Brave-browser: Clean up Default search engines settings

[BrendanEich]

We have way too many defaults, and only one is mandatory in most regions by user acclamation (Google), with two others partnered and sharing revenue with Brave (DuckDuckGo and Qwant).

Most of the rest are not general search engines. Also important from a user-first point of view: we allow users to customize default address bar search to use any engine that conforms to OpenSearch where we are based on chromium code. So fans of rarely used engines can (until we get commercial deals) suit themselves.

Therefore, after letting 1000 flowers bloom in early 2016 when my head of product Elissa and I were in an expansive mood, we should now mow the field.

Current "Default search engines": Google, DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Amazon, Bing, Ecosia, GitHub, Infogalactic, MDN Web Docs, searx, Semantic Scholar, Stack Overflow, StartPage, Twitter, Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha, Yahoo!, Yandex, YouTube

Proposed new list: Google, DuckDuckGo, Qwant, and Bing (prospective). Any others that provide OpenSearch XML can be added by our users now, thanks to chromium support for OpenSearch.

This bug needs to be mirrored in the iOS and Android repos.

[BrendanEich]

Noting Android needs OpenSearch support, to come via brave-core port to replace ad-hoc chromium fork that is basis of Brave for Android. iOS's OpenSearch support is another question but that tail does not wag the dog. Thanks.

[rebron]

cc: @anthonypkeane @SergeyZhukovsky @jhreis

[BrendanEich]

Based on mobile team feedback, let's include StartPage as well. We will hold to five: Google, DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Bing, and StartPage.

Also to be clear: don't wait for OpenSearch support on all platforms (which we do want), clean up now.

[diracdeltas]

We should have a process for vetting search engines before adding them in the future

[BrendanEich]

@diracdeltas Definitely.

[mojoaxel]

Good that you finally took "infogalactic" out. That was kind of embarrassing!

[Lululalu]

As an user I want to give a humble suggestion. Add two options, google.com (English) and google.com(.ca, .ee, .ru, .jp, etc). This is how it works in some mobile browsers, (Kiwi and Bromite) and as non-native speaker of English I find it useful.

[Lululalu]

What about regional search engines for people living in certain countries? Namely Seznam in Czechia, Naver in South Korea, Baidu and Shenma in China, Yahoo.jp in Japan, and Yandex in Russia (and some other countries).

If brave is to be used globally I believe it's good not to think about it with western perspectives only.

[diracdeltas]

We should have a process for vetting search engines before adding them in the future

btw this is here now: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Criteria-for-adding-new-search-providers-to-Brave

[BrendanEich]

What about regional search engines for people living in certain countries? Namely Seznam in Czechia, Naver in South Korea, Baidu and Shenma in China, Yahoo.jp in Japan, and Yandex in Russia (and some other countries).

Need a followup issue or issues on these. @srirambv could you please file? Thanks.

[srirambv]

#3395 logged for regional SE

[srirambv]

Verification passed on

Brave | 0.60.34 Chromium: 72.0.3626.109 (Official Build) beta(64-bit)
-- | --
Revision | fae8db7ab9280fa6704a59980263c804f809ebd5-refs/branch-heads/3626@{#857}
OS | Linux

Verification passed on

Brave | 0.60.34 Chromium: 72.0.3626.109 (Official Build) beta (64-bit)
-- | --
Revision | fae8db7ab9280fa6704a59980263c804f809ebd5-refs/branch-heads/3626@{#857}
OS | Windows 10

Verified passed with

Brave | 0.60.44 Chromium: 72.0.3626.109 (Official Build) (64-bit)
-- | --
Revision | fae8db7ab9280fa6704a59980263c804f809ebd5-refs/branch-heads/3626@{#857}
OS | Mac OS X

• Verified test plans from https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/1648 with US and France or Germany regions

[agnelvishal]

Since Searx is a privacy respecting and general purpose search engine, you can consider including it in default search engine list. Since the default search engine list is inside the settings, it won't clutter the user experience for most users.
Disclaimer : I run one of Searx instances with Brave Rewards