Brave Browser users doubled again this year to over 50 million monthly active users

Martin Brinkmann
Jan 7, 2022
Brave
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Say what you want about Brave Browser, but it is one of the few web browsers on today's Internet that is seeing strong user gains year over year.

source Brave

Last year, we reported that Brave doubled its monthly active users to more than 20 million users that are active in any given month. This year, Brave reports that the monthly active user account has crossed the 50 million mark in 2021.

Brave reached 50.2 million monthly active users and 15.5 million daily active users in December 2021 according to the blog post on the official site.

source Brave

Brave Browser, which has not been around for more than a few years, started to report usage numbers in 2017 for the first time. Back then, Brave Browser hat 1.2 million monthly active users. The number quadrupled to 5.9 million monthly active users in 2018, nearly doubled to 11.2 million in 2019, doubled again to 24.1 million in 2020, and has now reached the reported 50.2 million monthly active users in 2021.

Brave revealed several other metrics in the blog post that show considerable growth:

  • Brave Search reached 2.3 billion queries annualized.
  • Verified Creators are up 30% totalling 1.3 million.
  • Brave ad platform revenue increased by the factor 4 over the past 12 months.
  • More than 8 million users earn BAT currency via Brave Rewards.
  • Highest mobile browser growth in 2021 for browsers with more than 10 million downloads.
  • Brave Ads campaigns served 7.5 billion ad confirmation events since its inception.

Brave introduced several new features to its browser and business. The company acquired the open search engine Tailcat in the first quarter of 2021 and has launched the search product as Brave Search in the second quarter of 2021. Brave Search is advertised as an "independent search option" with "unmatched privacy".

The company integrated Brave Talk in the browser in the third quarter of 2021. Brave Talk is a video conferencing solution that gives users unlimited video calls without privacy sacrifices according to Brave. The technology is provided by Jitsi and Brave launched it as a free and premium version.

Closing Words

Brave is growing on all fronts and adding features to its browser and launching other products regularly. It managed to increase its usage share significantly in the past five years, but it captured just a tiny bit of the market still.

Mozilla, which is struggling to retain users, has more than four times the monthly active users. If Brave's growth continues, it could surpass Mozilla in 2023 provided that the monthly active users of the Firefox web browser remain at a stable level.

Now You: do you see Brave overtaking Firefox in two years time, or will the browser's growth slow down?

 

Summary
Article Name
Brave Browser users doubled again this year to over 50 million monthly active users
Description
Brave reached 50.2 million monthly active users and 15.5 million daily active users in December 2021 according to an announcement by the company.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Batt said on February 28, 2023 at 10:49 am
    Reply

    Now Brave is “robbing” the users left out of choice, to withdraw their vBat, and since vBat will be removed in April ’23, millions of users, and tens of millions of BAT tokens will be “taken away” from users!
    Brave scheme is premeditated!

  2. François said on March 23, 2022 at 2:08 pm
    Reply

    I switched to Brave Browser in 2017, then to Brave Search since they launched.

  3. GGmaSD said on January 8, 2022 at 11:35 pm
    Reply

    Choosing a browser is a matter of personal taste, of personal preferences. As a tech-challenged great grandmother I put off getting a computer for years. Finally gave in in 2011 and bought a desktop…which my sons now tell me is obsolete and I Have to get one of those fancy phones. Nope; not going there. I used to use Firefox and had all sorts of extensions I thought I needed – and some that were just fun. Then Firefox started changing and I changed with it – to look at other browsers. I also became more security conscious over the years.

    I have several browsers on my computer and find there have only been three that I use regularly. I use Brave with Ghostery, Cookies Auto Delete and a PW manager, Last Pass, which I am currently trying to change over to another. Use CLIQZ, also with Ghostery , Cookies Auto Delete and PW manager, for all financial transactions, banks, credit cards, etc. Need nothing else on that one, no fancy extensions. I have kept FF but have not used it for over a year now. I did install Epic browser when I was looking for more secure browsers, but have let that one sit for a while now. I may let it go. Then there is Opera which I used for several years but was unhappy with all of the tracking and lack of security I felt I wanted. I have it because of the Home page showing all of the sites I have bookmarked such as survey site links, games and puzzle sites, cooking & recipes, free movies & TV, etc. I can put them together by category rather than have to look thru a long list.

    I do surveys which have caused problems because they Love cookies, love to track you and keep your info, but it gives me a few bucks every month. I also am an eActivist and some of those sites are not always the safest to visit as they, too, track you. ALL of my browsers have Ghostery, Cookies Auto Delete, Lightshot, and my PW manager installed. I’ve found I need little else. Oh, almost forgot I also have Duck Duck Go as my search engine on every browser and use nothing else. Brave has been my main browser for two years and have found myself using the other browsers I had less and less and got rid of them over time.

    These are my personal choices and as I have read thru these comments see that it is always a choice you have, whether or not others agree with you. You may think my choices are not good, but they work for me and I am as safe as I can be, except I am still using Win7…never 10 or 11…am considering Linux. Though, remember, tech-challenged.

  4. common sense computing said on January 8, 2022 at 6:52 pm
    Reply

    Ungoogled Chromium is the only sane option for privacy if you absolutely need to use the Chromium engine. Or use LibreWolf/Tor. Brave is untrustworthy, less private, and has limited resources to deal with upstream treachery from Google.

    1. common sense computing said on January 9, 2022 at 9:15 pm
      Reply

      Ungoogled Chromium + Extensions like ublock origin is more private than Brave. Even after turning off the most invasive settings in Brave (brave ads, crypto, etc.), it still phones home often. Ungoogled does zero phoning home by default.

      1. Iron Heart said on January 9, 2022 at 9:33 pm
        Reply

        @common sense computing

        > Ungoogled Chromium + Extensions like ublock origin is more private than Brave.

        No, Brave is not just the same as Ungoogled Chromium + adblocker. Where are Ungoogled Chromium’s fingerprinting defenses? Where is its CNAME uncloaking? Where is the ephemeral storage? etc. etc. What you say is not at all correct.

        > Even after turning off the most invasive settings in Brave (brave ads, crypto, etc.), it still phones home often.

        What do you mean by “phones home”? Brave establishes the least connections out of all major browsers, and the connections it does establish consist of e.g. certificate renewal / updates, checking for application updates, checking for extension updates etc. Ungoogled Chromium is crippled in that you have to manually update it all the time and you have to install an extension that checks for updates of other extensions, self-ironically establishing an outbound connection while doing this… What you call a good thing is not that great after all. Some connections are necessary to maintain functionality.

    2. Loki57 said on January 8, 2022 at 10:26 pm
      Reply

      @common sense computing

      > Ungoogled Chromium is the only sane option for privacy if you absolutely need to use the Chromium engine.

      Hmmm, are you sure?

      https://privacytests.org

  5. Iron Heart said on January 8, 2022 at 2:28 pm
    Reply

    Ex-Mozilla employee switches to Brave and explains why: https://flailingmonkey.com/why-i-switched-from-firefox-to-brave-after-21-years

  6. brightspark said on January 8, 2022 at 1:16 pm
    Reply

    I have a question- if Brave is such a privacy oriented browser where are the statistics they are quoting being gathered from?

    1. Iron Heart said on January 8, 2022 at 2:09 pm
      Reply

      @brightspark

      Brave has a usage ping. No private info is getting transmitted there, it is just a ping indicating that there is an active Brave installation. You can disable the ping under brave://settings/privacy
      The cumulative number of pings indicates the number of Brave users (daily active or monthly active).

      They can also derive user numbers from counting their downloads, but since a user may download Brave more than once, e.g. for manual updates, it is not as accurate as the ping is.

  7. notanon said on January 8, 2022 at 12:05 pm
    Reply

    Brave is so pathetic it’s not listed in any of the browser statistics, so Brave self-reports their suspect numbers, probably double/triple/quadriple/etc. counting the number of users.

    50 million??? LOL. Only according to Brave. It’s like asking Spielberg how many people saw Westside Story (2021) in the theatres. Hint – no one.

