8 ms·
Former Mozilla CEO raises $35M in under 30s for his browser startup Brave
- wmf 9y agoYesterday's discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14453344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14453344
- keerthiko 9y agoThis article has way more info than a tweet though, so I wish HN didn't tag this as [dupe]. Although the link to the old discussion is useful.
- ouid 9y agoyeah, I'm really looking forward the browser where I can pay to do the things I do now for free.
- jzila 9y agoThere are those of us who look forward to exactly that: the ability to own our participation in the content we consume. When you pay for content, you are the customer. When someone else pays for the content, you are the inventory. Yes, ad blockers work. But they are susceptible to the tragedy of the commons: it's always advantageous to install an ad blocker. Then, as they proliferate, companies must insert more and more intrusive ads. This encourages more people to get ad blockers. Allowing a tiered economy for content will enable those who wish to pay to do so, and those who don't to see ads. The ads can become less intrusive because the companies are no longer playing a cat-and-mouse game with their inventory. That should decrease the incentive to use an ad blocker, allowing that revenue stream to stabilize.
- pmoriarty 9y ago"When you pay for content, you are the customer. When someone else pays for the content, you are the inventory." Subscribers to the NYT: are they the customer or the inventory (or product)? Subscribers to Netflix: are they the customer or the inventory (or product)? I really don't see why companies wouldn't treat them as both. So many businesses are operating on a subscription model, and still treat their "customers" as databanks ripe for mining and selling to their "real customers": advertisers and other purchasers of user data. The 21st Century has really become the century of spyware, and I don't see paying for content as a reliable way for consumers to avoid being a target.
- foota 9y agoBased off a quick glance through Netflix's financial reporting, I'm not thinking they sell your data (https://ir.netflix.com/financials.cfm?CategoryID=282 https://ir.netflix.com/financials.cfm?CategoryID=282) Although of course they use it internally.
- tahw 9y agoI'm certainly willing to pay if it means producers don't have to bug me with patreon links and shitty ads at every opportunity!
- roryisok 9y agoBut they still will. They'll still have to bug people who don't use brave. You think they're going to recode their sites to recognise brave and hide everything away? You'll get the same experience as you do right now with an ad blocker, except you'll be paying for it while the majority of people don't. And then in a few years brave will go belly up and you'll be out of pocket, and the internet will still be full of intrusive ads
- harterrt 9y agoWill this actually cause producers to remove ads? Isn't there just an alternative monetization now? In other words, is there no way for a content producer to 'double dip' and earn from both Brave's payments and ads that work around Brave's ad blockers?
- mhluongo 9y agoI prefer to think of it as "I'm really looking forward to an Internet that can survive without constantly nagging me for a subscription or running third-party ad code on my computer"
- Fezzik 9y agoI am hoping there is a market for such a browser. I, for one, would much rather pay for a browser that looks out for my (privacy) interests than use a free browser that does not. But I fall in the boat of people who would also rather pay for a television set that only worked as a television set, and not a behavior tracker. Heck, I would happily pay more to keep that functionality as far away from me as possible.
- AndrewKemendo 9y agoI, for one, would much rather pay for a browser that looks out for my (privacy) interests than use a free browser that does not. Doesn't Firefox do all of that already for free? It's FOSS and has a wide range of privacy features baked in including pixel blocking. Adding on ghostery and ublock covers the rest. Seems like the only difference is configuring options on installation.
- gorhill 9y agoTo add to your comment, Firefox people are working to support anti-fingerprinting protection in the browser.[1] [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1329996 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1329996
- Fezzik 9y agoIt does, as I understand it. I personally use Safari on my Mac, as I prefer the interface (with ghostery, and whatever uBlock is on that platform these days) but... I honestly LIKE paying for things I use. I feel more comfortable with paying for a product as opposed to keeping my fingers crossed that something free will 1) continue to exist/remain free and 2) retain the features I like. I pay for email, I pay for a VPN, I pay for everything I can pay for.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y agoAn ad-based model means that content creators have to adhere to what advertisers approve of. A direct-pay model mean that content creators have to adhere to what their audience approves of. I know which one I prefer.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Overtonwindow 9y agoBrave is wonderful. Whenever I encounter a site with bad advertising, or a paywall, Brave skips right around it. I really like the idea the browser puts forth that you can have some say over where advertising dollars go. It's a little clunky but hopefully that will get better with time.
