> If I sat down with a troubled couple who was having a hard time communicating, I wouldn't periodically interrupt and say "let's pause a moment for an ad. I think that's going to really open up a better and more free exchange between the both of you."

Couples counseling isn't free, maybe with ads they could be.

I mean obviously not, but only because a professional counselor can only see about 8 couples per day while a search engine can serve several billion.

Brave is saying it in a very PR / marketing speak way, but I get the underlying point. Instead of funding our service with your own money, let some big companies fund it in exchange for your attention.

The unspoken issue (well it gets spoken on HN a lot) is that your searchers no longer become your customers. So it's advantageous to improve your service for the sake of the advertisers to the detriment of the searchers, at least until a threshold that would make the majority of them quit. It only benefits "free and open exchange of information" for as long as that also benefits the advertisers.