    A cucked browser bundling an advertising system and pretending to care about your privacy, by blocking OTHER ADS, so their ads have a monopoly.

    And using a worthless crypto to try to bribe you to use it (why else would anyone bother???).

    Look at the brainlets (Ironshill) who use it. ROTFLMAO.

    Brave will NEVER break 1%, because it sucks a$$.

  8. Anonymous said on January 8, 2022 at 11:21 am
    Reply

    I tried Brave and Vivaldi today.

    Vivaldi can’t even open localhost/custom domain, a ticket has been opened 3 years ago and the devs suggest user to bookmark the site, what a joke. Opening/closing tabs is realy slow(using classic settings), I stopped trying after that.

    Brave so far is good, opening tabs is a bit slow but opens instantly in blank page, I think it’s good compromise for more functional speed dial page. The only annoying thing is I cannot change the bookmark icon position, why it must be on the left side? Beside the refresh icon? All browsers place that icon on the right.. A ticket has been opened 3 years ago, many people want this to be fixed, but it’s still not fixed until now.
    Another concerning thing is the Crypto thing, Brave has been pushing Crypto hard and even make wallet function for it and the rewards are in the form of Crypto?
    I really like how it opens history and downloads page when I press the Ctrl+H, and Ctrl+B shortcuts, no other browsers do it nowadays, they just use popups or panels.

    Overall, Brave seems to be a good browser but I don’t want to support any company doing Crypto and not implementing user feedback for long time.

  9. Phyllis said on January 7, 2022 at 8:50 pm
    Reply

    To be honest I absolutely love Brave browser, I think started locking up, and it would only happen when I had brave open to use it. Uninstalling and reinstalling would solve the problem for about 24 hours, and then it would start doing it again. So I took it out and went back to Chrome… Cuz I detest Edge with every fiber of my being.. and nothing locks up now. Been almost a month. Makes me very curious.

    1. Iron Heart said on January 8, 2022 at 8:52 am
      Reply

      @Phyllis

      Uninstalling and reinstalling Brave did not solve your problem because when you uninstall a browser (any browser, not just Brave), the PC will not automatically get rid of the profile folder, however the reason why the browser locks up is likely to be found in your specific profile. Delete the profile folder and try again, if you want:

      https://community.brave.com/t/where-does-brave-store-its-data-files/53830

      By the way, should the problem resurface after you have installed extensions into the browser, then an extension could likely be causing it. Hope this helps.

  10. Anom said on January 7, 2022 at 7:21 pm
    Reply

    @ULBoom
    Chromium is a free and open-source web browser project just like Linux. And Google has no power to kill a project/competitor like Brave as long as they make money and also their users/customers are happy with the product.

    And it doesn’t matter if “Google manages the browser space through search domination”. All the things smarter people want from a web browser is privacy which Brave provides well.

  11. ULBoom said on January 7, 2022 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    Google’s been FF’s main source of funding since almost day one; today it’s about leverage against anti-trust action. Same as MS funding Apple twenty years ago. Google also funds other browsers, including Brave and even gave apple $4 billion or thereabouts for a search deal last year.

    The browser space has little to do with the actual browser and a lot to do with Big Tech money. The software’s a revenue generator.

    Google manages the browser space through search domination, the contrived arguments about management this and management that just pick fly shit out of pepper. If any browser actually dents Chrome’s revenue stream (which is an ad server and Google says so), with marketing superior to Google (hah!), Google will surely kill it. They’d be negligent not to. Most browsers use Chromium, owned by Google. Google is everywhere!

    Brave started out doing the Eth Tech thing, pushing privacy; today they’re on the fence with Big Tech, with privacy and search. They’ll have to generate an increasing revenue stream as time goes on. How? Google, most likely. The cost of a non-Chrome browser to Google is a cup of coffee.

    Even so, for “earth people” Brave is easiest way to get some privacy. Other methods require a lot of work, or at least the ability to install extensions, which most users don’t possess. I’d recommend it.

  12. Hammerland said on January 7, 2022 at 3:31 pm
    Reply

    Oh no. haters are gonna hate this news.

    Interesting thing, I was walking around and someone had a tv on, and they were talking about some political stuff with statistics and all that, and the person was using Brave browser. Most of the time I see Edge browser or Chrome.
    Don’t know if the person was using Rewards, but didn’t look like it, like it had the same vibe when you start Brave from zero and everything is the default state.

    Firefox will be okay with the half billion dollars they get from Google, about marketshare, not really but money is more important than users, money pays bills, users don’t since they use the product for free.

  13. MeH said on January 7, 2022 at 3:12 pm
    Reply

    I think Brave will definitely topple Firefox. I used to be an avid fan of Firefox because of the philosophy behind Mozilla but not anymore since several years ago.

    Not only they don’t care about users’ privacy anymore, their software is weak too. After all these years, Firefox still sucks at managing RAM :(

    As long as Brave stays on its current right path, I will stick to it.

    PS Even though Brave has a built-in ad blocker, I still use the undisputed king of content blocking, uBlock Origin. I disable Shields and install uBO after every clean install ;)

  14. allen said on January 7, 2022 at 2:50 pm
    Reply

    Brave is doing what Mozilla used to do (but stopped): give users what they want. So, I won’t be at all surprised when Brave surpasses Firefox.

  15. semce said on January 7, 2022 at 2:27 pm
    Reply

    For now I’m sticking with Firefox. I use Qwant as search engine and I’m happy with it. Tried Brave and didn’t like it so as long as Firefox is maintained I’ll stay with it. To each his own.

  16. Ashray said on January 7, 2022 at 2:25 pm
    Reply

    After using Brave for a long time now, i’m thinking to make a switch to Vivaldi. I think they should add more (basic) features to the browser and also update the UI.

    1. Trey said on January 8, 2022 at 8:40 pm
      Reply

      The massive amount of customization is amazing in Vivaldi compared to all other browsers. You don’t have to risk a spyware gestures addons for instance because it’s built-in like so much else.

  17. Peter said on January 7, 2022 at 12:43 pm
    Reply

    Brave Browser sucks in many ways. E.g.

    When I download BraveBrowserStandaloneSetup.exe from

    https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v0.62.51

    and start it….it a) downloads something from Internet b) don’t ask the user where to install it

    I expect from a real PORTABLE browser offline package to be *.zip archive which can be extracted where the user want and offers everything necessary to run

    Most probably the developers didn’t really understand the term “portable”.
    This is all not trustworthy

    I stick with Iron Browser

    1. ShintoPlasm said on January 8, 2022 at 9:11 pm
      Reply

      Why on earth would you download an ancient pre-stable version that was released in April 2019??

    2. ULBoom said on January 7, 2022 at 4:43 pm
      Reply

      Standalone means the entire program and installer are downloaded. Best for offline installs. The installer download version is much smaller and only works online. At Brave’s site, you get that one. Neither are portable. The version you mention is way out of date, the current one is 1.6X.XX, something, depending on what you want.

      Portable versions exist, through portableapps and others, here’s one:
      https://github.com/portapps/brave-portable/releases

  18. henry said on January 7, 2022 at 12:36 pm
    Reply

    How to disable telemetry in firefox about:networking shows two options:
    content-signature-2.cdn.mozilla.net
    firefox.settings.services.mozilla.com

    Is there a lot of telemetry in brave, can it be turned off completely?

    1. Iron Heart said on January 8, 2022 at 9:02 am
      Reply

      @henry

      > Is there a lot of telemetry in brave

      A lesser amount of telemetry than in browsers like Chrome, Edge, Firefox… but still more than in, say, Ungoogled Chromium. I am still using Brave over e.g. Ungoogled Chromium because it has various advantages for me though.

      Brave’s telemetry is documented here:

      https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/P3A

      > can it be turned off completely?

      Yes, you can turn off telemetry completely in Brave in its internal settings (it’s not external and you don’t need flags, no idea where @ULBoom gets this idea from). You can find the telemetry-related settings if you put brave://settings/privacy into the address bar and press Enter.

    2. ULBoom said on January 7, 2022 at 4:28 pm
      Reply

      No, only externally. Settings and flags are it. FF has hundreds of granular controls in about:config.

