Edit: looks like this is just temporary.
Hi, when I try to search for images by clicking the word “images” a dialog pops up asking me if I want Bing or Google. Did I accidentally change something?
Yeah, I’ve seen this, too, and I hate it.
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Please revert this decision, I don’t want to have to leave Brave Search just to be able to use the image and video sections.
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This is a temporary measure, brought on by Brave Search now relying 100% on it’s own index, with the exception of image and video content:
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Does this mean the forcing to choose Bing or Google to view images will go away…soon? Because I’ll hang in there. But if this is the new way of life, there’s no point in continuing with Brave
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Great news for Brave search. However, I’m not digging this speed bump with the Photo and Video searches. Using DuckDuckGo for the time being until this gets sorted out.
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Came here to ask the same thing — when would we see images show up again via search.brave.com? As of now, I’ll switch to DuckDuckGo but I’d hope this is reverted back soon.
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Created account to ask the same, then saw this afterwards. I would like to know more on how temporary this is or whether the image and video results will return at all.
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WTF is going on? Do I need to source a new default browser? If I wanted to use Google or Bing, I would use them. I came to Brave to get away from that crap. FIX IT!
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It says it’s temporary. They just launched the search engine so I’m OK with sticking with it. It’s evolving.
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Suggestion: Add Yandex as well. They have a decent image search, rely on their own index, and are not “Big Tech” like Microsoft Bing or Google.
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Brave already even wrote a Blog post saying why the Brave Search change… what Extensions have to do with it? It’s not hard to find the information, Brave is opened about what they do with Brave and other products.
I don’t know how hard is to understand this or find the information, especially when Matthes already linked to all this:
This post should have already marked as 'solved" and closed for good…
Also if you all clicked the ? icon in the popup, you would have gotten a clear explanation why.
So I am sorry but I don’t understand the issue with humans and their lack of reading or researching, it’s like everyone just want to make drama and ignore the information provided by Brave.
Even going to Brave Twitter account would have made it clear why is the reason for this change.
I don’t know how hard is to understand that Brave was using Bing API for News, Images and Videos and Brave decided to stop using Bing API because there were news of Bing API increasing its price, yes, it is NOT free to use.
Bing API is used by MOST search engines, especially the most famous Google ‘alternatives’ like: DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Swisscows, Ecosia, etc, so you can stop the whole “well I will go and use blablablala”
The search engine space is either controlled by Google or Bing API which accounts for like 5% of market-share.
You can see the list here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines and see “Microsoft Bing” in all the backend ownership.
As a matter of fact, all those search engines, that use Bing API, have to share information with Microsoft, if you read all those DDG or Qwant privacy policy they will tell you how they had to do it.
This is the reason why DuckDuckGo was caught whitelisting Bing trackers in their applications, because it was part of the contract. You can’t just hire a service and don’t do what it says.
I am sure this included Brave, I am sure Brave wasn’t exempted from such thing!
So how can that be a good thing for Brave privacy and anti big tech stance?
First Microsoft Bing is biased, that’s why News, were terrible. Then images and videos weren’t even great.
So because of price increase because Microsoft building their Bing AI Chat feature, and how controlled and biased and censored Bing is, they decided to FINALLY stop using Bing API
But, Brave Search still can’t offer Images and Videos, only News, YET.
So they decided to offer the redirection as a temporary solution.
This redirection is the same thing you would do if you wanted to switch search engines to search images and videos, it’s like when you use !bangs but instead of you doing it, Brave is automatically doing.
So there is nothing you can do, you either use Brave search temporary redirection for images and videos, or manually go to other browsers to do the same if you want to use an alternative, or use !bangs to do the same.
As you can see, if you use another search engine it might be using Bing API, unless you use a Chinese search engine, Yandex or Mojeek or Gigablast. There is no escape about it.
The search engine space is totally controlled by Silicon Valley, and Bing and Google hide million things from you on the internet.
This is an old video but still relevant on what happens with Bing and Google and how they hide a lot of results from you!
This is why it is important for Brave to move on and remove Bing API, first, it was not too privacy oriented to keep using Bing for images, videos and news.
Second, Bing is biased and censors and all that, so the images, videos and news that Brave was getting were terrible.
Third, Brave was wasting their money paying for Bing API, money that could be used to actually improve Brave search itself and other products.
This is why Brave announced they want to offer a Brave Search API, that means they can make money by allowing other search engines to use Brave as backend and maybe replace Bing, which would be a good move against big tech.
Is this hard to understand? Bing and Google redirection is just an easy way for you to go and keep searching images somewhere else in the meantime, it doesn’t mean you have to use it, you can use bangs as I said https://search.brave.com/bangs
You can set up your own Search Engine like Yandex images, or Searx or whatever.
Anything else, you don’t need to make image searches in Google or Bing only because it made sense for Brave to add them as redirection.
At least now News is not controlled by biased Bing API, that’s the best news about it! Now people can’t complain about Brave being biased and getting ‘fake news’ by mainstream media outlets controlled by governments when they didn’t control the search results.
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Anyone who wishes to define “temporary” and how it pertains to this issue, please respond.
This, exactly.
Who thought limiting us to ging or boogle would be a good idea when other options are available?
That person should be given a stern talking to, imo.
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To be fair, they did at least direct to the two search sites with the largest databases. I’m assuming the reason for those two in particular is because that’s where they were pulling the search results from anyway.
That said, you would think they’d just have removed the “image search” from the site entirely until fixed or would have links to other resources than just the two.
I just use the Redirector extension and redirect my Bing queries to DuckDuckGo, problem solved.
If I select Google it automatically syncs with my google account when I image search. I hated it… Gotta go with duckduckgo for awhile but its pretty bad with image search capability. I hope they resolve this issue soon. Glad I found out what was happening here
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You have to change this very fast. I too will use another search engine because I definitely don’t want to support Microsoft or Google!
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If Duckduckgo, Qwant, Ecosia or any other privacy-respecting search engine is added, that would be great, thanks
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Thank you for the information. There are A LOT of us out here who aren’t familiar the workings of tech. Your explanation is appreciated…I would suggest, though, not to be so quick to insult others. Just because we’re unfamiliar with a subject doesn’t mean we won’t understand when a more-detailed explanation is provided.
Thanks again
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