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I'm actually tempted to start using Brave. I'm still holding out with Firefox despite Mozilla trying very hard to get rid of us (to the point where the thought

I'm actually tempted to start using Brave. I'm still holding out with Firefox despite Mozilla trying very hard to get rid of us (to the point where the thought has struck me more than once if the current CEO of Mozilla is in the pocket of Google). If at some point the last competing mainstream browser engine is gone I'll probably go for Brave and I might start testing it this week.

NoGravitas 5y ago
Brave is just Chromium with a cryptocurrency scam bolted on to it. I'm unhappy with Firefox's ad-related changes recently, but Brave is definitely not an option. If it came to it, I'd use a WebKit browser — objectively worse, but not clearly compromised.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  Brave is Chromium with more web features and more privacy and crypto stuff that is turned off by default. It has Web Torrents, IPFS, Tor, built-in ad blocking, etc. I just don't understand how someone can be "mad" at a feature that is turned off by default, especially when most browsers ship with literal spyware turned on.
  - skyfaller 5y ago
    For the record, IPFS also has ties to cryptocurrency with Filecoin. I have no intention of using Brave or IPFS for that reason, if I can avoid it. I really think most people don't understand how destructive cryptocurrency is, in multiple ways. If you don't care about the energy use causing greenhouse gas emissions, how about electronic waste? https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-electronic-waste-monitor/ https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-electronic-waste-monitor/ How about the impact on any service that offers free CPU cycles, such as continuous integration systems used by open source projects? https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disas... How about the impact on critical infrastructure such as hospitals due to ransomware? https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/ransomware.html https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/ransomware.html Cryptocurrency isn't just a disaster, it's several disasters bundled together. Anyone working with it in any way, anyone who has a stake in cryptocurrency, has been compromised, and can no longer be trusted, just as your neighbor who is trying to sell you on their multilevel marketing scheme can no longer be trusted. (Did they invite you to dinner? Oh, surprise, it's just to sell you on their MLM again.) They are ignoring multiple dire ethical problems as they sell their relationship with you for funny money.
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      Give it a rest. Everything you stated is hyperbole. We should all just return to sticks and stones I guess.
- soundnote 5y ago
  Yeah, built-in adblockers (including the blocking being written in Rust and built into the browser, so it won't get nerfed by Manifest v3. Also capable of doing CNAME unmasking, the thing that makes uBO better on Firefox, btw) and other anti-tracking measures, running their own end to end encrypted sync architecture and standalone revenue streams like Brave Talk, their Brave Ads-driven takes on Search and News, etc. so they can be actually independent. Yeah. Just a cryptocurrency scam. The coin itself is one of the few that has a value based on some actual use, at that: Brave sells adspace, gets paid in Money™. They keep a cut, take the rest and buy BAT with it, give it to users. Users can then tip content creators with the BAT and get some compensation for Brave's part in killing tracking ads. Many people are idiots who do think that BAT is for them to get rich but like hell it is. Single ad viewers aren't very valuable, they only matter in aggregate, so you'll only ever get pocket money as BAT.
neiman 5y ago
What Mozilla is doing now with Firefox should be taught in business schools as an example how to destroy a brand.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  It really is strange and I don't understand what's driving all these bad decisions.
  - neiman 5y ago
    My guess is that they're unhappy of being a fringe browser with a "small" (a few millions) crowd of loyal users, but instead want to be "great again".
- schleck8 5y ago
  Can someone fill me in?
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    Hostility towards users asking questions as seen in the tabstrip API bug. (A really simple thing that I fix on a weekly basis in 4 minutes every time I restart Firefox but somehow next to impossible for Mozilla. Although I should admit they are making it harder and harder for me as well.) Pushing Pocket (which is nice and could have become a nice source of income from users like me who wants to support the browser) in a dishonest way and as a built in part of Firefox instead of an extension that people could remove, saying there were no ties when there definitely was. Almost scaring the crap out of a number of the more careful ones of us when they installed a "I, Robot extension" or something without any warning. Milking the browser part of the system dry to fund its "mission", then laying off browser engineers and the Rust team to save money. Pretending to be a community when fundraising, but a dictator when making decisions. Misleading people to think they suppprt Firefox when they donate to the foundation, then sending nothing to the browser and burning it all on "its mission".
    - 5y ago
acatton 5y ago
I totally get you, as a long time Mozilla fan, I'm sad to see the direction towards which Firefox and Mozilla as a whole are going. But it's not like Brave is ethically or technically better. They use Blink (the same engine as Chrome) and therefore contribute to the mono-culture of the web.[1] They collect donations on behalf of content creators[2], they created this "Attention Token" based on etherium to replace ads with all the controversies surrounding cryptocurrencies (from the pyramid-scheme to the global-warming topic, I know the latter is not valid with Etherium anymore), … I think that these days, it's more about choosing the lesser evil as a browser. [1] https://archive.md/S7GZf https://archive.md/S7GZf [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brave_(web_browser)&oldid=1050833807#Brave_browser_collecting_donations_on_behalf_of_content_creators https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brave_(web_browse...
- moystard 5y ago
  The latter is still valid for Ethereum until the update to ETH v2 and Proof of Stake is live. We are not there yet.
  - _han 5y ago
    When is this expected to go live? I thought we'd be there by now.
    - NoGravitas 5y ago
      It's been "coming soon" for years. It's basically just a greenwashing tactic that never has to be delivered on.
      - hunterb123 5y ago
