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Opinions are obviously split here among HNers about the merits of Brave and what it's actually trying to achieve. I can only speak for myself but I find that B

Opinions are obviously split here among HNers about the merits of Brave and what it's actually trying to achieve. I can only speak for myself but I find that Brave as a daily driver is a wonderful browser. Since it's built on Chromium, it has all the common extensions I use with Chrome (Dark Reader, uBlock Origin, etc.). It has built-in Tor and a rich set of default privacy features. The ads it provides are opt-in and the way that it allows the user to choose which website/content creators to reward allows a level of freedom to users that other browsers typically don't. I don't know about the ethics behind everything Brave is doing - but this built in functionality of 404 redirects with the help of the IA/Wayback Machine is, to me, an interesting and welcome feature. I did not know, before reading this thread, that other browsers had plugins/extensions available for this. The fact that Brave is simply building it in natively seems to be a bold move. If other browsers adopt similar functionality natively, we'll know that it was a winning move. When all is said and done, despite any missteps Brave may be making, it is trying a different approach, and I think that in the end, whether or not Brave succeeds, that's healthy for a competitive browser ecosystem. Edit: One thing I'd really like to see for Brave's mobile browser in the future is the ability to use Chrome extensions - it seems completely strange to me that this hasn't been implemented yet (if I'm slow on the uptake and this capability has been added, please correct me)

