If you are keen on personal privacy, you might have come across Brave Browser. Brave is a Chromium-based browser that promises to deliver privacy with built-in ad-blocking and content-blocking protection. It also offers several quality-of-life features and services, like a VPN and Tor access. I mean, it’s even listed on the reputable PrivacyTools website. Why am I telling you to steer clear of this browser, then?
but we’ll have one less competitor to Google’s absolute hegemony over the web browser market.
Brave isn’t a competitor to Google, it’s an enabler. It uses the same engine, which is all Google cares about: Their engine, their internet.
It absolutely is a competitor. Yes, it uses the same engine, but it blocks their ads. And at the end of the day, serving ads is what Google wants to do.
But again, Firefox (and forks) is my main browser, and it’s what I recommend to everyone. But Brave is on my list of acceptable Chromium browsers, assuming you need a Chromium browser (I do for web dev at my day job).
Yes, it uses the same engine, but it blocks their ads.
Which means nothing, when Google can, and is, pushing technology to freely unleash their ad network on all web pages, as a function of the engine itself.
No, it’s not a competitor. Excepting in their ad markets, and frankly, it’s not a competitor, it’s a statistical blip.
as a function of the engine itself.
AFAIK, there’s nothing in Blink (the rendering engine), V8 (the JavaScript run engine), or any other low level pieces of the browser that does this. What they’re doing is hamstringing extensions and building in a layer of tracking into the browser on top of the engine. A fork can absolutely keep the engine bits and remove the tracking bits.
The problem with Chrome’s hegemony over the rendering engine has nothing to do with their ad network, but with their ability to steer people to use their products instead of competitors’ (e.g. “Google Docs is faster on Chrome, switch today!” just because they introduced a chrome-only spec extension).
Brave absolutely is a competitor. They block Google’s ads, have their own search engine (and are building their own index), and provide a privacy friendly alternative to Chrome without any compatibility issues. That’s why it’s my backup to Firefox (and forks), sometimes things don’t work properly on Gecko and I want a privacy-friendly alternative to chrome. That used to be Chromium w/ uBlock Origin, but with that extension taken from the chrome web store, I reach for Brave, which has it built in.
And yeah, it doesn’t have a ton of users. That doesn’t mean they’re not a competitor though.