- floatboth 9y agoChromium skin (literally Electron app) with an adblocker and HTTPS Everywhere already integrated and an integrated payment thing, made by the guy infamous for inventing JavaScript and donating $$$ to pushing homophobic legislation? Whatever.
- Sephr 9y agoI don't agree with his business model. Instead of paying to block ads, Brave could hook into a P2P CDN like greta.io or peerweb.net to offset the bandwidth costs of sites you visit (or maybe just the sites you favorite/bookmark). If I'm ever going to pay to block ads, I'm not going to share the payment with my browser vendor, especially vendors with CEOs that support homophobic causes.
- roryisok 9y agoHomophobic?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- giggles_giggles 9y agoHe got run out of Mozilla for making a donation to a group that supported Prop 8 in California, banning same-sex marriage, which passed in a referendum in 2008.
- acchow 9y agoBandwidth costs are not really the major cost of providing content.
- hvo 9y agoI generally don't respond to low-road conduct like this on HN. But the arrant balderdash needs to stop. Please stop calling Brendan Eich "homophobic" just because he donated money to the cause he believes in. Nobody calls Paul Graham names just because he was in support of the end of death penalty in California[1] [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/prop62.html
- Sephr 9y agoThe cause he donated to was homophobic in itself. If I donate to ISIS and then say "I don't support ISIS" you would have a hard time believing me. I don't understand these mental gymnastics you are trying to do.
- rc_kas 9y ago> "in under 30s" Sheez FFS, someone learn how to write headlines. I was trying to figure out what that mean. 30 is not a dollar bill denomination? All the donations were under $30? What?
- goda90 9y agos = seconds. I agree that it's not a good abbreviation choice here. "sec" would have been better.
- juandazapata 9y ago30s => 30 seconds.
- toomanybeersies 9y agoI agree. I was actually under the impression that he raised $35MM from people under the age of 30.
- roryisok 9y agoI'm amazed there's been no mention of HNs favourite angry rant topic: Brave is a browser built on electron. And no, I do not mean webkit.
- fooker 9y agoA browser built on a browser sandbox, what could go wrong! Can we go deeper?
- deburo 9y agoIt has its appeal. An interface made in html/css/js is customizable and programmable from a user's pov. Only the performance can be annoying, but sometimes its not too much of an issue, as Visual Studio Code demonstrated.
- fooker 9y agoFirefox had XUL for a long time, which is imo a better solution for building structured user interfaces compared to raw html.
- cyrofox 9y agoI'm going to give Brave a try as my primary browser for a week and see how it goes. So far so good.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 9y agoIt wasn't that bad when I used it for a week.
- outsidetheparty 9y agoI'll say this much, Brave has done a marvelous job of branding this advertising middleware platform as an ad blocker and privacy protector. Look at question 15 in their FAQ. https://brave.com/FAQ.html https://brave.com/FAQ.html They're gathering much more information than regular ads are able to, and they're using that information to push more highly targeted ads at you. That's the business model. All the handwaving about how that information never leaves the browser is irrelevant; it's still being used to push ads at you.
- AndrewKemendo 9y agoThat's a really bad interpretation. By default any browser would "see this information" no matter what browser you are using. Our auditable open source browser code protects this intent data on the client device. Our server side has no access to this data in the clear, nor does it have decryption keys. We do not run a MitM proxy or VPN service. Right, as expected. So they aren't pulling your data - according to them. So I don't see the problem.
- outsidetheparty 9y ago> By default any browser would "see this information" no matter what browser you are using. Yes, but by default most browsers don't go on to use that information to decide "what preferences and intent signals to expose [to advertisers] to maximize user, publisher and advertiser [and Brave's] value". >Our server side has no access to this data in the clear, nor does it have decryption keys. We do not run a MitM proxy or VPN service. See, this is the brilliant marketing I was talking about. They don't use the data serverside and expose the results to advertisers. They use it clientside and then expose the results to advertisers. The end result is exactly the same, it just sounds friendlier. The references to MitM and VPNs is just verbal chaff: they don't need to run a man-in-the-middle attack to listen in on your traffic, because the end-user software is already doing everything a MitM would have done, and then some. Now do you see the problem?
- AndrewKemendo 9y ago
- flashmob 9y agoThere needs to be a fairer distribution of the tokens if they want this to succeed. This is because token holders become the ambassadors / evangelists for the project. There's probably a lot of disappointed people who missed the crowdsale - this means the project would have a lot of salty opponents now.