A brave new world in searches?

A privacy-focused search engine called Brave Search launched in June, marking a potential competitor to the search engine behemoth Google.

CNET said Brave Search is building an independent index of the web — which is likely as intimidating a prospect as it sounds — relying on Bing in some areas like images. Users can blend in Google results for ordinary searches by enabling the feature when prompted.

Brave will start off ad-free, then offer a choice of a paid option with no ads or a free, ad-supported search.

Brave blocks trackers from following your moves online don’t profile users, and claims there are no algorithms to bias results. That last comment is a direct shot at Google, known for manipulating search results according to user behavior, as well as its own proprietary formula.

Instead, Brave Search will provide results with a community-powered index, relying on the collective actions of users to steer each other toward quality information. Although more than 92 percent of searches currently go through Google, Brave’s chief executive Brendan Eich has experience introducing viable competitors — he led Mozilla and Firefox before co-founding Brave.