  19. Neutrino said on January 7, 2022 at 12:32 pm
    Reply

    “do you see Brave overtaking Firefox in two years time, or will the browser’s growth slow down?”

    It doesn’t matter. At the end of the day Google wins. It feeds them both and it decides the course internet should be on.
    You maybe cheering up some good statistic numbers right now, but it’s exactly this stupid entertaining game of Brave vs Firefox, which is the biggest reason Google wins!

    Divide et impera; Panem et Circenses. It’s that simple.

    So, unless B&F start making moves towards some serious union, instead of only competition, I’ll keep thinking of them as the hyenas and jackals one runs into when the lion’s on a hunt.

    1. im a keyboard warrior, dont mind me said on January 7, 2022 at 2:17 pm
      Reply

      lol google will never win, it doesnt matter if it firefox or chrome in the end. ppl always fight back, one will even use a simple/lightweight browser with unpatched or literally no security (search that stuff in google play, look at that download/active user number, thats not small even if it considered “little/tiny/miniscule/0.X%”). look at when whatsapp turn shit, ppl change to signal & telegram instantly, heck im pretty sure most ppl never heard of signal before then, it small like that.

      be a little more positive would ya? we arent so weak to succumb to google :) :) :)

      tho i kinda hoping somebody would hardfork firefox and rework its ui & extension system, really want those heavy theme & extension from pre-quantum update.

      1. RogerW said on January 7, 2022 at 6:38 pm
        Reply

        @im a keyboard warrior, dont mind me

        “..in the end. ppl always fight back”

        ” A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”
        – Agent Kay. Men in Black (1997)

  20. anona said on January 7, 2022 at 11:53 am
    Reply

    Firefox has 220m MAU and a 3.x% market share (including mobile). That means Brave is still <1%.

    1. Iron Heart said on January 7, 2022 at 12:24 pm
      Reply

      @anona

      That is true, but consider since when Brave has been around… And it didn’t have the comfort of only having to defeat a dying and horrible to use Internet Explorer, and the user market benefit this yielded.

      1. RogerW said on January 7, 2022 at 4:15 pm
        Reply

        @Iron Heart

        Playing the devils attorney here, Internet Explorer wasn’t really that horrible. Maybe from 4 to 6 but after that it really got better with time. The real problem was that it was too closed source for its own good and in the hands of a team in Steve Ballmer’s Microsoft. Remember that meme of the organizational chart of Ballmer’s Microsoft where ever department was pointing a gun at each other, that forced culture of internal competition that bred more infighting and reduced cooperation.

        Also all that bad press it received during the initial browser war days and the fiasco that was IE6 didn’t exactly help it’s cause.

        But I sincerely wish Microsoft had continued with legacy Edge after releasing it’s source code because I honestly felt it was a really good browser that could’ve really been something with continued development.

      2. Anonymous said on January 8, 2022 at 1:20 am
        Reply

        @RogerW
        If you are on first world country, sure IE was not that horrible. I still remember how slow IE was to render image, the browser need to download the whole image first to be displayed.

        And other browsers already has tab while IE didn’t.
        Reason why it fell because It’s not bad press, it’s the truth.

      3. RogerW said on January 8, 2022 at 11:52 am
        Reply

        @Anonymous

        Back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s there was no fiber-optic broadband so most people were on dial-up internet, including myself and yes I too experienced all the woes of Internet Explorer in it’s dark days that is why I said IE4 to 6 was terrible, especially IE6 but it got significantly better after that.

        Now tell me the name of one browser that was just perfect every which way back in the days when IE was terrible. Both Firefox and Chrome had tons of bugs back when they came out and reaching where they are today took years of positive open development. IE had the top market share once and it was the browser everyone loved to hate not only because of it’s myriad issues but also all the bad press it had accumulated.

        Also this overused “Oh you are from a first world country so you have no idea what real life is unlike me” trope is getting really stale, not to mention corny and overtly sanctimonious. No I am not from a “first world” country so I too have experienced reality as most people have, regardless of where they are from.

        Only difference is I don’t like jumping on the bandwagon of hate, especially when it concerns something I have personally experienced. I’ve used Internet Explorer right from the days of Windows 95 till it’s eventual demise and I have both loved and hated it. When I don’t deny the hatred I felt for it I also won’t deny the love, which wasn’t entirely nostalgic either.

        P.S. Don’t look now but your “Not so Evil” homeboy Google’s “Oh so Great” browser Chrome seems to be walking somewhat the same path as evil Microsoft and their crappy IE despite being a so called open source browser.

      4. ShintoPlasm said on January 8, 2022 at 9:08 pm
        Reply

        @RogerW: one browser that was great back then? Opera.

      5. RogerW said on January 9, 2022 at 8:12 am
        Reply

        @ShintoPlasm

        Aww and I was hoping someone would say Mosaic.

        Opera was a trialware that you had to buy to use after the trial period was over. Who ever heard of a browser that was a trialware?

        Moreover it’s proprietary Presto engine lacked flexibility that’s why they had to dump it for Webkit.

        I’ve used Opera trial back then and wasn’t really that impressed. It wasn’t bad by any means but paying to use a browser that really didn’t offer anything unique, even back in the 90’s, nope. For anyone who really hated IE that bad there was always Netscape. I used both.

        Opera has always been like the Yahoo of the the browser world. Been there since forever, only a few diehard yahoo followers, forever the third wheel. Too bad they dumped Presto instead of releasing the code and keep working on it with the open source community but instead they filed a DCMA when the source code was released on Github even after they migrated to Webkit. What a bunch of jackasses.

      6. tigertaurus said on March 24, 2022 at 5:31 am
        Reply

        Ah, I was one of the “suckers” who paid for Opera back in the day. That’s how much better I thought it was than the competition. Was paying for it stupid? If more people had been willing to pay for software and online services, maybe surveillance capitalism wouldn’t have completely overtaken the Web as it has. As the saying goes, if you’re not paying for a product, *you* are probably the product.

        Nothing unique? If memory serves right, Opera was the first browser to offer tabbed browsing, and it offered it long before the competition. Opera had many innovative features that were later lifted by competitors like Firefox and IE. Bookmark management in mainstream browsers like FF and Chrome still feels crude compared Opera’s more than a decade ago.

  21. RogerW said on January 7, 2022 at 11:18 am
    Reply

    The only reason I can’t get out of the veritable prison that’s Firefox is part nostalgia and part some of the indispensable extensions which have become an intrinsic part of my web experience have no proper Chromium alternative.

    1. Dumbledalf said on January 7, 2022 at 11:29 am
      Reply

      When Firefox dies and shuts down, you may have to learn some new tricks with Chromium, because there will just be nothing else to use.

      Oh, and I can see Firefox trying to not die and shut down by migrating their rendering engine to Chromium.

      1. RogerW said on January 7, 2022 at 6:49 pm
        Reply

        @Dumbledalf

        Can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

        Sometimes I wish I could go back to the late 90’s or the early 2000’s and just stay there. At least things made some sense back then.

      2. Iron Heart said on January 7, 2022 at 11:54 am
        Reply

        @Dumbledalf

        > When Firefox dies and shuts down, you may have to learn some new tricks with Chromium, because there will just be nothing else to use.

        Mozilla has no one but themselves to blame. They predate all the big VPN, secure E-Mail etc. companies. They could easily be today what, say, NordVPN and ProtonMail are TOGETHER, but they borked it. Their business model has been, and by now always will be, sucking from Google’s ad money teats. Yeah, sure, they are now entering the VPN business and such with a “service” they don’t even operate themselves, but it is way, waaaaay too late for this. This market is already overcrowded and very competitive, and Mozilla is the outlier. They are for the most part bad businessmen and -women, it’s just what it is.

        Another issue is, their browser has no attractive, unique selling point, so they are losing out on that front as well. Rumor has it that Eich has proposed a similar model like what he does now with Brave back then at Mozilla, but it got rejected. Now they, these fools I mean, are paying the price.

