Ditch Chrome, Firefox for this 8 million strong privacy-focused web browser
After his ouster from Mozilla, ex-CEO Brendan Eich has launched Brave version 1.0, a cross-platform web browser for Windows, macOS, Linus, Android and iOS. In a category where users are absolutely spoilt with options, Brave plans to be a fast option that maintains users’ privacy with default settings that are strong along with crypto currency-centric private ads and payment platform that enables users to incentivize content creators.
Brave already has 8 million monthly users while the Brave Rewards program, which needs publishers and opt-in from users, currently features 300,000 publishers on board. A majority of these users have small followings on YouTube and Twitter; however, large publishers such as Wikipedia, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Slate and the LA Times are also part of the Brave ecosystem. Utilizing this system, the browser will display a few ads as a notification in a separate private ad tab, based on the browsing habits of a user. A user then receives 70 per cent of what the advertisers spend on ads, while Brave keeps the rest.
When users see these ads, they begin earning Basic Attention Tokens (BAT), which is Brave’s cryptocurrency that can be given to publishers. In its initial days, Brave started with Bitcoin as the currency for this; however, it became too expensive because the price of Bitcoin was going up and users wanted to hold on to it instead of donating it.
The browser also comes with an in-built ad blocker that’s that is one of the best around and it features advanced anti-tracking features as well. For those who want to be anonymous online, there is also a private browsing mode. However, the difference here is that a private session can be opened through the Tor network. This will make it extremely difficult for most companies to identify you.
A report by TechCrunch states, “At its core, Brave is simply a fast, extensible Chromium-based browser. That’s also what the company believes will sell it to users.” Eich states that for Brave, speed, ad/tracking protection are interlinked and all its other benefits grow from that.