csteubs 7y ago
I tend to agree. I run a QA team for an e-commerce startup and started using Brave for manual testing about a year ago. Chromium means the same dev tools I know and love, the extensions I use for debugging in Chrome work out of the box, Brave ads/BAT is all opt-in, and the the default "Shield" settings are great for sussing out analytics implementation issues. It seems like most of the arguments against Brave hinge on the token economy and the business model, which I really could not care any less about. Make your money, Brave. The Wayback machine feature is an interesting move, especially in the world of A/B tests and feature flags. I hope this bolsters support for IA initiatives and ends up powering some cool products, because I can think of a few ideas already (leaning heavily on competitive intelligence, inferring feature performance based on longevity/time-in-test, etc.)
- wilkystyle 7y ago
  In theory I really like the economic model. By ensuring a revenue stream outside of ads, it should mean that we get the polish and longevity of a commercial product, but without having to pay for it (either with money or by giving up our privacy). In practice, though, I wish it were more stable, with basic working features. Instead it seems like basic functionality is buggy[0], and major breaking changes could crop up at any time[1]. [0]: https://community.brave.com/t/brave-sync-temporarily-disabled-on-desktop/106837 https://community.brave.com/t/brave-sync-temporarily-disable... [1]: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/7639 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/7639
thrwaway69 7y ago
You should try vivaldi. They have more straight forward source of revenue and it packs a lot of features on top of chromium which you will install via extensions anyway. https://vivaldi.com/features/ https://vivaldi.com/features/
- tim-- 7y ago
  I am not a fan of Vivaldi being closed source. At least Brave, like Chromium is Open Source.
  - thrwaway69 7y ago
    https://vivaldi.com/source/ https://vivaldi.com/source/
    - a_t48 7y ago
      https://www.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/62adz5/the_vivaldi_source_code_license_and_the_eula/ https://www.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/62adz5/the_... That apparently only covers Chromium changes to allow an HTML UI, not the actual interesting bits of the browser.
- jraby3 7y ago
  What is their source of revenue? Couldn’t find it on their about page.
  - thrwaway69 7y ago
    https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/ https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/ Vivaldi generates revenue from partner deals with search engines and default bookmarks.
redsolver 7y ago
I want to use Chrome desktop extensions on mobile, I recommend trying out Kiwi Browser. It's open-source.
- redsolver 7y ago
  *If you want
  - nougatbyte 7y ago
    I'm not sure if it changed, but last time I checked kiwi was not open source. There is a GitHub repo but it contained only part of the code
- csagan5 7y ago
  It is not and has never been, see https://github.com/kiwibrowser/android/issues/12#issuecomment-435690397 https://github.com/kiwibrowser/android/issues/12#issuecommen...
mettamage 7y ago
They're spearheading the right to forgotten in a sense (not sure how to phrase that quite right). I predict that if Brave happens to become popular, the IA will become a lot more popular and people would want to delete a lot of IA pages for privacy reasons.
- DelightOne 7y ago
  Which is why they hopefully implement private caches which can't be touched by IA page removal.
bad_user 7y ago
Firefox introduced similar functionality in its former Test Pilot program, in 2018. It now lives on as an extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wayback-machine_new/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wayback-machi... And here's the report: https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/test-pilot-no-more-404s-graduation-report-22e65f62b2b1 https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/test-pilot-no-more-404... Basically if you look at the results, they aren't so encouraging, because the archive has results for only ~20% of URLs that aren't found and when it does have results, a majority of the time users tend to dismiss or ignore the notification. Still, it's a useful extension that I keep installed in my Firefox. --- Adding something natively to the browser isn't a virtue, because the browser maker can have perverse incentives due to the nature of the business. I personally don't understand how some people can trust Brave for ad-blocking (given they are a company whose business model is still the serving of ads) instead of just installing uBlock Origin in their favorite browser, whatever that browser is. Speaking of uBlock Origin, even if you can install it on Brave right now, given Google is deprecating the underlying API in manifest v3, I don't think Brave will be able to support uBlock Origin for long, in spite of what they've claimed, simply because I don't think they have the capacity to diverge too much from Chromium's code base. And if you want Tor and such, might as well go for the real thing. -- > One thing I'd really like to see for Brave's mobile browser in the future is the ability to use Chrome extensions - it seems completely strange to me that this hasn't been implemented yet Well, it's actually rather obvious: 1. Brave is basically leeching on Google's work, they don't have the capacity for actual software development that goes beyond branding and features that serve their own bottom line — speaking of which, if you care about the health of the web, you're not sticking it to Google when using Brave, precisely because it's still Chromium, still contributing to Google's dominance 2. Extensions can go against their own business model and their interests here are actually aligned with Google's (yes Mozilla's interests are aligned with Google as well, but Firefox on Android does support extensions and given their culture and how things have evolved on the desktop as well, at least in this regard I'm pretty sure they'll support extensions for as long as the underlying OS allows it)
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  > Brave is basically leeching on Google's work, they don't have the capacity for actual software development that goes beyond branding and features that serve their own bottom line I fail to see how extensions on mobile is more difficult than adblocking, tracking resistance, and TOR support. You can claim that all of those are just baking in well-understood functions from elsewhere, but it's not like extensions are novel, and mobile isn't that weird a platform.
mcv 7y ago
I have my doubts about Brave's cryptocurrency tie-in, but checking the Wayback Machine for 404s is a brilliant idea. Apparently there are extensions for other browsers that do the same. I might look into that.

csteubs 7y ago

I tend to agree. I run a QA team for an e-commerce startup and started using Brave for manual testing about a year ago. Chromium means the same dev tools I know and love, the extensions I use for debugging in Chrome work out of the box, Brave ads/BAT is all opt-in, and the the default "Shield" settings are great for sussing out analytics implementation issues. It seems like most of the arguments against Brave hinge on the token economy and the business model, which I really could not care any less about. Make your money, Brave. The Wayback machine feature is an interesting move, especially in the world of A/B tests and feature flags. I hope this bolsters support for IA initiatives and ends up powering some cool products, because I can think of a few ideas already (leaning heavily on competitive intelligence, inferring feature performance based on longevity/time-in-test, etc.)

wilkystyle 7y ago
In theory I really like the economic model. By ensuring a revenue stream outside of ads, it should mean that we get the polish and longevity of a commercial product, but without having to pay for it (either with money or by giving up our privacy). In practice, though, I wish it were more stable, with basic working features. Instead it seems like basic functionality is buggy[0], and major breaking changes could crop up at any time[1]. [0]: https://community.brave.com/t/brave-sync-temporarily-disabled-on-desktop/106837 https://community.brave.com/t/brave-sync-temporarily-disable... [1]: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/7639 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/7639

