Presearch extension enables private searching across on Chrome, Firefox, and Brave browsers
If you would like to break Google's stranglehold on your search habits, you might want to have a look at a blockchain-based startup that aims to reward you for searching the web.
Toronto, ON-based Presearch has released new browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Brave browsers which let anyone search privately, without sharing or compromising personal data.
The decentralized search engine rewards its 250,000 monthly active community members for their usage, contribution to, and promotion of the platform.
PRE tokens earned through Presearch can be used to purchase advertisements on the platform. The PRE tokens cannot be used to spend on yourself – nor on any of its partner platforms.
It does not store searches or identifying information, and allows users to select their preferred search engines from more than 80 options including Google, Wikipedia, Amazon, and Facebook.
Colin Pape, founder of Presearch said:
The Presearch community has grown to more than a million members in under a year, showing that searchers want change; more choice, more privacy and more rewards.
The new browser extension makes it even easier to switch to Presearch and start earning cryptocurrency when you search. We developed the extension because the community kept requesting it, and we're grateful to all who are helping improve Presearch as it continues to grow and evolve.
So will it succeed? At the moment, not many users are focused on buying ads across partner platforms – so the incentive to use Presearch will not be strong for them.
But the knowledge that private searching is spreading across browsers, and websites might give users the incentive to use the extension and browse their normal sites without any risk of compromising their data.
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