Brave is built on chromium. Cool concept, but not a new browser

They often say they don't use problematic features.

They're still beholden to Google. Their own repo is a set of patches that disable some features. For now, it's mostly feature flags being turned on/off. What happens when Google starts being more hostile and makes disabling features harder ? Can Brave have the manpower to disable that, forever? What if there's a new rendering engine that's 10 times faster but it's so intertwined with a restrictive API that you can't have one without the other?

Brave, for all their talk, are at Google's mercy.

And no, don't give me "but Chromium isn't just Google anymore": it is 90% Google.

I'd expect them to have the skills to fork Blink.

not sure about the resources to support its development long-term, though

That's like people who don't like what Chromium does, but still uses it along with uBlock. It feels to me like the web needs another engine, not chromium reskins, to stay healthy.

it'd be a step in the right direction if one of the "new" browsers trying to do cool things were using gecko (firefox's engine)

I agree with the sentiment. But the main reason I have heard from browser builders is that Gecko isn't as easy to integrate as Blink. Nyxt browser, for example, is engine-agnostic. They still have trouble integrating Gecko. Servo, on the other hand, is designed with embedding in mind. They have picked up some pace after joining the Linux Foundation. Libweb (Ladybird's engine) is also a candidate. Let's hope that current situation spurs them on.

I'd been under the impression that most of the useful stuff from servo had already been integrated back into gecko, but I just checked their git and was glad to see that development continues, despite mozilla's layoffs

right, just problematic people to lead their efforts (brendan eich)

Fair.

On the other hand, didn't he start the whole thing after getting kicked out of Mozilla?

pretty much—according to wikipedia, he resigned, though apparently moz actually tried to keep him around (just not as CEO, his appointment as which flagged the donations initially)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich

I have a serious question about Brave. I would be glad to use it, but I am a bit scared of the fat that it is linked to a crypto (I didn't dive in the tokenomics, but maybe the team is driven by the money ? or other shady things ?), and also the fact that I go ads for this browser. Getting an ad for the browser make me question: what are their incentives ? Why would they invest money to attract people ? What is their business model ? The fact that it's a for-profit, just like the other browsers (except Firefox), make me think that they might push things for money, not for the users despite all their claims of being so focused on the user safety, privacy etc.

Most likely: You will become their product that’s it. Be sold as part of their audience and then crypto-bros can invest into you and search advertisers will get you watching their ads so you will eventually invest into a token + have your local browsing history analyzed + your searches spied by their search engine (but it won’t be Google they promise, and they will keep their promise).

At the origin, Brave was supposed to be an adware that replaces the ads of the website with theirs.

Just pick your poison but all browser developers need money to live.

The only way to be sure a browser works in your best interest would be if you accept to pay, and nobody wants to do that.

See what has happened with Neeva.

I have the wallet/bat token stuff turned off. Its not even turned on when you install Brave.

The main reason I moved to Brave is Firefox's bizarre updating model on Ubuntu which causes it to randomly shutdown all the time. Plus on Android, brave just blocks a ton off ads, that firefox doesn't without extensions and fiddling about.

Is it Firefox's bizarre updating model or Ubuntu's bizarre updating model? On my Arch, Firefox updates work fine.

I have it installed via flatpak (on Pop!_OS), which turns off auto-updates, and gives me full control over when updates happen

The crypto element is entirely optional and can be hidden with two tickboxes. Maybe they'll start pushing it harder, at which point someone will come along and fork it, and I'll have to copy my bookmarks over to the New Thing. It's an eternal cycle.

The crypto feature is a way to allow web content to be paid for, but it's super easy to turn off.

From my perspective it seems that the current FF CEO basically did a hostile takeover of Firefox, that involved maximising their personal wages. Firefox is absolutely for profit, the $millions the CEO takes is ridiculous. I read that they got a personal stipend from Google too, but I've not been able to confirm that. Maybe you're confusing them with the Mozilla Foundation. The way they structure things so you can't donate to engineering on Firefox is skeevy, far worse than a system designed to enable content owners to get paid.

I was a supporter/promoter of FF for 18 years, fwiw.

And which engine does Brave use? Take a wild guess.

Brave is just a privacy scam. And it's also Chromium based

So you might as well be using Chrome.

Can you show some sources for how Brave is scamming people out of privacy (or whatever else "privacy scam" means)?

Sure. https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-aff...

While that move was bad, it had zero to do with privacy.

Just eroding user trust. Which is the basis of privacy

You explicitly said that move was a "privacy scam".

Now you're backtracking to "just eroding trust". There's quite a gap there.

Learn to read. I said Brave was privacy scam. The whole company. Not just that move.

I can read fine.

1) You provided that example directly in response to the question "Can you show some sources for how Brave is scamming people out of privacy".

2) That example, I think we agree, is explicitly NOT "scamming people out of privacy".

You're wrong. It's okay though. Just acknowledge that you misspoke, clarify what you were trying to say, and move on. No need to be childish.