thrwaway69 7y ago

You should try vivaldi. They have more straight forward source of revenue and it packs a lot of features on top of chromium which you will install via extensions anyway. https://vivaldi.com/features/ https://vivaldi.com/features/

tim-- 7y ago
I am not a fan of Vivaldi being closed source. At least Brave, like Chromium is Open Source.
- thrwaway69 7y ago
  https://vivaldi.com/source/ https://vivaldi.com/source/
  - a_t48 7y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/62adz5/the_vivaldi_source_code_license_and_the_eula/ https://www.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/62adz5/the_... That apparently only covers Chromium changes to allow an HTML UI, not the actual interesting bits of the browser.
jraby3 7y ago
What is their source of revenue? Couldn’t find it on their about page.
- thrwaway69 7y ago
  https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/ https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/ Vivaldi generates revenue from partner deals with search engines and default bookmarks.

redsolver 7y ago

I want to use Chrome desktop extensions on mobile, I recommend trying out Kiwi Browser. It's open-source.

redsolver 7y ago
*If you want
- nougatbyte 7y ago
  I'm not sure if it changed, but last time I checked kiwi was not open source. There is a GitHub repo but it contained only part of the code
csagan5 7y ago
It is not and has never been, see https://github.com/kiwibrowser/android/issues/12#issuecomment-435690397 https://github.com/kiwibrowser/android/issues/12#issuecommen...

mettamage 7y ago

They're spearheading the right to forgotten in a sense (not sure how to phrase that quite right). I predict that if Brave happens to become popular, the IA will become a lot more popular and people would want to delete a lot of IA pages for privacy reasons.

DelightOne 7y ago
Which is why they hopefully implement private caches which can't be touched by IA page removal.

bad_user 7y ago

Firefox introduced similar functionality in its former Test Pilot program, in 2018. It now lives on as an extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wayback-machine_new/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wayback-machi... And here's the report: https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/test-pilot-no-more-404s-graduation-report-22e65f62b2b1 https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/test-pilot-no-more-404... Basically if you look at the results, they aren't so encouraging, because the archive has results for only ~20% of URLs that aren't found and when it does have results, a majority of the time users tend to dismiss or ignore the notification. Still, it's a useful extension that I keep installed in my Firefox. --- Adding something natively to the browser isn't a virtue, because the browser maker can have perverse incentives due to the nature of the business. I personally don't understand how some people can trust Brave for ad-blocking (given they are a company whose business model is still the serving of ads) instead of just installing uBlock Origin in their favorite browser, whatever that browser is. Speaking of uBlock Origin, even if you can install it on Brave right now, given Google is deprecating the underlying API in manifest v3, I don't think Brave will be able to support uBlock Origin for long, in spite of what they've claimed, simply because I don't think they have the capacity to diverge too much from Chromium's code base. And if you want Tor and such, might as well go for the real thing. -- > One thing I'd really like to see for Brave's mobile browser in the future is the ability to use Chrome extensions - it seems completely strange to me that this hasn't been implemented yet Well, it's actually rather obvious: 1. Brave is basically leeching on Google's work, they don't have the capacity for actual software development that goes beyond branding and features that serve their own bottom line — speaking of which, if you care about the health of the web, you're not sticking it to Google when using Brave, precisely because it's still Chromium, still contributing to Google's dominance 2. Extensions can go against their own business model and their interests here are actually aligned with Google's (yes Mozilla's interests are aligned with Google as well, but Firefox on Android does support extensions and given their culture and how things have evolved on the desktop as well, at least in this regard I'm pretty sure they'll support extensions for as long as the underlying OS allows it)

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
> Brave is basically leeching on Google's work, they don't have the capacity for actual software development that goes beyond branding and features that serve their own bottom line I fail to see how extensions on mobile is more difficult than adblocking, tracking resistance, and TOR support. You can claim that all of those are just baking in well-understood functions from elsewhere, but it's not like extensions are novel, and mobile isn't that weird a platform.

mcv 7y ago

I have my doubts about Brave's cryptocurrency tie-in, but checking the Wayback Machine for 404s is a brilliant idea. Apparently there are extensions for other browsers that do the same. I might look into that.