Brave's search engine no longer requires that you jump to Bing or Google just to find photos or videos. The company has introduced image and video queries to Brave Search, helping you find media while maintaining the same levels of privacy and freedom of access. You won't have to worry about being profiled through your picture hunts, or risk missing politically sensitive content (if unintentionally) pulled from another engine's index. You'll still have the option of continuing searches through competitors, at least for a while. The choice helps you get the results you're looking for, so long as you don't mind using a major engine.

You can now try Brave's search engine for yourself. Brave has launched a beta Search feature both as an option in all its browsers as well as through the web for everyone else. As you'd expect, it's billed as a privacy- and transparency-oriented platform that doesn't track your activity or use "secret" algorithms to curate results. You'll eventually have the option of an ad-free version if you're willing to pay, and Brave will make Search available for other engines. The site index is independent, although Brave noted that image searches and some other features will lean on Microsoft's Bing.

As it and other technology giants face questions and fines over their practices when it comes to competition and user privacy, Google is adding a new official option to its popular Chrome browser that allows users to search the web using the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo search engine rather than its own platform. The update to Chromium -- which powers Google Chrome -- axes search engines like AOL and Yahoo!, replacing them with DuckDuckGo (in France, privacy-focused search engine Qwant was also added to the list). More search-savvy users may have already known about the company's DuckDuckGo Chrome extension, which makes DuckDuckGo the default option in the Google browser and protects users from ad-tracking software found on almost every site you visit regularly. The Chrome update means you will no longer need an extension to use DuckDuckGo from your URL bar. If you're unfamiliar, DuckDuckGo is a search engine designed to protect any data generated by your search results and history.