After its release in 2008, just 3 percent of people used Chrome for those first few months. It’s been a steady move upwards ever since. Fast-forwarding to today, Chrome browser has obliterated the competition with 80 percent dominance in the market.
The people have voted with their mouse clicks and taps. Chrome is indeed an amazing browser backed by great tech.
So why all this talk about Chrome? Well Brave is a close relative to Chrome. To be more precise it’s built on top of Chromium, which is Google’s open-source web browser project. Most of the code that makes up Chrome can be found in Chromium.
Opposing Views About Trackers
The key difference between Chrome and Brave is philosophy. The founders of Brave believe trackers have overstepped reasonable boundaries.
In short, everything we do online is tracked and saved by corporations. Sometimes that data is sold to other companies too. And no, it isn’t done because they want to get to know us. They want to sell us stuff, and to do so more efficiently than their competitors.
David vs Goliath
Brendan Eich, co-founder and CEO of Brave Software invented the JavaScript programming language and co-founded Mozilla. Eich and company brought us the excellent Firefox browser, and has done it again with Brave.
With established leadership like that, Brave Software has a real shot at converting users to its browser. In fact, it’s already going swimmingly. A website called BATGROWTH is tracking the growth of Brave publishers. This is proving to be a huge year for the browser with no signs of slowing down.
How Brave Gives Back to its Users
Tech companies like Google and Facebook make most of their profit from ads. Traditionally users endure a barrage of advertising messages and in return gain free use of superb web software.
The issue with this model is that we all avoid ads like the plague regardless of the fact that ads are necessary when the service is free. Banner ads were once widely used and are seen less and less due to an effect called “banner blindness.” People learned how to divert their attention away from the noise and focus on the content they came for.
And as advertisers tried harder to grab our attention with videos, texts ads that don’t look like ads, etc., we found new ways to push it all away. Now users have ad blockers to deal with these unwelcome commercial messages.
It’s become an arms race between the user and the publisher.
With no incentive to view and interact with ads, so it’s no wonder the traditional approach is a struggle.
Thus, Brave rewards people with Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) when they opt-in and accept unobtrusive advertising. BAT is a cryptocurrency that can be exchanged for dollars or held if you believe its value will go up. Additionally, Brave has a built-in wallet to store these tokens.
According to Eich, the current internet’s current monetization system is “mature, but troubled,” suggesting that the human attention economy through the Basic Attention Token will eventually replace the need for fund-raising through sites like Patreon or through traditional programmatic digital advertising exchanges.
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Once ads are turned on, by default every two hours a notification item appears at the top right of the browser window. You can choose to view the content or close this notification.
It’s not perfect since people can still tune out the advertiser’s messages. However, since the user is being compensated, the ads are no longer unwelcome. As with Brave’s model, it’s a choice.
Trackers and Ads Get the Heave-Ho
The ads publishers place on their sites are blocked by Brave right out of the gate. So are third-party cookies and trackers used to collect data on your browsing.
It’s pretty amazing to have this built-in to the browser. It works great. Plus, with much less bloat than extensions like Adblock Plus for Chrome. Third-party adblockers are notorious for hogging system resources. It’s good to see Brave addressed this inefficiency as well.
Making the Switch
If privacy is important to you, what are you waiting for?
Download Brave and give it a test run today.
If you’re a Chrome user, you’ll feel right at home. Also, if you like Firefox, it makes sense to check it out as well. Brave carries a lot of the vision over from Mozilla as both were founded by Brendan Eich.
This is a really exciting time for the web. Inspiring new projects that utilize blockchain are reinventing existing tools: in this case the browser. By using Brave you’ll be among the first wave of people to experience the new, improved internet, free of trackers and annoying ads.
Viva la revolución!