It’s one of the few options (the only other being Orion afaik) that you can natively block ads from the browser on iOS. The other solutions like firefox/chrome/safari have to go through the declarative content blocking API since you can’t install Chrome/Firefox plugins.
This post is about the search engine, not the web browser. I use Brave instead of Google search because Google presents me with captchas every time I use it, and Brave's search engine is good enough. I already use Firefox and ublock origin.
Thanks for this. I don't get why most comments are about the browsers...
I tried kagi, the results start great and get noticeably better even within the free trial period. I don't have to worry about ads and I've blocked or lowered all poor quality sites on the fly. I sort results by tracker count and find most of the time results with lowest trackers have the best content for what I am looking for. Anything I couldn't find was also not findable with google or bing. I started a year of paid subscription and I don't think I'll ever go back to any ad-funded search or any free search that might be tempted to add ads later.
Chrome is heavy spyware that scans your whole PC by default under the guise of "chrome is an antivirus now". Chrome tracking data is used for google's advertising wing and they lied about it extensively, which was obvious to many but now there's proof because of the recent leak.
Brave does not do this. Pretty much without exception, anyone using chrome is better served by using brave. It doesnt mean brave is perfect or the best, but holding up chrome as better is a joke.
The only real constraint on what Brave will and will not do is their VC pressures to make money vs reputational damage. And reputational damage isn't all that expensive.
> Safe Browsing
> The Brave Browser automatically uses Google Safe Browsing to help protect you
against websites, downloads and extensions that are known to be unsafe (such as sites that are fraudulent or that host malware).
And google keeps threatening to make it not work at all on Chrome. Most recently, yesterday [1], with warning banners harassing users supposedly rolling out on Monday.
Mozilla is in bed with Google. I use brave because:
* it has reasonable way of funding, crypto may suck, but it is believable they will not sell my data
* anonymous bookmark sync with multiple profiles. With Chrome and Firefox I have to sign up for each sync.
* Chrome based debug tools
* It is usable without any plugins. In some environments I do not want to install some questionable plugins, that may change ownership anytime! (It is already named "Ublock Origin", ownership already changed )
* Proprietary Video Codecs support out of the box on Linux. Some distros do not have it, and I do not want to enable community repos.
> it has reasonable way of funding, crypto may suck, but it is believable they will not sell my data
You can rest assured that Brave absolutely will and does sell your data.
> anonymous bookmark sync with multiple profiles. With Chrome and Firefox I have to sign up for each sync.
Nothing at all anonymous about it, firstly. Secondly, you can import/export bookmarks from Firefox and Chrome and do an actual 'anonymous' sync that way.
> Chrome based debug tools
Like.... chrome has?
> It is usable without any plugins. In some environments I do not want to install some questionable plugins, that may change ownership anytime! (It is already named "Ublock Origin", ownership already changed )
No it's not. It's completely unusable if you actually don't want ads.
> Proprietary Video Codecs support out of the box on Linux. Some distros do not have it, and I do not want to enable community repos.
The only reason prop codec implementations are not supported in some (not most) repos is because of licensing/OSS policy... which would equally apply to Brave within those same repos.
Looks a lot like Brave's overall strategy (not just this announcement but the whole gist of the company) is to try and tap in to a part of Google's revenue stream by innovating in the web browser space. It is a bold one if so and I wish them every success.
It is a pity the managers over at Mozilla don't think Google is worth challenging. If someone ever succeeds at dragging AdSense into the OSS world / a big free market the world would be very different. There might finally find a use case for crypto. I suppose the fraud might be too much, but there must be an interesting commercial model in there somewhere.
Like, "Every inch of the new park is covered in sponsor branding" is a problem, but "I had no idea that a store selling towels opened in our town" is also a problem. These are both advertising, at some point you cross from "I didn't know about that, thanks" to "Just fuck off already" and that's too much advertising.
Dispepsi for example, the Negativland album, is premised on the idea that everybody on the entire planet already knows about Coca-Cola and Pepsi, so their continued advertising is entirely futile. Nobody who wants a brown fizzy beverage is unsure whether they could obtain such a thing or what it might be called. So all they're doing is annoying us.