        Considering their close affiliation with, and strong dependence on, Google, and their stance towards freedom of expression online, I am not sad at all to see Mozilla go. In fact, to be honest with you, popcorn and cola are already in place.

      3. Anonymous Anonymous said on January 8, 2022 at 9:31 am
        Reply

        @IronHeart

        > Another issue is, their browser has no attractive, unique selling point, so they are losing out on that front as well.

        The attractive unique selling point for FF is the “Gecko Engine” with the endless customization options, stellar security and the unsurpassed privacy it provides depending on the hardware and setup configuration used. It has a higher market share than Brave for a reason. Marketshare position does not demonstrate how good a browser is though. On desktop, FF is the superior browser for anyone with even a hint of privacy awareness. That would still be so, even if Brave surpassed FF marketshare, not that it would ever happen though.

        Brave will never be an attractive browser to use instead of FF for many privacy advocates and those trying to take a step back from anything google related. Even as a browser for compartmentilsation purposes, it is not even really recommended by privacy groups such as “Privacy Guides” for likely various reasons. That is only one example, many dislike Brave because it lacks strong customization.

        Brave uses a “big tech centralized browser engine” that google has a monopoly over, and can take in any direction they want, with browser forks like Brave having to deal with googles privacy invading mess regarding “googles de facto ownership” of chromiums design implementation and direction for their financially controlled pseudo FOSS “chromium engine”. Chromium is an engine clutched in the hands of google to manipulate and craft as they will, with forks being dependent on googles direction and having to clean up googles direction frequently, likely breaking things in the process whilst trying to fork it, as chromium ultimately belongs to google, it was originally intended for chrome. It follows chromes path.

        I have no confidence in “browser developers” using a chromium fork and calling it private. I do not care about a long list of toggle options for privacy in a chromium fork, i do not trust the chromium engine. I will never use anything related to google, especially a browser engine because google are not exactly known for privacy.

        Chromium has poor privacy compared to what can be done with firefox customization options and extensions.

        > Rumor has it that Eich has proposed a similar model like what he does now with Brave back then at Mozilla, but it got rejected.

        Great! Crypto generation through ads in a browser has been widely criticised in privacy communities. Before you whine about ads in FF, one can always say they can be easily turned off.

        > Considering their close affiliation with, and strong dependence on, Google, and their stance towards freedom of expression online, I am not sad at all to see Mozilla go.

        You would be sad to see them to go, because you are not a “privacy advocate” that would like to see a great variety of browsers and engines available, so that people can have multiple options for a browser. As for your thoughts on their stance regarding freedom of expression? You have been beating that drum for over a year, whilst failing to realise that “Mozilla” are not in any type of position such as “Google” to engage in outright censorship. Google engages in censorship across their platform “youtube”. However, being as shortsighted and clueless as you are, you fail to acknowledge those facts, whilst you continue to support a “browser engine” (chromium) being actively developed by a company (google) that has a strong history of censorship! You are full of hypocrisy!

        Pointless browser wars between chromium/Brave VS Firefox is all you argue about, you have a poor grasp of understanding as regards to technology aswell.

        I Like that Brave exists and is a browser option, you use it, good for you, many others use it, good for them. However, many will never use it, but are glad it exists as a fork. However, you wanting to see the demise of FF shows who you are.

        No one who enjoys a good browser ever takes you seriously. Your arguments have been consistently dismantled time and time again.

      4. Iron Heart said on January 8, 2022 at 1:44 pm
        Reply

        @Anonymous Anonymous

        > The attractive unique selling point for FF is the “Gecko Engine”

        This is not a selling point, or rather, is only one for ideologues. Most people don’t know which engine their browser and wouldn’t care if you told them. People ask themselves which FEATURES would come in handy for them and seemingly Firefox doesn’t have any killer feature that would draw people to the browser.

        > endless customization options
        > setup configuration used

        Enjoy still being unique and ot having fixed anything after you have supposedly “improved” your privacy. Actual privacy protection requires monolithic, preconfigured setups where it is not easy to differentiate between users, and where you are not put into a small yet easily identifiable group of people using some obscure user.js. What you propose is not effective privacy protection, it’s clearly bullshit:

        https://www.quippd.com/writing/2021/07/26/firefox-privacy-stop-hardening-love-strict-etp.html

        Tor understands that, Brave understands that, and you don’t understand it. The custom hardening meme needs to die so that actual privacy protection can live.

        > stellar security

        LOL, not even once:

        https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html
        https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing

        I realize that I have posted this link time and time again, but as long as ignorants like you claim that Firefox has “stellar security” despite all the evidence to the contrary, I feel like I haven’t done it enough still.

        > It has a higher market share than Brave for a reason.

        Firefox has been around since 2004, Brave since 2016. Firefox had the benefit of building up mind share when the only opposition it faced was the (at the time) decaying IE.

        > On desktop, FF is the superior browser for anyone with even a hint of privacy awareness.

        It’s certainly the superior browser if you believe in the hardening meme, which I don’t believe in because it doesn’t actually work.

        > That would still be so, even if Brave surpassed FF marketshare, not that it would ever happen though.

        Going by Firefox’s decline and Brave’s growth, I expect them to be about equal in terms of numbers in 2023.

        > Marketshare position does not demonstrate how good a browser is though.

        What about Firefox’s decline? Any excuse you have to offer for this?

        > Even as a browser for compartmentilsation purposes, it is not even really recommended by privacy groups such as “Privacy Guides” for likely various reasons.

        * [Editor: removed]

        > That is only one example, many dislike Brave because it lacks strong customization.

        The hardening meme again… Prove that your very custom setup makes you less unique, I’ll listen to your elaborations. Promise.

        > Brave uses a “big tech centralized browser engine” that google has a monopoly over, and can take in any direction they want,

        Google is not the sole developer of Chromium to begin with and they have virtually no control over what patches downstream forks accept.

        > pseudo FOSS “chromium engine”

        How can something be “pseudo-FOSS”? What is that even supposed to mean? You either are FOSS or you aren’t. How feasible a fork of your code is does not determine the basic licensing. You seem confused.

        > I have no confidence in “browser developers” using a chromium fork and calling it private. I do not care about a long list of toggle options for privacy in a chromium fork, i do not trust the chromium engine. I will never use anything related to google, especially a browser engine because google are not exactly known for privacy.

        Firstly, I am pretty sure that you are using Android whose main developer happens to be Google… Secondly, Chromium forks other than Chrome itself are very similar to what Custom ROMs are for Android. I have never heard that people supposedly distrust major Custom ROMs just because the base code is coming from Google for the most part. Do you think the downstream fork devs, whether it is for Android or for Chromium, are all idiots who are unable to work with, or understand the code? Try to go to a CalyxOS or GrapheneOS forum and tell them how their many times vetted, expertly developed, downstream forks are somehow riddled with privacy issues because of the inherent evilness of the Google code beneath, starting ith the calculator and ending with the light sensor code… hahahahaha. I have no issue using Google code if it goes through another layer of people that I trust (more than I trust Google, anyway). All you have is speculation, you can’t actually prove that there are privacy issues for Brave stemming from their supposed inability to deal with Google’s code.

        Also, you have little to no idea about software development. Even in case of a privacy-hostile feature, internal kill switches remain a necessity, should the associated code get under attack from third parties, or should Google fuck up and need to disable the feature to stabilize the browser again. Without internal fallbacks and kill switches, no modern development would be possible. So, for most APIs, even if they are as bad as you think, Brave can disable them if there is no other mitigation.

        Also, I have no reason to trust Mozilla code any more than I trust Google code. Feel free to disagree, you seem to trust Mozilla for whatever reason that I don’t share.

        > Chromium has poor privacy compared to what can be done with firefox customization options and extensions.

        Many Chromium-based browsers are superior to Firefox, out of the box or otherwise. Example? Brave or Bromite.

        > Great! Crypto generation through ads in a browser has been widely criticised in privacy communities.

        What is great or not is determined by what the users adopt in the end. Brave grows, Firefox declines. Therein lies your answer re. what is great and what isn’t.

