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Brave Browser

Brave is a free and open-source web browser based on the Chromium web browser developed by Brave Software, Inc. Brave is a privacy-focused browser that sets itself apart from other browsers by automatically disabling online ads and website trackers by default. It also gives viewers the option to switch on optional adverts that pay them in Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) cryptocurrency for their attention. Users can then contribute donations in the form of tips to websites and content creators, as well as keep the cryptocurrency they earned. The headquarters of Brave Software are in San Francisco, California. Brave boasts 36.2 million monthly active users, 12.5 million daily active users, and a network of 1.2 million content providers as of September 2021.

History

CEO Brendan Eich and CTO Brian Bondy created Brave Software on May 28, 2015. Brave Software announced intentions for a privacy-respecting ad ecosystem and released the first version of Brave with ad-blocking capabilities on January 20, 2016.

Brave launched a pay-to-surf test version of the browser in June 2018. For the short-term purpose of testing this functionality, this version of Brave came preloaded with roughly 250 adverts and provided a complete log of the user's browsing activities to Brave. Expanded trials would follow, according to Brave. Brave added Tor support to its desktop browser's private-browsing mode later that month.

Brave ran on a fork of Electron called Muon until December 2018, which they touted as a "more secure fork." Despite this, Brave devs switched to Chromium to reduce their maintenance burden. Brave Software issued the final Muon-based version with the aim of it ceasing to function, and advised users to update as the deadline approached.

Brave began testing a new ad-blocking rule-matching algorithm written in Rust in June 2019, replacing the prior C++ approach. The new logic was influenced by the uBlock Origin and Ghostery algorithms, which Brave claims is 69 times faster than the previous one.

Brave's stable release, version 1.0, was released on November 13, 2019, with 8.7 million monthly active users. On a daily basis, it had around 3 million active users at the time. According to Engadget, Brave 1.0, which is available on Android, iOS, Windows 10, macOS, and Linux, integrates "almost all of Brave's flagship features across all platforms."

Brave announced having 20 million monthly users in November 2020, and 36 million monthly active users in September 2021.

Brave launched its search engine in March 2021, based on Tailcat, which it purchased earlier this year from Hubert Burda Media in Germany.

Tailcat was created with the goal of providing search results without tracking user behaviour.

Brave was the first browser to be added to the Epic Games Store in April 2021. Brave Search, Brave Software's planned search engine, became live in public beta in June 2021. It's currently in the works.

Business model

Brave's Basic Attention Token (BAT) is used to generate money. The firm was founded in Delaware in 2015 as Hyperware Labs, Inc., but it later changed its name to Brave Software, Inc. and registered in California, where it is now headquartered.

Venture capital firms such as Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Propel Venture Partners, Pantera Capital, Foundation Capital, and the Digital Currency Group had invested at least US$7 million in the company by August 2016.

Brave Ads, a new ad network, was launched in November 2019. Brave Software keeps 30% of the advertising money and gives the rest to the users. Advertisements are displayed to customers as they browse.

Features

  • Brave search - Along with the Web Discovery Project WDP feedback programme competition, Brave search was implemented as the default search engine (replacing Google search) in October 2021.

  • Ad Blocking - Third-party advertisements and trackers are blocked by the Brave Shields feature. By default, the advertisement blocking features are turned on. In the Shields and Privacy section of the browser, users can configure ad blocking, script, and cookie settings.

  • Privacy - On the user's device, all user data is kept private and is not accessible by any other parties. Because the browsing data is not sent to Brave's servers, the browsing data is only visible to the device's owner. Professor Douglas J. Leith of the University of Dublin conducted a study on browser privacy and found that Brave has the highest level of privacy of the browsers evaluated. "Any use of identifiers allowing tracking of IP address over time, and no exchange of the details of web sites visited with backend servers" were not included in Brave. The browser protects users from device fingerprinting by making each browser session appear unique. Brave was the only mainstream browser to pass the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Cover Your Tracks test, according to Digital Trends tests. Brave unveiled a new privacy feature called Debouncing on October 15, 2021. The new functionality is intended to disable bounce tracking, which is a type of Internet tracking that involves the loading of intermediary domains when visitors click on a link. When users are about to visit a known tracking domain, debouncing detects this and redirects them to their intended destination, skipping the tracking site entirely.

  • Basic Attention Token - The "Basic Attention Token" (BAT) is a cryptocurrency and open-source decentralised ad trading network based on Ethereum.Brave Software International SEZC sold 1,000,000,000 BAT for a total of 156,250 Ethereum (US$35M) in less than 30 seconds during an initial coin offering on May 31, 2017. The corporation kept an additional 500,000,000 BAT to boost the platform's adoption.The first round of the company's 'user growth pool' grants was distributed in early December 2017: a total of 300,000 BAT was distributed to new users on a first-come, first-served basis.

  • Brave Talk - Based on 8x8 Jitsi, a browser-based privacy-focused video conferencing platform. In September 2021, it was merged into Brave.

  • Brave Rewards - Users of the Brave browser have been able to opt in to the Brave Rewards feature, which provides BAT micropayments to websites and content providers, since April 2019. Owners and producers of websites must first register as publishers with Brave. Users can opt for auto-contribute, which divides a monthly donation in proportion to the amount of time spent, or manually give a specified amount (referred to as a tip) while visiting the site or creator. Users can earn BAT by seeing advertising that are delivered as notifications by their computer or device's operating system. Users are matched with advertising campaigns based on their browsing history; this targeting is done locally, with no personal data transmitted outside the browser. Additionally, or alternatively, users can purchase or sell BAT through Brave's partnership with Uphold Inc., a digital currency exchange.Brave Payments was the original iteration of the micropayments functionality, which was launched in 2016 and used Bitcoin. Advertisements were displayed in a different tab in the browser.

What makes Brave different from other browsers?

Brave is distinguished by its outspoken anti-advertising stance. The browser was created to remove online adverts from websites, and its creator's business model relies not just on ad blocking, but also on replacing scratched-out banners with ads from its own network. It's as if a new sports cable network declared it would employ technology to remove commercials from another network's programming, such as ESPN's, and then rerun those programmes with ads of its own design, with ad income going to its coffers rather than ESPN's.

Brave also disables all ad trackers, which are frequently inconsequential page components that advertisers and site publishers employ to identify users and learn what other sites they visit or have visited. Ad networks utilise trackers to present products that are comparable to those that have been purchased or are being considered, resulting in the meme of seeing the same ad no matter where one navigates.

Since Brave's release, popular browsers such as Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, and others have added anti-tracking features of their own. (In reality, where once the battleground for browser fights was page rendering speeds as the barometer of success, privacy features are now the battleground, and tracker blocking is the barometer of success.) Brave's claim to enhanced privacy is thus less compelling than it was, say, three years ago.