        $5 billion+ is staked on ETH2 already. It's delivered, it just takes time to migrate the entire market cap.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  We do indeed use Chromium, though patched for security and privacy reasons (see https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-(features-we-disable-or-remove) https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...). I don't see how that's an ethical or technical mark against us, however. Early on we did tests with Gecko, but soon found that if we were to build a compatible (with the Web as it is) browser, we'd need to do so with Chromium. Your claim that Brave collected donations on behalf of others is quite misleading. There was a bit of confusing UI in our early tips interface (called 'Payments' at the time). We clearly marked verified creators as such, but gave no special marking for unverified creators (our approach resembled that of Twitter's blue checkmarks). Regarding the "donations" themselves, we allowed Brave users to direct BAT from our user-growth pool (that is, Brave's own tokens) to creators. If those tokens were not claimed by the intended recipient after 1 year, they (Brave's tokens) would be recycled back into the system. As Wikipedia records, there were major UI/UX changes made about 48 hours later which dramatically improved the feature, IMHO.
WithinReason 5y ago
>to the point where the thought has struck me more than once if the current CEO of Mozilla is in the pocket of Google No need to wonder. Mozilla gets $450M per year from Google [0], and the Mozilla Chair gets a large chunk [1]: [0]: https://www.androidheadlines.com/2020/08/mozilla-firefox-google-search https://www.androidheadlines.com/2020/08/mozilla-firefox-goo... [1]: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
- skinkestek 5y ago
  I wonder what it would take to trigger an official investigation, because if they manage this Google has destroyed a values for many hundred million dollars and also solidified their position as a monopoly.
fleddr 5y ago
In the real world, Firefox is already dead and the only real competing browser engine is Webkit/Safari. Firefox's market share is 3.6% and on mobile only 0.5%. On many websites, mobile traffic is now at about 70%. Firefox doesn't even show up in dashboards, and is smaller than various Chromium clones and/or regional browsers.
- toyg 5y ago
  We've been here before (hell, 3% looked massive back then, and in a much smaller market). Marketshare is not an issue, the relationship with the community is. A strong community, united around a core of values and secure that the product is built with these values at heart, will evangelize such product out of a niche. Unfortunately, the current Mozilla leadership doesn't seem to understand that significant chunks of its community have lost the faith.
  - fleddr 5y ago
    I want to agree, but can't. The loss of market share has nothing to do with the browser in itself. Mozilla simply has no reach. Chrome is shipped via Android and on the desktop via services having a billion+ users, like Youtube and Gmail. Mozilla has no reach or push. It's not an engineering problem.
    - toyg 5y ago
      It's not like FF was ever shipped with Windows. It's just that enough people saw enough value and purpose in it, to go out and get it themselves. You can install FF on Android in a second on the Play Store, it's easier than it's ever been on the desktop; but you have to want to install it in the first place. Some of this want can be generated by feature excellence, some by peer pressure; but for a long time now, FF has lagged in producing the former and its leadership has actively sabotaged the community that can provide the latter. Obviously FF was helped by MS dropping the ball in a way Google has not (yet), but in my opinion what happened then could be done again. Antitrust action is coming for both Apple and Google, Mozilla should be ready to pounce right there and then - but it cannot happen if the leadership does not understand that there is a problem.
pmurt7 5y ago
Mitchell Baker (Mozilla CEO) makes $3 million a year, and Mozilla asks you to donate "to help a nonprofit organization". "On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to." "By 2020 her salary had risen to over $3 million, while in the same year the Mozilla Corporation had to lay off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues. Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic." This lady then goes on and on talking about "social justice". Also Google deal produces 90% of Mozilla's revenue. I would say Mozilla is really controlled opposition.
- jozzy-james 5y ago
  ah yes, the coronavirus...the thing that made everybody not use the internet
- bodge5000 5y ago
  "...That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to." Can anyone explain what this actually means? It sounds like she's saying that taking a lower pay by 5x is too much to ask of her, but then "people and their families" doesn't make any sense, because its 1 person and 1 family. Thats not even getting into how true is may or may not be, or how its still a lot of money overall, even if its not compared to the market overall.
  - Whitespace 5y ago
    I read it as, "that's too big a discount to ask [qualified CEO candidates] and their families to commit to." In other words: good luck finding a qualified person to run Mozilla.
    - bodge5000 5y ago
      ohhh that makes a lot more sense actually, cheers
    - 5y ago
sam_goody 5y ago
Well, you know, Brendan Eich was CEO of Mozilla and they were flying high. Then he got cancelled, and with it was cancelled the dream of having a real platform that can compete with Google. (Brave, with all of its advantages, is still a fork of Chrome and in that way promotes the Chrome monopoly.) Since then, the new CEO of Mozilla has made herself a lot of money, and she seems perfectly happy to destroy the long term viability of the company for some quick injections of cash that can justify her bonuses. And Eich single-handedly created the only other viable browser in the market starting from scratch [market wise, not technology wise]. Yet, somehow, people still think this was better than leaving Eich as head of Mozilla.
- OneLeggedCat 5y ago
  I'd forgotten about Brendan Eich. Thanks for reminding me why I'll try hard to never install any software that benefits him, like Brave.
  - andai 5y ago
    You'll have to stop running JavaScript, too ;)
    - Barrin92 5y ago
      tbf I don't think Eich benefits from JS usage
      - BrendanEich 5y ago
        I missed the tee-shirt franchise. https://comb.io/jZLfI2 https://comb.io/jZLfI2
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- 5y ago
EMM_386 5y ago
> I'm still holding out with Firefox I have been using Firefox since the Pheonix/Firebird days where you download it and unzipped it to a folder. I left a few months ago because I just couldn't get the performance where I needed it. I unfortunately had to go to yet-another-Chromium browser and just chose Brave because it seems like it has the right priorities. After installing the same extensions I was using on Firefox it's pretty much the same, it's just faster. I hate saying that, after two decades of using Firefox. I want another browser engine. We need that competition. We lost Microsoft. We still have Apple with Safari and I hope Mozilla can hold on with Firefox. But if Google ever cuts that search funding I don't see a great future.