        And no, Brave’s ads are well-documented, are fully processed locally and respect user privacy: https://brave.com/intro-to-brave-ads/
        You can also look at the open source code and then demonstrate all the “issues” of Brave Ads that only you seem to know about. Fact is, nobody in the know was able to prove that Brave violates privacy despite the best efforts of the sinking ship Firefox community who are eager to prove such a thing. What does that tell you?

        > Before you whine about ads in FF, one can always say they can be easily turned off.

        Are you telling me that Firefox’s ads are opt-out while Brave has opt-in ads? That is not a Pro-Firefox argument, younknow. Further, Firefox’s promotional ads rely on a shady proxy connection and are not locally processed like Brave’s ads. Before you complain about supposed privacy issues of Brave that you can’t even prove, how about you clean up at your own doorstep? It’s dirty, and stinks.

        > You would be sad to see them to go, because you are not a “privacy advocate”

        I would not be sad to see them go because I still believe in Mozilla’s 2005 values, not in their 2022 values.

        > would like to see a great variety of browsers and engines available, so that people can have multiple options for a browser.

        If you build a great product with neat features, people will flock to you. You don’t, so they don’t. The ideological shaming operation is not working that well on me, try it elsewhere.
        If you think a 3% market share browser is stopping Google, you are delusional. Even if Mozilla grows and gets some power and a say back, which I sincerely hope won’t happen, I have no real reason to believe that their ideals are closer to me than they are to Google, their benefactor.
        Furthermore, since Chromium is open source and can be modified, there is no inherent value in a competing but much inferior engine. Last but not least, Firefox has to ensure compatibility with Google-owned websites even if Chrome and Chromium didn’t exist, so whatever Google implements there, you will have to support anyway. Prove me wrong.

        > As for your thoughts on their stance regarding freedom of expression? You have been beating that drum for over a year, whilst failing to realise that “Mozilla” are not in any type of position such as “Google” to engage in outright censorship.

        Mozilla can absolutely block access to websites, display warnings and overlays, and report the websites people visit back to the mothership. Not saying that they are currently doing this, but denying even the possibility is silly when it is clearly there. Their stance on the subject doesn’t bode well for the future at all and I won’t support them unless they publicly reverse course, which they won’t.

        > Google engages in censorship across their platform “youtube”. However, being as shortsighted and clueless as you are, you fail to acknowledge those facts, whilst you continue to support a “browser engine” (chromium) being actively developed by a company (google) that has a strong history of censorship! You are full of hypocrisy!

        Yeah, Google is definitely pro-censorship. However, I am only indirectly using Google code, since the code is going through yet another layer / filter (Brave Software in my case). As I said, I trust that they keep an eye on the code and so far I am not disappointed. By using Firefox, I am directly supporting a pro-censorship organization and I don’t want to do that at all. Sure, it would be great if a self-supported browser engine existed where the organization behind it is pro-freedom, but I am not aware of any, so Brave is as good as it gets for me.

        > However, you wanting to see the demise of FF shows who you are.

        Yes, it shows that I am not supporting Mozilla’s 2022 values. If they reverse course, I may re-evaluate. Until then, I am glad that I am who I am, thank you very much.

        > No one who enjoys a good browser ever takes you seriously.

        That is your prerogative. I don’t take you terribly seriously either to be perfectly honest… You support a pro-censorship organization and believe in privacy concepts that don’t work. What else but contempt could I have for this?

        > Your arguments have been consistently dismantled time and time again.

        Not in a credible fashion and certainly not by you.

        Have a good time, and thanks for the laugh.

      5. Anonymous Anonymouus said on January 9, 2022 at 12:44 am
        Reply

        Typo.

        If you can not see the code, you can *not* see any possible vulnerabilities and fully verify what such code is actually doing. FOSS software is superior in that regard in that the code is open source.

      6. Anonymous Anonymous said on January 9, 2022 at 12:08 am
        Reply

        @Iron Heart

        > Firefox doesn’t have any killer feature that would draw people to the browser.

        If that was the case, then why are you on a website that actively promotes and is well known for FF hardening guides to give people a greater level of security and privacy on their browser of choice? Do you have a problem with the great information that “ghacks” provides to readers?

        Also, since FF has a higher market share than Brave on desktop, it would seem that many people are in fact opting to use FF because of nice features such as the great customization options. You are not convincing many people to make the switch away from FF.

        > Enjoy still being unique and ot having fixed anything after you have supposedly “improved” your privacy. Actual privacy protection requires monolithic, preconfigured setups where it is not easy to differentiate between users, and where you are not put into a small yet easily identifiable group of people using some obscure user.js. What you propose is not effective privacy protection, it’s clearly bullshit:

        Privacy is a complex topic, not that i would expect you to fully understand it as you are generally too narrow minded. Browser configuration and setup is not all there is to good privacy. For example, choosing a particular set of websites to only visit in an online session and avoiding most of the websites that engage in “heavy tracking” is already going in a strong privacy direction. Also tracking domains can be effectively blocked with simple extensions in a browser. Not all websites “fingerprint” users to track them. Even if a website fingerprinted a user, that data set does not tell a whole lot, as browser configurations can be changed often enough to confuse the tracking. Having cookies enabled is a far more convenient way for websites to track, that is why chrome have done away with cookies and developed a different way to track. Browser compartmentalisation practice generally using different browsers mess up any tracking attempts aswell. Best defense is not to use heavy tracking sites to begin with and never turn on cookies for convenience sake.

        Also, you have no such largescale idea of what browser setup makes a user unique, all you have is “hearsay and gossip”, as browser fingerprinting test sites are obscure with a poor sample size to compare to the overall internet traffic in everyday use. They are highly inaccurate.

        A unique fingerprint without a real IP address is not even a good way to identify a user. Fingerprinting methods can be easily blocked in many different ways, even people whose browsers update automatically sooner or later will get a new fingerprint. Not using sites that fingerprint is an example on how not to be tracked, using different setups as regarding browser software is another example.

        > The custom hardening meme needs to die so that actual privacy protection can live.

        Many privacy communities would strongly disagree with your misleading and inaccurate information.

        > I realize that I have posted this link time and time again, but as long as ignorants like you claim that Firefox has “stellar security” despite all the evidence to the contrary, I feel like I haven’t done it enough still.

        FF has strong site isolation going forward, project fission implementation as of recently,. Your link is severely outdated, irrelevant, debunked and not related to privacy. Project fission is a stellar development and that researcher is not a browser developer, he is not qualified to make such ridiculous assumptions and be taken seriously as regards to his thoughts on FF.

        That researchers theories have been widely debunked. He is also heavily criticised in privacy communities for promoting “closed source operating systems” over “open source” ones. Windows and Apple are subpar products when compared to open source ones as regards to privacy and security. If you can not see the code, you can see the possible vulnerabilities and fully verify what such code is actually doing. Open source software is superior in that regard. Windows is the absolute worst, new hardware released in the future will contain microsoft pluton, which will be integrated into the die of a device’s CPU and will be related to windows updates.

        You will need new material to criticise FF, not that you or that researcher ever had a strong argument to begin with.

        A researcher who promotes closed source OS over FOSS-OS generally hasn’t a clue what they are talking about anyway.

        > It’s certainly the superior browser if you believe in the hardening meme, which I don’t believe in because it doesn’t actually work.

        Actually it does work. Many toggles in “about config” regarding fingerprinting resistence are “state of the art” and are some of the best features to have in a browser that are currently available.

        > Going by Firefox’s decline and Brave’s growth, I expect them to be about equal in terms of numbers in 2023.

        I don’t.

        > What about Firefox’s decline? Any excuse you have to offer for this?

        Ever hear of google chrome and edge? The pre-installed browsers found in almost all of mainstream desktop hardware and chrome being the browser in android OS? Privacy does not just fall into peoples hands, you have to want it and actively seek it out.

        That is where hardened FF comes in.

        > The hardening meme again… Prove that your very custom setup makes you less unique,

        You have no real official sample sizes of what browser setups are used on the web. All you have to go by is silly fingerprinting test sites with a miniscule amount of data sets to paint a picture of how much users are using a particular browser setup. And as i said, people who do not like to be fingerprinted can stay away from the websites that engage in it, including those very fingerprinting test sites themselves.

