5 ms·

Brave is essentially a repackaged Chrome and does nothing to help undermine the Blink monopoly. They're not directly funded by Google, but their browser depends

Brave is essentially a repackaged Chrome and does nothing to help undermine the Blink monopoly. They're not directly funded by Google, but their browser depends directly on Google funding Chrome's development.

fastball 6y ago
If Google disappeared tomorrow, Brave would continue to exist and would continue to get updates. Brave does not depend on Google, directly or otherwise. They depend on an open source project called Chromium, which is largely developed by Google, but because it is open source anyone can build off of it. Brave funds their development through the BAT token and through affiliate marketing, both of which are much better for user privacy and security, and much more resilient to Google than where Mozilla is getting its money. No, I don't think Apple would integrate thorough ad-blocking by default, just as I don't think Mozilla will do this either. Brave has already done it. Brave's ad-blocker works better by default than any ad-blocker I've used, and I've tried them all. HN's hate-boner for Brave is very strange. They clearly care more about user privacy than any other browser vendor (except maybe Safari, but again they have a conflict of interest), and it is built on a core that is arguably the best at handling the modern web (Chromium).
- bad_user 6y ago
  > If Google disappeared tomorrow, Brave would continue to exist and would continue to get updates. Microsoft wasn't able to keep developing a browser on their own, I doubt that Brave could. The problem is that a browser nowadays is so complex to develop that you need serious resources to invest in it. Without Google's ongoing development, Brave would not survive. And given Google's changes to undermine ads blockers, it's going to be interesting to see Brave struggling to maintain their fork. --- > much better for user privacy and security Right, keep telling yourself that. Btw, I actually wonder how what Brave is doing isn't copyright infringement, given they are directly profiting from blocking the ads of publishers. I guess they are small enough to not matter, for now. --- > Brave's ad-blocker works better by default than any ad-blocker I've used, and I've tried them all. I worked on anti-ad-blocking technology. Nothing beats uBlock Origin running on top of Firefox, everything else was strictly inferior. Not even blocking JavaScript in the page, because you can easily force the user to enable JS for you by breaking the content on that page. uBlock Origin is so bad that we avoiding it entirely, being useful for people frustrated with AdBlock Plus to turn to, sort of like in the Matrix.
  - fastball 6y ago
    > Microsoft wasn't able to keep developing a browser on their own, I doubt that Brave could. The problem is that a browser nowadays is so complex to develop that you need serious resources to invest in it. Without Google's ongoing development, Brave would not survive. And given Google's changes to undermine ads blockers, it's going to be interesting to see Brave struggling to maintain their fork. IE was woefully out-of-date. MSFT then tried to build a browser from scratch. That was a lot of effort, so they decided to fork Chromium (like Brave) instead. What exactly do you think would happen in Google dissappeared tomorrow in their case? Do you think they would go back to trying to build their own browser from scratch? No, they'd just keep developing Chromium. Many (most) changes would probably be upstreamed. Forking a browser and maintaining it is orders of magnitude easier than starting from scratch in [current year]. As you point out, there are not multiple parties building on Chromium, so I'm sure slack could be picked up if Google switches gears. But you're right, maybe Brave won't be able to keep up with upstream changes that make ad-blocking harder. In that case, you can always just switch browsers. In the meantime, however, I'll use the browser that does a better job of protecting privacy by default. > Right, keep telling yourself that. Luckily, I don't need to. A browser that blocks ads by default is objectively better for user privacy and security than one that doesn't. --- > Btw, I actually wonder how what Brave is doing isn't copyright infringement, given they are directly profiting from blocking the ads of publishers. I guess they are small enough to not matter, for now. They aren't directly profiting off of ad-blocking, so maybe that helps. --- > I worked on anti-ad-blocking technology. Nothing beats uBlock Origin running on top of Firefox, everything else was strictly inferior. Have you actually tried Brave? Works better for me, and I've tried Firefox with uB0. Have also tried Chrome with uB0. Brave blocks both ads and tracking more consistently across the board. It occasionally breaks a webpage, but I have reported those to Brave and two of them have been fixed (out of like 5). This process is clearly better for users than everyone having to configure their uB0 Matrix and such separately. Brave is creating a web where all the privacy violating / attention grabbing shit is very much blocked by default in a much stricter way than other options. When this breaks the internet, they fix it and because this fix is part of the blocker it fixes it for everyone.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  > If Google disappeared tomorrow, Brave would continue to exist and would continue to get updates. "Updates" may be, large, architectural upgrades? Doubt it. There's a reason they didn't start fresh and I very much doubt they'd muster the resources to maintain development were Google to drop it. Google has invested billions, probably tens of billions into Blink engineering. What I could see happening is Brave forming some sort of a coalition with KDE and the wider open-source community in the better case or trying to switch to WebKit in the worse case as that is exchanging one corporate overlord for another. Not to mention Brave's VC funded, so they'd want some form of a meaningful exit at some point. The bigger concern however is not that Google will not fund Blink development, but that it will increasingly implement features that primarily benefit itself and Brave, as a dependent player, will be spending an increasing amount of resources trying not to get eaten by Google's "direction tax", as all developers depending on a 3rd party corporation they're in some sense competitors with find out eventually. See also Twitter 3rd party client developers or the many AppStore devs Apple burned and ruined their business overnight.

