I heard a lot of bad stuff about Brave and their CEO lately and am now unsure if the search engine is any good? Do they censor stuff? Is any data collected? Can it be considered private?
If you’d not recommend it, what are good alternatives and why? I was a long time duckduckgo user before, so anything similar to it or brave search would be great. I’m not into self hosting.
They are recommended on privacy guides: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/search-engines/#brave-search I generally trust privacy guides, although I don’t use Brave Search.
Their CEO is anti-vax and homophobic. Brave Browser (not search) has had some controversy around including crypto, replacing ads with their own, and having had inserted affiliate links into the URL bar in the past.
Hard to say, the job of a search engine is to show you what you want to find.
There is telemetry that can be turned off.
If I try to stop using every company or service that has an obnoxious CEO spouting ignorant views I’m afraid I wouldn’t even be able to access the web. At the very least I’m glad companies like Brave give lip service to privacy to highlight awareness.