        If you think being fingerprinted is all about using browser setups, you are clearly deluded, as most people who dislike being tracked do not generally use websites that track or fingerprint.

        > Google is not the sole developer of Chromium to begin with

        They fund it the most and their devs make the most contributions.

        > they have virtually no control over what patches downstream forks accept.

        Has it clicked with you yet? Downstream? forks have to deal with whatever google sends downstream to them. So not really all that independent of google, now is it? Without the work of google, a browser like brave would not even exist as they would have no updates and security patches to use for their browser from google. The breakage argument of having to deal with google changes to chromium as relating to browser forks is a valid argument.

        Google is hard work to deal with, people can assume.

        > How can something be “pseudo-FOSS”?

        Since chromium was originally intended to be the engine for closed source “Chrome” then it is pseudo FOSS in spirit.

        Since chromiums main development purpose is used to push the chrome browser and now even edge, it is quite bizarre why anyone claiming to be a private browser would use such an engine.

        > Firstly, I am pretty sure that you are using Android whose main developer happens to be Google… Secondly, Chromium forks other than Chrome itself are very similar to what Custom ROMs are for Android.

        You are pretty wrong. As i said, i do not use any products related to “Google” including their financially backed chromium engine or their mobile devices being used for alternative OS like grapheneOS.

        To use grapheneOS You would have to buy a google phone, and that would be a financial contribution to a google product as relates to using their hardware.

        > have no issue using Google code if it goes through another layer of people that I trust (more than I trust Google, anyway)

        You see, i do not trust anyone that claims they can make forks of google engine code like chromium fully private, also not using anything google related just feels damn good.

        > Also, I have no reason to trust Mozilla code any more than I trust Google code.

        Google develop closed source products. Mozilla do not.

        Chromium may be called FOSS, however, why would a FOSS engine be designed primarily for a closed source browser? As i said pseudo FOSS.

        > Many Chromium-based browsers are superior to Firefox, out of the box or otherwise. Example? Brave or Bromite.

        Lol at out of the box. The main draw for FF is customization on desktop at least. I don’t care for mobile devices as they are far more privacy invading no matter what browser is used. As for grapheneOS you would have to buy a google product to use it and i’m not buying anything google. I have no problem with FF getting money from google for implementing a search engine deal, as that money goes to the devs and forks can be created due to the nature of the great work of FF devs.

        > What is great or not is determined by what the users adopt in the end. Brave grows, Firefox declines.

        Going by your logic, google chrome and edge are the best browsers.

        > And no, Brave’s ads are well-documented, are fully processed locally and respect user privacy

        But brave uses a google engine being financially developed by google affiliates. I’m sorry, but i don’t use google code.

        Enjoy your google sir.

        > Firefox’s promotional ads rely on a shady proxy connection and are not locally processed like Brave’s ads.

        Lol. Why would i care? When i can easily turn off such ads?

        > I would not be sad to see them go because I still believe in Mozilla’s 2005 values, not in their 2022 values.

        Firefox 2005 = FOSS Firefox 2022 = FOSS.

        I fail to see any difference.

        > If you think a 3% market share browser is stopping Google, you are delusional.

        It already is. That 3% are not using a full google backed engine.

        > their benefactor.

        A Search deal? Great, more money for FF Devs keeping all the great FF forks updated. More browser choices, more non google engine choices.

        Not that i use google chrome myself. But i don’t care as long as i can simply change settings.

        > Firefox has to ensure compatibility with Google-owned websites even if Chrome and Chromium didn’t exist, so whatever Google implements there, you will have to support anyway. Prove me wrong.

        Google does not own every website.

        > Mozilla can absolutely block access to websites, display warnings and overlays, and report the websites people visit back to the mothership. Not saying that they are currently doing this, but denying even the possibility is silly when it is clearly there. Their stance on the subject doesn’t bode well for the future at all and I won’t support them unless they publicly reverse course, which they won’t.

        No they do not. Even if they did, it would be easy to turn off, not that it will ever happen though.

        I Find it quite funny how you make Mozilla out to be a google involved in censorship.

        Show me anywhere where Mozilla has the capacity to engage in censorship on the level of google?

        You mix up words and political opinions with the software. A complete fallacy on your part as you indulge in incorrect reasoning.

        > I am only indirectly using Google code,

        You are using an engine being financially backed by google being taken in googles direction consistently. If you are using grapheneOS (I don’t hate that OS, i just don’t use it) then you are more likely using google hardware to be able to run it, pixel phones etc thus directly making a financial contribution to google.

        > By using Firefox, I am directly supporting a pro-censorship organization and I don’t want to do that at all.

        If you have a google pixel phone to be able to run graphene OS then you are already supporting an organisation (google) that heavily censors alternative opinions on their platforms.

        > You support a pro-censorship organization

        Where has Mozilla banned thousands of users from contributing to youtube just because they have a different opinion on different subjects?

        Anyway, its been fun debunking your nonsensical arguments.

      7. Iron Heart said on January 9, 2022 at 3:44 pm
        Reply

        @Anonymous Anonymous

        > If that was the case, then why are you on a website that actively promotes and is well known for FF hardening guides to give people a greater level of security and privacy on their browser of choice?

        Did I somehow miss the part where gHacks got renamed into fireHacks? This is not a Firefox-exclusive website, so don’t expect Firefox-exclusive opinions. You are here, under a Brave-related article, promoting Mozilla and your own erroneous concepts of privacy protections, and then you complain about the fact that I disagree with it? Seriously?

        > Do you have a problem with the great information that “ghacks” provides to readers?

        I really don’t think anything related to the hardening meme is “great information”, but in principle? No, I haven’t. If I thought this website was a worthless pile of trash with no good info at all, I wouldn’t be here.

        > Also, since FF has a higher market share than Brave on desktop, it would seem that many people are in fact opting to use FF because of nice features such as the great customization options.

        You still live off the wealth of market share you’ve accumulated in the mid- to late 2000s, and you will soon run out of it. You have a net loss of users for a decade now. Brave is moving in the opposite direction.

        > You are not convincing many people to make the switch away from FF.

        And that’s not my job here at all either. Use what you believe is best for you. But in the end, you are here, in an article related to Brave, advertising Mozilla and Firefox. Seems like you are the one who tries to convince people here.

        > Privacy is a complex topic

        And I am acutely aware of this, contrary to what you insinuate about me here. I know that there is more to privacy than just using a private web browser (or multiple, as you say, for “compartmentalization” – not that I think this works either, due to WebGL leaks that can’t be prevented in most browsers, but hey, what gives…). But you know, this is not the topic here, the topic here is one aspect of privacy, browser choice. Are you mentioning all these other things to demonstrate how much you supposedly know about privacy protection? If the answer is yes, then congrats, it isn’t news to me at all.

        And your claim that fingerprinting websites just ought to be avoided is nonsense in practice. How do you even find out which script is a fingerprinting script and which isn’t? Are you researching every script, am I supposed to believe that? If you browse the Internet like 99% of people do, then you can’t research every single script, so you need a base defense against this attack that is increasingly becoming popular, as cookies and similar ancient tracking tech slowly goes extinct (even Google admits this). Fingerprinting can also identify you with extremely high accuracy, so much so that it is being tested as an alternative to passwords for login purposes.

        Your claim that browser settings “can be changed often enough to confuse fingerprinting scripts” is nonsense especially on browsers like Firefox or Tor that rely on all users looking the same to scripts. What you propose is not fixing the issue at all and might indeed worsen it.

        > Many privacy communities would strongly disagree with your misleading and inaccurate information.