fastball 6y ago

If Google disappeared tomorrow, Brave would continue to exist and would continue to get updates. Brave does not depend on Google, directly or otherwise. They depend on an open source project called Chromium, which is largely developed by Google, but because it is open source anyone can build off of it. Brave funds their development through the BAT token and through affiliate marketing, both of which are much better for user privacy and security, and much more resilient to Google than where Mozilla is getting its money. No, I don't think Apple would integrate thorough ad-blocking by default, just as I don't think Mozilla will do this either. Brave has already done it. Brave's ad-blocker works better by default than any ad-blocker I've used, and I've tried them all. HN's hate-boner for Brave is very strange. They clearly care more about user privacy than any other browser vendor (except maybe Safari, but again they have a conflict of interest), and it is built on a core that is arguably the best at handling the modern web (Chromium).

bad_user 6y ago
> If Google disappeared tomorrow, Brave would continue to exist and would continue to get updates. Microsoft wasn't able to keep developing a browser on their own, I doubt that Brave could. The problem is that a browser nowadays is so complex to develop that you need serious resources to invest in it. Without Google's ongoing development, Brave would not survive. And given Google's changes to undermine ads blockers, it's going to be interesting to see Brave struggling to maintain their fork. --- > much better for user privacy and security Right, keep telling yourself that. Btw, I actually wonder how what Brave is doing isn't copyright infringement, given they are directly profiting from blocking the ads of publishers. I guess they are small enough to not matter, for now. --- > Brave's ad-blocker works better by default than any ad-blocker I've used, and I've tried them all. I worked on anti-ad-blocking technology. Nothing beats uBlock Origin running on top of Firefox, everything else was strictly inferior. Not even blocking JavaScript in the page, because you can easily force the user to enable JS for you by breaking the content on that page. uBlock Origin is so bad that we avoiding it entirely, being useful for people frustrated with AdBlock Plus to turn to, sort of like in the Matrix.
- fastball 6y ago
  > Microsoft wasn't able to keep developing a browser on their own, I doubt that Brave could. The problem is that a browser nowadays is so complex to develop that you need serious resources to invest in it. Without Google's ongoing development, Brave would not survive. And given Google's changes to undermine ads blockers, it's going to be interesting to see Brave struggling to maintain their fork. IE was woefully out-of-date. MSFT then tried to build a browser from scratch. That was a lot of effort, so they decided to fork Chromium (like Brave) instead. What exactly do you think would happen in Google dissappeared tomorrow in their case? Do you think they would go back to trying to build their own browser from scratch? No, they'd just keep developing Chromium. Many (most) changes would probably be upstreamed. Forking a browser and maintaining it is orders of magnitude easier than starting from scratch in [current year]. As you point out, there are not multiple parties building on Chromium, so I'm sure slack could be picked up if Google switches gears. But you're right, maybe Brave won't be able to keep up with upstream changes that make ad-blocking harder. In that case, you can always just switch browsers. In the meantime, however, I'll use the browser that does a better job of protecting privacy by default. > Right, keep telling yourself that. Luckily, I don't need to. A browser that blocks ads by default is objectively better for user privacy and security than one that doesn't. --- > Btw, I actually wonder how what Brave is doing isn't copyright infringement, given they are directly profiting from blocking the ads of publishers. I guess they are small enough to not matter, for now. They aren't directly profiting off of ad-blocking, so maybe that helps. --- > I worked on anti-ad-blocking technology. Nothing beats uBlock Origin running on top of Firefox, everything else was strictly inferior. Have you actually tried Brave? Works better for me, and I've tried Firefox with uB0. Have also tried Chrome with uB0. Brave blocks both ads and tracking more consistently across the board. It occasionally breaks a webpage, but I have reported those to Brave and two of them have been fixed (out of like 5). This process is clearly better for users than everyone having to configure their uB0 Matrix and such separately. Brave is creating a web where all the privacy violating / attention grabbing shit is very much blocked by default in a much stricter way than other options. When this breaks the internet, they fix it and because this fix is part of the blocker it fixes it for everyone.
AsyncAwait 6y ago
> If Google disappeared tomorrow, Brave would continue to exist and would continue to get updates. "Updates" may be, large, architectural upgrades? Doubt it. There's a reason they didn't start fresh and I very much doubt they'd muster the resources to maintain development were Google to drop it. Google has invested billions, probably tens of billions into Blink engineering. What I could see happening is Brave forming some sort of a coalition with KDE and the wider open-source community in the better case or trying to switch to WebKit in the worse case as that is exchanging one corporate overlord for another. Not to mention Brave's VC funded, so they'd want some form of a meaningful exit at some point. The bigger concern however is not that Google will not fund Blink development, but that it will increasingly implement features that primarily benefit itself and Brave, as a dependent player, will be spending an increasing amount of resources trying not to get eaten by Google's "direction tax", as all developers depending on a 3rd party corporation they're in some sense competitors with find out eventually. See also Twitter 3rd party client developers or the many AppStore devs Apple burned and ruined their business overnight.