Even if it may bring developers some pain.

I've been very happy with it. People gripe about ads, crypto integration, etc. but it can all be avoided and/or turned off. It has the speed of Chromium but with additional features and is privacy-focused.

But to get to the point, regarding the search ...

I'm happy to see they (somehow!) have been able to build their own search engine now. Obviously that's no simple task, I have no idea what goes into powering that but it has to be a major investment.

It seems pretty good. If they can sell API access for cheaper then the others and still return quality results, that seems like it has potential to be a good revenue stream.

They are very clear about the Web Discovery Project, what the purpose is, what it collects, etc. And obviously it's opt-in.

I really hope they succeed with this. Another example of where competition is definitely good.