        Well many privacy communities evidently also fail to recognize the principles on which e.g. Tor is built. Tor has the principle at its root that all of its users ought to look the same, so it comes preconfigured and you are not at all supposed to touch the settings (or install extensions). If you do that, you are destroying the privacy that Tor is trying to grant you. Default Firefox doesn’t protect anything and is highly unique, which is obviously a bad situation, but custom hardening it is not the solution to this. If you take some obscure user.js in, and hopefully don’t modify it even further, you are in a very small scale sample of people and you are still nearly perfectly unique. You need a sizable crowd to hide in, and only preconfigured setups that have millions of users can provide this, e.g. default Tor Browser Bundle. An obscure user.js will never match this and is a failed concept that is only privacy theater in the end.
        This problem of being a small sample size is further compounded by a rapid release cycle, because despite the complete security theater, user agent fakery of RFP, I can still determine your actual browser version with extremely high accuracy by just probing for support of some web standards that were recently introduced, I will find out then that you are not actually using ESR on Windows despite what the user agent fakery says. I can thus differentiate between multiple major browser versions. This is the reason why Tor sticks to the more static ESR by principle, and yet another thing these user.js amateurs don’t understand. But don’t worry, even if you switch to ESR now and set it up to imitate Tor, I can still tell from your IP address that you are not coming from a Tor node. If you route your stuff through Tor as well in response, may I ask what purpose is then left for Firefox? Why not just use the Tor Browser Bundle at this point? I’ve said it in the past and I’ll say it again, these user.js files have no use case. They are not reducing your uniqueness to a point where it matters, and to cover all possible angles including shared IP addresses requires Tor anyway.
        Another serious issue would be extensions that supposedly improve your privacy, e.g. uBlock Origin may expose a unique list configuration that absolutely does leak, yet it is recommended by these clueless privacy communities over system-wide adblocking that doesn’t have this leak issue.

        > FF has strong site isolation going forward

        Fission, your supposed technological marvel, does not even match 2018’s state of Chromium. There is still leakage and shared resources all over the place, it’s all on Bugzilla, look it up. Even if it were mature, it would still not be a fix for all the other security of Firefox that exist outside of site isolation, and there are plenty. You are no match for Chromium’s level of security and exploit resistance, in fact, years of engineering lie ahead of Firefox to even catch up.

        > That researchers theories have been widely debunked.

        Where? When? I seem to have missed this, so source? There hasn’t been a credible refutation of madaidan or Micay yet because what they say is just factual, you can’t really prove them wrong without the facts, and the facts point in their direction entirely.

        > The main draw for FF is customization on desktop at least.

        I know that you are a believer in the hardening meme, but with a most heavy heart, I need to tell you: It doesn’t work. Ask the Tor devs on why custom setups can’t possibly provide any privacy, then feel free to post their explanation here. Can’t wait.

        > Windows and Apple are subpar products when compared to open source ones as regards to privacy and security.

        Privacy, yes. Security? Nope. Linux is not more secure than Windows, it misses several important exploit mitigations that we know are there in Windows. Linux is more obscure, thus has less malware written for it, but that doesn’t mean, and is not the same as, the actual security of the base code. If Linux was more popular and got under more scrutiny under attack, you would find out that it is far easier to write exploits for it than it is for Windows.

        > Windows is the absolute worst, new hardware released in the future will contain microsoft pluton, which will be integrated into the die of a device’s CPU and will be related to windows updates.

        It’s a privacy issue for sure but a severe security impact that exceeds slightly wideningv the attack surface is yet to be demonstrated. I fail to see how this is any worse, than, say, Intel ME. Sorry.

        > not that you or that researcher ever had a strong argument to begin with.

        What you call an “argument” are just the facts, and they haven’t been debunked obviously as otherwise they wouldn’t be the facts. To “debunk” them would be to fix the issues listed, which is why I said Mozilla has years of engineering ahead of it. Good luck, live in your dream world until then.

        > A researcher who promotes closed source OS over FOSS-OS generally hasn’t a clue what they are talking about anyway.

        Windows is significantly harder to exploit than Linux. The reason why Linux is falsely considered more secure is the fact that nobody cares enough to write exploits for 1% of desktop users. That’s not actual security, though, it is just hoping that you remain obscure and hidden enough. And FOSS does nothing per se to enhance security, someone still needs to fix the issues, and whether that is a FOSS dev or a Microsoft employee for Windows hardly matters. You can also absolutely write insecure software that is FOSS. Firefox is an example for this, ironically.

        > Actually it does work. Many toggles in “about config” regarding fingerprinting resistence are “state of the art” and are some of the best features to have in a browser that are currently available.

        Read the link I’ve posted, RFP is in Firefox to take the maintenance burden away from the Tor project. It is not meant for the general user despite what any obscure user.js project may claim. RFP is for monolithic setups with a large crowd behind it. RFP is partially made useless by version number detection via feature detection, putting you in a small sample of people who are using RFP on a version of Firefox that is not ESR. The amateur user.js files also propose other detectable changes outside of RFP (like WebGL, or IPv6 support) that, in summary, further narrow you down as a user of an obscure user.js file.

        > I don’t.

        Fine, but it’s just where the graphs will meet if the current trend persists. You can’t beat math.

        > Ever hear of google chrome and edge?

        Ever hear of Internet Explorer? You beat it despite it being preinstalled and having 95% market share back in the day. Because you were the users of the superior product back then. Now you aren’t. People see no reason to seek you out over Chrome and Edge, hence 3% market share for you. Where is your killer feature again?

        > You have no real official sample sizes of what browser setups are used on the web.

        Do I need any? All mainstream browsers including Firefox are unique by default, and stay that way, even if the user goes down the custom hardening route (as I said, it doesn’t fix anything). Tor provides a monolithic, non-unique setup (that is, if you maintain discipline), but how many daily active users does it have? I can logically deduce from this that only a tiny number of web users is not unique.

        > silly fingerprinting test sites

        You brought those up, not me, so not commenting on this. I don’t need those to deduce that most Internet users have to be unique.

        > as most people who dislike being tracked do not generally use websites that track or fingerprint.

        You don’t seem to understand how widely distributed fingerprinting is today, please read up on the subject. If you tell me that you avoid all of these websites, then I tell you that I strongly doubt it.

        > They fund it the most

        How is Chromium different from Firefox in this regard?

        > and their devs make the most contributions

        That’s not the same as the exclusive control you claimed before.

        > Has it clicked with you yet? Downstream?

        Yeah of course, Downstream. That downstream is unable to deal with upstream changes is just an assumption you make, point in case:

        > Google is hard work to deal with, people can assume.

        Yet there is no evidence that downstream developers are somehow too dumb or incapable of dealing with upstream code. Reality points to the contrary. I’ve already told you why I am not too worried about whatever Google does with upstream, even they can’t do development without fallbacks and kill switches. If downstream fails to otherwise mitigate a hostile API, they can always disable it even when upstream doesn’t. If you think Chromium has no internal kill switches or flags, then please look at the code, and then return to me.

        > The breakage argument of having to deal with google changes to chromium as relating to browser forks is a valid argument.

        Why should I switch to Mozilla because of this? Contrary to you, I don’t just assume that their code is in turn not hostile, just because.

        > Since chromium was originally intended to be the engine for closed source “Chrome” then it is pseudo FOSS in spirit.

        Again, there is no pseudo-FOSS. That you can build a closed source browser on a FOSS foundation doesn’t render the FOSS foundation non-free all of a sudden. There are also open source Chromium forks, Brave is one. This is very contrived.

        > Since chromiums main development purpose is used to push the chrome browser and now even edge, it is quite bizarre why anyone claiming to be a private browser would use such an engine.

        Again, what does Chrome or Edge have to do with Brave? All use Chromium as a foundation, fine, that does not mean at all that they have the same privacy standards. The Chromium foundation does not automatically make a browser non-private.

        > You are pretty wrong. As i said, i do not use any products related to “Google”

        And that’s fine by me. Who am I to judge. But using closed source iOS is not better, and Linux smartphones are not much more functional than a burner phone as long as they have no apps. Because you are insisting on open source / FOSS so much, I assumed Android. Doesn’t really matter for this discussion what you personally use though.

        > To use grapheneOS You would have to buy a google phone, and that would be a financial contribution to a google product as relates to using their hardware.