NoGravitas 5y ago

Brave is just Chromium with a cryptocurrency scam bolted on to it. I'm unhappy with Firefox's ad-related changes recently, but Brave is definitely not an option. If it came to it, I'd use a WebKit browser — objectively worse, but not clearly compromised.

hunterb123 5y ago
Brave is Chromium with more web features and more privacy and crypto stuff that is turned off by default. It has Web Torrents, IPFS, Tor, built-in ad blocking, etc. I just don't understand how someone can be "mad" at a feature that is turned off by default, especially when most browsers ship with literal spyware turned on.
- skyfaller 5y ago
  For the record, IPFS also has ties to cryptocurrency with Filecoin. I have no intention of using Brave or IPFS for that reason, if I can avoid it. I really think most people don't understand how destructive cryptocurrency is, in multiple ways. If you don't care about the energy use causing greenhouse gas emissions, how about electronic waste? https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-electronic-waste-monitor/ https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-electronic-waste-monitor/ How about the impact on any service that offers free CPU cycles, such as continuous integration systems used by open source projects? https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disas... How about the impact on critical infrastructure such as hospitals due to ransomware? https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/ransomware.html https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/ransomware.html Cryptocurrency isn't just a disaster, it's several disasters bundled together. Anyone working with it in any way, anyone who has a stake in cryptocurrency, has been compromised, and can no longer be trusted, just as your neighbor who is trying to sell you on their multilevel marketing scheme can no longer be trusted. (Did they invite you to dinner? Oh, surprise, it's just to sell you on their MLM again.) They are ignoring multiple dire ethical problems as they sell their relationship with you for funny money.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    Give it a rest. Everything you stated is hyperbole. We should all just return to sticks and stones I guess.
soundnote 5y ago
Yeah, built-in adblockers (including the blocking being written in Rust and built into the browser, so it won't get nerfed by Manifest v3. Also capable of doing CNAME unmasking, the thing that makes uBO better on Firefox, btw) and other anti-tracking measures, running their own end to end encrypted sync architecture and standalone revenue streams like Brave Talk, their Brave Ads-driven takes on Search and News, etc. so they can be actually independent. Yeah. Just a cryptocurrency scam. The coin itself is one of the few that has a value based on some actual use, at that: Brave sells adspace, gets paid in Money™. They keep a cut, take the rest and buy BAT with it, give it to users. Users can then tip content creators with the BAT and get some compensation for Brave's part in killing tracking ads. Many people are idiots who do think that BAT is for them to get rich but like hell it is. Single ad viewers aren't very valuable, they only matter in aggregate, so you'll only ever get pocket money as BAT.

