Mobile / Web · 2016-01-23

‘Brave’ is a free, secure browser that speeds up your surfing experience – #Startup

braveA new browser, which right now is in an early development phase, was recently released by the creator of JavaScript & Mozilla cofounder Brendan Eich & his new startup. It speeds up browsing greatly by blocking tracking mechanisms & ads & replacing them with anonymous ads curated by ‘Brave’.

The browser is based on the open source version of Chrome: Chromium (with some Webkit, Mozilla, Electron & Microsoft code), but unlike this traditional browser tech, Brave’s obsessive focus is on speed & privacy.

As Brendan Eich says in a post entitled, “How to Fix the Web” on the Brave Website:

Brave browsers block everything: initial signaling/analytics scripts that start the programmatic advertising “dirty pipe”, impression-tracking pixels, & ad-click confirmation signals. By default Brave will insert ads only in a few standard-sized spaces. We find those spaces via a Cloud robot (so users don’t have to suffer, even a few canaries per screen size-profile, with ad delays and battery draining). We will target ads based on browser-side intent signals phrased in a standard vocabulary, & without a persistent user id or highly re-identifiable cookie.

The browser sees everything you do, including actions to stop that annoying phenomenon of retargeting where an ad chases you around the Web, often for something you just bought or decided not to buy. We keep user data out of our cloud Brave Vault by default. It’s better for you and us that we don’t store any of your data without your permission.

So Brave is not really just an ad blocking platform & gives users the possibility to make the decision to stay ad supported for particular sights or fund Website owners through monetary contributions. In this way the main business model of the Internet, which is based on ad revenue, is still in place though redistributed according to Brave’s criteria. Since the development of the browser & its Cloud infrastructure is part of an Open Source effort, the developer & user Community is heavily involved in the decision making process.  Brave is really only going after Websites 3rd party ads based on browser user data.

The browser itself is really fast, storing bookmarks in the Cloud (the Brave Vault) as well as anonymized browsing activity. Since it is cross-platform, data can be synced across the user’s devices & it doesn’t rely on username/password combinations or email addresses since it uses UUIDs that work like QR codes.

If you’d like to download & build the Brave Beta version for iOS go can go to Github here.

For desktop platforms (OS X / Windows / Linux) go here.

Click here to download Brave on your Android device.

 

– This post is merely a startup profile based on publicly available information & not a review. –

 

Image Credit: Brave

 

 

•Share This•

Click here to opt-out of Google Analytics