Advertising worked OK when everyone understood what it was and how it was necessary to pay for free, or almost free, stuff.
I can remember when our local paper used to sell out everywhere on a Thursday afternoon because that was the day when all the job ads were published. No one ever complained there were too many of these. Similarly on a Friday when all the houses for sale or rent were posted.
As happened with other forms of cheap or free media such as regular mail, telephone calls and email, the returns for advertising eventually become a numbers game even when 99.9% of the audience hate them.
ADS are cancerous just like crypto stuff. That is the reason I switched to firefox klar & esr on my dailydriver machines and to librewolf on any other machine I had lying around. And search engine wise ecosia, metager and Qwant do a great job.
Brave Search has been a lot better than these other alternatives in my experience. I used to use DDG but the results were always a hit and miss. With Brave Search, I have completely replaced Google.
Brave partnered with a few crypto exchanges. The issue (which is on GitHub) was a bug in the URL auto suggestion feature of the chromium browser. Instead of suggesting the links, it was replacing them ONLY ON THOSE 2-3 CRYPTO WEBSITES.
The bug was fixed before it became news. It was fixed on day 1 of the report.
How do people keep peddling #2, when it isn't even factually correct on what happened? Sure, presume malice on the campaign links to Binance, but the bug was about turning people writing binance.us IN THE ADDRESS BAR into a campaign link, not replacing anyone's affiliate links on web pages, which is how it's always presented as.
Brave is shilled by so many tech "influencers" on Youtube you would assume it's a decent browser. These are privacy focused people. People that promote and use Linux daily and they're using a browser that is one step away from Google. What a joke.
Are these paid promotions? Youtube influencers shill so many dubious sponsored products in general they've become very easy to ignore since one can assume it's all trash.
Short list of other YouTube trash I'm never touching:
* OperaGX
* NordVPN
* SurfShark
* RidgeWallet
* BetterHelp
* And the granddaddy of all trash sponsorships - Raid: Shadow Legends
Coincidentally I’ve noticed a significant drop in quality of results, even though I don’t see any ads yet. It is well known that relevance and click through rate (CTR) are inversely correlated. Was the deterioration in relevance “prep work” for ads?
Advertising is not the problem. The current ad system is to blame. A different ad model is needed. One that is built using privacy, choice and rewards. User data and activity is not collected. Users have the choice to engage or ignore. And, if they choose to engage, they are compensated. Money flows directly from the seller to the buyer. We built this solution and call it Sellff Offers. It’s an alternative model that works the opposite of AdTech. Although just launched, we think Sellff Offers is the future of digital advertising. https://sellff.com/offers
I disagree. I abhor advertising primarily because it non-consensually and obnoxiously competes for my attention. (the privacy thing is also bad of course)
Brave search has been so terrible for me. I’ve very quickly been conditioned to append “!g” to all omnibar searches, even in non-brave browsers! (This tells brave to use Google)
An indenpendent search engine that doesn't track you seems like a good thing to me. Remember, half the nastiness of modern ads is that they track you and are also pretty heavy. In a search engine it's much easier to get the targeting from your search query without tracking you - something eg. DuckDuckGo also does. Helps keep the lights on.
Been using Brave Android since 2017, have never used BAT or whatever "value-add" bloatware they've offered. It can be disabled from the menu, two taps max.
Readit News
I tried kagi, the results start great and get noticeably better even within the free trial period. I don't have to worry about ads and I've blocked or lowered all poor quality sites on the fly. I sort results by tracker count and find most of the time results with lowest trackers have the best content for what I am looking for. Anything I couldn't find was also not findable with google or bing. I started a year of paid subscription and I don't think I'll ever go back to any ad-funded search or any free search that might be tempted to add ads later.
I really recommend to give it a try.
"All ads are bad, block them... except for mine."
Brave does not do this. Pretty much without exception, anyone using chrome is better served by using brave. It doesnt mean brave is perfect or the best, but holding up chrome as better is a joke.
But now they do.
The only real constraint on what Brave will and will not do is their VC pressures to make money vs reputational damage. And reputational damage isn't all that expensive.
https://brave.com/privacy/browser/
> Safe Browsing > The Brave Browser automatically uses Google Safe Browsing to help protect you against websites, downloads and extensions that are known to be unsafe (such as sites that are fraudulent or that host malware).
brave gets me chromium and blocking by default use as disposable browser with history.
