What was Brave Search called before Brave acquired it?

Before Brave acquired and developed it into Brave Search, the search engine project was called Tailcat. Tailcat was an open-source search project associated with the German company Cliqz GmbH.

Brave announced its acquisition of Tailcat in 2021 as part of its effort to build an independent, privacy-focused search engine. The acquisition mattered because Brave wanted to reduce reliance on the indexes and infrastructure of major technology companies. Brave Search subsequently launched as a standalone service and was also integrated into the Brave browser.

Goggles is not the former name: it is a later Brave Search feature for customizing or re-ranking results. Cliqz Search is also a related but different label connected with Cliqz’s earlier search products, while Web Discovery was not Tailcat’s former name. Thus Tailcat is the single canonical answer.