        You repeat this multiple times, I’ll reply to this once: The solution for this issue is, buy a used phone. Problem solved. Google gets no money this way,this is a non-issue.

        > You see, i do not trust anyone that claims they can make forks of google engine code like chromium fully private

        …yet you fail to produce evidence of actual privacy issues that can’t supposedly be resolved due to upstream code.

        > Google develop closed source products. Mozilla do not.

        Your point being…? What I am using is not closed source at all.

        > Lol at out of the box.

        Yeah, having the browser preconfigured out of the box is the only way to crowd building and for defeating tracking 2.0 a.k.a. fingerprinting. Ask the Tor devs, “out of the box” does matter because the custom hardening meme is unworkable.

        > I don’t care for mobile devices as they are far more privacy invading no matter what browser is used.

        To be fair, depends on the ROM you use. Talking about Android here.

        > I have no problem with FF getting money from google for implementing a search engine deal, as that money goes to the devs and forks can be created due to the nature of the great work of FF devs.

        The problem is not them getting money from Google per se (although that is odd for a pro-privacy organization), the problem is the financial dependence on the deal and that they have no actual business model outside of it (contrary to Brave, might I add).

        Firefox users sometimes claim that if Google doesn’t pamper them anymore, Microsoft / Bing will do it, but I don’t think that is the case at all. People don’t want to use Bing, they want to use Google (before you complain: Look at the market share of search engines). They would likely switch back to Google immediately or switch to another browser if they don’t know how. Firefox’s search box is not that attractive for the first loser of search engines, so I’ll believe that MS would give them a comparable amount of money only when I see it.

        > Going by your logic, google chrome and edge are the best browsers.

        Outside of the privacy issues, they are admittedly work fairly great. We ought not forget that people use what works for them, and they do work for them. This is why smaller competitors have such a hard time now, it is not the Internet Explorer times where all the alternatives were much better. Brave at least has adblocking on Android (also driving desktop adoption via sync) and the Get-paid-for-browsing angle, therefore it grows. What does Firefox have to offer other than ideological arguments (that will not convince anybody)? You won’t get around building a great product.

        > But brave uses a google engine being financially developed by google affiliates. I’m sorry, but i don’t use google code.

        Outside of ideology (I hate Google yadda yadda), you were not able to prove that Chromium poses an actual issue for Brave. Do you realize that you could condemn Android custom ROMs by the same logic? Yet nobody does that, I wonder why…

        > Lol. Why would i care? When i can easily turn off such ads?

        You complained about Brave’s ads, as if they are an issue. When the same happens in Firefox, even worse if we consider the proxy, then the issue just vanishes or is a matter of settings. Nice hypocrisy right there.

        > Firefox 2005 = FOSS Firefox 2022 = FOSS.

        “FOSS” is not the changes values I was talking about, you know.

        > It already is. That 3% are not using a full google backed engine.

        3% market share browser against Chromium is totally inconsequential.

        > A Search deal?

        A financial dependency.

        > Google does not own every website.

        But Firefox would have to support Google websites (Search, GMail, Maps, YouTube etc.). Whatever they implement there, you will support. Your resistance is only pseudo-resistance and that Firefox has never taken the high road compared to Chromium on any important issue proves my point.

        > No they do not. Even if they did, it would be easy to turn off, not that it will ever happen though.

        Why do you assume that censorship tools would be easy to turn off? That would be totally against their purpose.

        > Show me anywhere where Mozilla has the capacity to engage in censorship on the level of google?

        I never said that they could engage in censorship on the level of Google, they are far too irrelevant and far too incompetent for that. But they are an outspoken pro-censorship organization, and I won’t support them. That’s all.

        > You are using an engine being financially backed by google being taken in googles direction consistently.

        That’s also true for Firefox if you think about it.

        And that downstream forks can do nothing about upstream changes is just an assumption, which, I guess, I am supposed to swallow, because that would only leave Google-funded Firefox as the other option? Nice dream world you live in. Prove the issue first and then we can talk about it.

        > Where has Mozilla banned thousands of users from contributing to youtube just because they have a different opinion on different subjects?

        Funny that you mention it, Mozilla is of the opinion that Google doesn’t censor YouTube quite enough yet:

        https://foundation.mozilla.org/de/youtube/regrets/

        Again, I do not support pro-censorship organizations.

      8. Nemo said on January 8, 2022 at 12:42 pm
        Reply

        @Anonymous Anonymous

        >Great! Crypto generation through ads in a browser has been widely criticised in privacy communities. Before you whine about ads in FF, one can always say they can be easily turned off.

        Won’t lie, that was one of the motivations behind trying out Brave for me. I’ve never ventured into the world of crypto and must admit I still don’t fully understand all of it’s complexities so it seemed rather intriguing. But the crypto generation in Brave is so damn slow. I mean like, even if you make it you default browser and get blasted with completely irrelevant ads I only made like 0.054 BAT in nearly a week. Also for some reason the crypto generation on different devices is not accumulative as I thought it would be.

        So goodbye Brave. Wish you all the best but there must be better ways of making crypto.

  22. PalotaJ said on January 7, 2022 at 9:31 am
    Reply

    Add me ot that list ;) A few day I switched to Brave replacing my old Ungoogled Chromium 67.x. I stayed on an older version for a quite awhile, for reasons…but web incompatibilities was becoming a problem. The newer Ungoogled Chromium builds while good, I just don’t have the time to manual updating everything. Also the built-in adblocker of Brave is ublock underneath or so I hear. It won’t be facing manifest v3 in the near future and not installing another addon is a plus.

    1. Dumbledalf said on January 7, 2022 at 11:28 am
      Reply

      Regarding Brave’s built-in content blocker, it has one very useful feature. And that is if you load about:adblock, on the very bottom there is a text box where you can paste your own custom rules, each on a new line, which makes it so much easier to add your own custom rules compared to stupid browsers like Vivaldi, where you have to click a button, paste a single filter list, lick OK and then do this over and over for all the filter lists you have.

      This makes Brave for Android a particularly good competitor to Kiwi Browser, because you can make it block content almost as good as Kiwi can with real extensions.

      If Brave’s content blocker was uBlock Origin underneath, then all the options would have been present, but they are not and the pre-built list of filters, which you can activate using checkboxes, is just not enough to give you a decent experience on either desktop or mobile, but with the custom filters, it can.

      On PC I use Brave with content blocker set on Aggressive and uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger and Avira Web Security added as extensions.
      On Android, I use Kiwi with uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger and Avira Web Security and I’m pretty pleased about it.

      1. limonka said on January 7, 2022 at 11:26 pm
        Reply

        on android all you need is open source app blokada.org with selected blocklists + possibly secure DNS filtering and you would have peace of mind from ads not only in the browser but in all applications.

  23. Ayy said on January 7, 2022 at 9:28 am
    Reply

    >do you see Brave overtaking Firefox in two years time, or will the browser’s growth slow down?
    Seeing as how Brave is one of the only mainstream browsers with a genuine focus on privacy, yeah I don’t see the growth slowing down anytime soon unless they do something stupid like Microsoft has done with Edge.

    as for Firefox… they lost a very large chunk of their talented developers a long time ago and the only people left are from the rainbow brigade, even with google pumping hundreds of millions into them they still find a way to lose users and money, all the while Mitchell Baker’s salary as CEO goes up every year($2.69 million as of the 2020 990 form).

    1. smaragdus said on January 7, 2022 at 10:55 pm
      Reply

      “Seeing as how Brave is one of the only mainstream browsers with a genuine focus on privacy…”

      The normies are as clueless as usual. Nothing will ever change for the better as the idiots, the hoi polloi, are not millions but billions and their numbers growing.

    2. Klaas Vaak said on January 7, 2022 at 9:43 am
      Reply

      @Ayy: her salary is entirely justified as it takes some real talent to lose users big time that way. The main drawback of her brilliant management is that, if FF goes belly up, some of the more useful forks, notably Librewolf, will not be able to survive for long.

  24. Anonymous said on January 7, 2022 at 8:56 am
    Reply

    This is only the start, it is expected to see Brave grow much bigger after what we read about Manifest V3.

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