Firefox is main and will use that if i want info to by synced.
Chrome is the last resort browser that i'll use if i have to login but is broken in firefox.
Nexusmods CloudFlare keeps blocking firefox but not chrome. Bank site won' let me use firefox.
Except it doesn't block all ads by default at all.
And google keeps threatening to make it not work at all on Chrome. Most recently, yesterday [1], with warning banners harassing users supposedly rolling out on Monday.
[1] https://blog.chromium.org/2024/05/manifest-v2-phase-out-begi...
* it has reasonable way of funding, crypto may suck, but it is believable they will not sell my data
* anonymous bookmark sync with multiple profiles. With Chrome and Firefox I have to sign up for each sync.
* Chrome based debug tools
* It is usable without any plugins. In some environments I do not want to install some questionable plugins, that may change ownership anytime! (It is already named "Ublock Origin", ownership already changed )
* Proprietary Video Codecs support out of the box on Linux. Some distros do not have it, and I do not want to enable community repos.
You can rest assured that Brave absolutely will and does sell your data.
> anonymous bookmark sync with multiple profiles. With Chrome and Firefox I have to sign up for each sync.
Nothing at all anonymous about it, firstly. Secondly, you can import/export bookmarks from Firefox and Chrome and do an actual 'anonymous' sync that way.
> Chrome based debug tools
Like.... chrome has?
> It is usable without any plugins. In some environments I do not want to install some questionable plugins, that may change ownership anytime! (It is already named "Ublock Origin", ownership already changed )
No it's not. It's completely unusable if you actually don't want ads.
> Proprietary Video Codecs support out of the box on Linux. Some distros do not have it, and I do not want to enable community repos.
The only reason prop codec implementations are not supported in some (not most) repos is because of licensing/OSS policy... which would equally apply to Brave within those same repos.
Dead Comment
It is a pity the managers over at Mozilla don't think Google is worth challenging. If someone ever succeeds at dragging AdSense into the OSS world / a big free market the world would be very different. There might finally find a use case for crypto. I suppose the fraud might be too much, but there must be an interesting commercial model in there somewhere.
The absolute last thing I want is for the OSS world to fall prey to the perverse incentives of the ad industry.
Advertising needs to be purged, not embraced.
Like, "Every inch of the new park is covered in sponsor branding" is a problem, but "I had no idea that a store selling towels opened in our town" is also a problem. These are both advertising, at some point you cross from "I didn't know about that, thanks" to "Just fuck off already" and that's too much advertising.
Dispepsi for example, the Negativland album, is premised on the idea that everybody on the entire planet already knows about Coca-Cola and Pepsi, so their continued advertising is entirely futile. Nobody who wants a brown fizzy beverage is unsure whether they could obtain such a thing or what it might be called. So all they're doing is annoying us.
As happened with other forms of cheap or free media such as regular mail, telephone calls and email, the returns for advertising eventually become a numbers game even when 99.9% of the audience hate them.
I agree, but most people also also feel that content should be free. If content is free, but not ad supported, who pays the people to create it?
It's not an easy thing to do when they get half a billion a year from Google.
2 - They've been caught replacing affiliate links with their own.
Based on that information what does your instinct tell you?
Brave partnered with a few crypto exchanges. The issue (which is on GitHub) was a bug in the URL auto suggestion feature of the chromium browser. Instead of suggesting the links, it was replacing them ONLY ON THOSE 2-3 CRYPTO WEBSITES.
The bug was fixed before it became news. It was fixed on day 1 of the report.
Short list of other YouTube trash I'm never touching:
* OperaGX
* NordVPN
* SurfShark
* RidgeWallet
* BetterHelp
* And the granddaddy of all trash sponsorships - Raid: Shadow Legends
Deleted Comment
* Planet Scale
* Supabase
* Neon
* ...
https://youtu.be/YnSv8ylLfPw?t=135
I mean: are the user rewarded for the attention (the logic behind BAT) or it's just another search engine with another search ads ?
Mine is an honest question, not a complaining.