Brave will now prompt DuckDuckGo users to switch to Brave Search. Added search promotion for DDG by simonhong · Pull Request #23889 · brave/brave-core · GitHub
Thoughts ?
Edit: second links with more pictures Rotate search promotion for DDG users by simonhong · Pull Request #24057 · brave/brave-core · GitHub
If user dismiss by clicking close(
x) button, this banner will not be shown anymore.
No reason to make a DDG vs Brave Search war out of this.
That’s why I put attack in quotes, but if you have a better title I am all ears.
It’s just marketing, essentially a somewhat targeted ad for Brave Search.
Brave is a company that needs to make money to continue to offer us a very good browser for free. Showing an ad like this ONCE is perfectly fine in my book.
I just dislike that they are implying DuckDuckGo isn’t private. That’s what I am taking aim at.
Brave has a bit of a track record of this sort of behavior. I don’t think this warrants dusting off the pitchforks but do think that this type of behavior is not great, and doesn’t give me warm fuzzy feelings towards Brave as an organization. I think that Privacy-centric companies using negative advertising to attack one another should be looked down upon. The primary goal should be to grow the privacy space/userbase as a whole, not in-fight over existing users.
No reason to make a DDG vs Brave Search war out of this.
If the goal is to avoid a search war, simply not implementing a banner intended to undermine the reputation of your competitor which says “Ditch the Duck” and calls your competitor “Bing in Disguise” is a great step towards not starting a search war… 
But DDG is just Bing in disguise. 
I agree the first banner is pretty “spicy” but that’s how marketing works to generate attention. They’re not alleging things that are not true as far as I can tell.
If truth is binary, then yes.
If this is once every few years that’s fine, but I should look into this.
As Valynor says — it’s just marketing garbage corpo speak and as long as it isn’t false I’d just ignore it.
That said.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy describes the Marketing Department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as: “A bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.”
Curiously, an edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica which fell through a rift in the time-space continuum from 1000 years in the future describes the Marketing Department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as: “A bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came.”
Vive la révolution 
If we Ignore privacy completely, then yeah, kind of.
But if we Ignore privacy, Brave is Just Chromium “in disguise.” I don’t think that is a fair characterization of Brave Browser, and I don’t think it’s a fair characterization of DDG.
The difference is that Brave using a chromium base does not require forwarding your queries to a 3rd party. DDG is offering users a Bing proxy rather than their own search engine. Brave has every right to inform DDG users who may not be aware of this. Not every DDG user is as well-versed in privacy tech as the PG community. The Brave ad is merely providing info to those who may not be aware.
Do they do this to Google/Bing?
Not sure, but after some digging it may be a response to DDG putting a big banner telling Brave users to “upgrade to DDG”:
As far as I remember, this banner was not limited to users of the Brave browser but was visible to users of any browser other than the DDG browser. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Edit: Okay, it’s not visible on Firefox, but on Chrome. Seems like it might be Chromium-exclusive.
I’m tired of all this in-fighting between privacy projects, it’s lame.
Not sure if niche is the right word for privacy, but it’s definitely a subset of the available market. So it’s not unsurprisingly a business is trying to snipe other clientele.
My opinion is that privacy products are like having a string of great bars or restaurants close together. One might think that it would spread clientele thin among them all, but having many options and choices attracts a larger audience. Analogy kind of breaks if they do the exact same thing though - I personally just stick with a private searx or fallback to DDG.
I think the duckduckgo banner on their search engine is far worse, cause the browser is just not competitive at all. at least brave search is basically just an equivalent to duckduckgo search, not better or worse. and the source of search results is a legitimate advantage.
duckduckgo’s browser is an active downgrade and just bad. basically zero reason to ever use it. and at least in brave’s browser you have the option to use other search engines, unlike duckduckgo’s one which forces you to use DDG
Specially when they have an alternative claim that is factual and irrefutable: ddg is pro censorship and will curate results based on their political bias and agenda.
How many people use Google in Brave browser though? How many people use Bing at all?
And by pro-censorship you mean “attempting to help limit the spread of pro-Russian propaganda and health misinformation”. Almost like “censorship” can be good sometimes.
I am starting to believe that a person or a country definition of dystopia is another’s utopia.
That is country politics for you.