neiman 5y ago

What Mozilla is doing now with Firefox should be taught in business schools as an example how to destroy a brand.

rsj_hn 5y ago
It really is strange and I don't understand what's driving all these bad decisions.
- neiman 5y ago
  My guess is that they're unhappy of being a fringe browser with a "small" (a few millions) crowd of loyal users, but instead want to be "great again".
schleck8 5y ago
Can someone fill me in?
- skinkestek 5y ago
  Hostility towards users asking questions as seen in the tabstrip API bug. (A really simple thing that I fix on a weekly basis in 4 minutes every time I restart Firefox but somehow next to impossible for Mozilla. Although I should admit they are making it harder and harder for me as well.) Pushing Pocket (which is nice and could have become a nice source of income from users like me who wants to support the browser) in a dishonest way and as a built in part of Firefox instead of an extension that people could remove, saying there were no ties when there definitely was. Almost scaring the crap out of a number of the more careful ones of us when they installed a "I, Robot extension" or something without any warning. Milking the browser part of the system dry to fund its "mission", then laying off browser engineers and the Rust team to save money. Pretending to be a community when fundraising, but a dictator when making decisions. Misleading people to think they suppprt Firefox when they donate to the foundation, then sending nothing to the browser and burning it all on "its mission".
  - 5y ago

acatton 5y ago

I totally get you, as a long time Mozilla fan, I'm sad to see the direction towards which Firefox and Mozilla as a whole are going. But it's not like Brave is ethically or technically better. They use Blink (the same engine as Chrome) and therefore contribute to the mono-culture of the web.[1] They collect donations on behalf of content creators[2], they created this "Attention Token" based on etherium to replace ads with all the controversies surrounding cryptocurrencies (from the pyramid-scheme to the global-warming topic, I know the latter is not valid with Etherium anymore), … I think that these days, it's more about choosing the lesser evil as a browser. [1] https://archive.md/S7GZf https://archive.md/S7GZf [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brave_(web_browser)&oldid=1050833807#Brave_browser_collecting_donations_on_behalf_of_content_creators https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brave_(web_browse...

moystard 5y ago
The latter is still valid for Ethereum until the update to ETH v2 and Proof of Stake is live. We are not there yet.
- _han 5y ago
  When is this expected to go live? I thought we'd be there by now.
  - NoGravitas 5y ago
    It's been "coming soon" for years. It's basically just a greenwashing tactic that never has to be delivered on.
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      $5 billion+ is staked on ETH2 already. It's delivered, it just takes time to migrate the entire market cap.
jonathansampson 5y ago
We do indeed use Chromium, though patched for security and privacy reasons (see https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-(features-we-disable-or-remove) https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...). I don't see how that's an ethical or technical mark against us, however. Early on we did tests with Gecko, but soon found that if we were to build a compatible (with the Web as it is) browser, we'd need to do so with Chromium. Your claim that Brave collected donations on behalf of others is quite misleading. There was a bit of confusing UI in our early tips interface (called 'Payments' at the time). We clearly marked verified creators as such, but gave no special marking for unverified creators (our approach resembled that of Twitter's blue checkmarks). Regarding the "donations" themselves, we allowed Brave users to direct BAT from our user-growth pool (that is, Brave's own tokens) to creators. If those tokens were not claimed by the intended recipient after 1 year, they (Brave's tokens) would be recycled back into the system. As Wikipedia records, there were major UI/UX changes made about 48 hours later which dramatically improved the feature, IMHO.

WithinReason 5y ago

>to the point where the thought has struck me more than once if the current CEO of Mozilla is in the pocket of Google No need to wonder. Mozilla gets $450M per year from Google [0], and the Mozilla Chair gets a large chunk [1]: [0]: https://www.androidheadlines.com/2020/08/mozilla-firefox-google-search https://www.androidheadlines.com/2020/08/mozilla-firefox-goo... [1]: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html

skinkestek 5y ago
I wonder what it would take to trigger an official investigation, because if they manage this Google has destroyed a values for many hundred million dollars and also solidified their position as a monopoly.

fleddr 5y ago

In the real world, Firefox is already dead and the only real competing browser engine is Webkit/Safari. Firefox's market share is 3.6% and on mobile only 0.5%. On many websites, mobile traffic is now at about 70%. Firefox doesn't even show up in dashboards, and is smaller than various Chromium clones and/or regional browsers.

toyg 5y ago
We've been here before (hell, 3% looked massive back then, and in a much smaller market). Marketshare is not an issue, the relationship with the community is. A strong community, united around a core of values and secure that the product is built with these values at heart, will evangelize such product out of a niche. Unfortunately, the current Mozilla leadership doesn't seem to understand that significant chunks of its community have lost the faith.
- fleddr 5y ago
  I want to agree, but can't. The loss of market share has nothing to do with the browser in itself. Mozilla simply has no reach. Chrome is shipped via Android and on the desktop via services having a billion+ users, like Youtube and Gmail. Mozilla has no reach or push. It's not an engineering problem.
  - toyg 5y ago
    It's not like FF was ever shipped with Windows. It's just that enough people saw enough value and purpose in it, to go out and get it themselves. You can install FF on Android in a second on the Play Store, it's easier than it's ever been on the desktop; but you have to want to install it in the first place. Some of this want can be generated by feature excellence, some by peer pressure; but for a long time now, FF has lagged in producing the former and its leadership has actively sabotaged the community that can provide the latter. Obviously FF was helped by MS dropping the ball in a way Google has not (yet), but in my opinion what happened then could be done again. Antitrust action is coming for both Apple and Google, Mozilla should be ready to pounce right there and then - but it cannot happen if the leadership does not understand that there is a problem.

pmurt7 5y ago

Mitchell Baker (Mozilla CEO) makes $3 million a year, and Mozilla asks you to donate "to help a nonprofit organization". "On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to." "By 2020 her salary had risen to over $3 million, while in the same year the Mozilla Corporation had to lay off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues. Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic." This lady then goes on and on talking about "social justice". Also Google deal produces 90% of Mozilla's revenue. I would say Mozilla is really controlled opposition.

jozzy-james 5y ago
ah yes, the coronavirus...the thing that made everybody not use the internet
bodge5000 5y ago
"...That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to." Can anyone explain what this actually means? It sounds like she's saying that taking a lower pay by 5x is too much to ask of her, but then "people and their families" doesn't make any sense, because its 1 person and 1 family. Thats not even getting into how true is may or may not be, or how its still a lot of money overall, even if its not compared to the market overall.
- Whitespace 5y ago
  I read it as, "that's too big a discount to ask [qualified CEO candidates] and their families to commit to." In other words: good luck finding a qualified person to run Mozilla.
  - bodge5000 5y ago
    ohhh that makes a lot more sense actually, cheers
  - 5y ago

sam_goody 5y ago

Well, you know, Brendan Eich was CEO of Mozilla and they were flying high. Then he got cancelled, and with it was cancelled the dream of having a real platform that can compete with Google. (Brave, with all of its advantages, is still a fork of Chrome and in that way promotes the Chrome monopoly.) Since then, the new CEO of Mozilla has made herself a lot of money, and she seems perfectly happy to destroy the long term viability of the company for some quick injections of cash that can justify her bonuses. And Eich single-handedly created the only other viable browser in the market starting from scratch [market wise, not technology wise]. Yet, somehow, people still think this was better than leaving Eich as head of Mozilla.

OneLeggedCat 5y ago
I'd forgotten about Brendan Eich. Thanks for reminding me why I'll try hard to never install any software that benefits him, like Brave.
- andai 5y ago
  You'll have to stop running JavaScript, too ;)
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    tbf I don't think Eich benefits from JS usage
    - BrendanEich 5y ago
      I missed the tee-shirt franchise. https://comb.io/jZLfI2 https://comb.io/jZLfI2
  - deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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5y ago

EMM_386 5y ago

> I'm still holding out with Firefox I have been using Firefox since the Pheonix/Firebird days where you download it and unzipped it to a folder. I left a few months ago because I just couldn't get the performance where I needed it. I unfortunately had to go to yet-another-Chromium browser and just chose Brave because it seems like it has the right priorities. After installing the same extensions I was using on Firefox it's pretty much the same, it's just faster. I hate saying that, after two decades of using Firefox. I want another browser engine. We need that competition. We lost Microsoft. We still have Apple with Safari and I hope Mozilla can hold on with Firefox. But if Google ever cuts that search funding I don't see a great future.