Brave launches Search Ads and Premium access
Brave Software announced the launch of advertisement on Brave Search, the company's search engine. The company promises that ads on Brave Search are privacy-preserving, which means that users of the search engine won't be tracked.
Brave Search users who don't want advertisement in search may subscribe to Search Premium instead. Search Premium is available for $3 per month and will provide search results without advertisement on Brave Search.
Ads are labeled clearly on Brave Search so that they may be distinguished from organic search results. An "Ad-icon" is displayed on the right side of an advertisement on Brave Search. The feature is in Beta currently, and while that is the case, a beta label is attached to the icon as well.
Brave promises that ads do not track or profile users. The company reveals that search ads use only three types of information to display ads on Brave Search: the search query, country and device type.
Search queries can, in theory, still include identifiable information, but the search engine "does not keep any kind of profile" of the searches that users make. In other words: Brave Search is going back to the classic days of advertisement on the Internet, where ads were displayed based on the topic of a page or site, or in this case search, instead of dedicated user profiles that gather information from all corners of the Internet.
Only text-based advertisement is shown on Brave Search during the beta phase. The company plans to integrate the advertisement service with the private ads feature of the Brave Browser. For now, Brave users who opted-in to Brave Private Ads won't see ad units on Brave Search. Brave Software plans to integrate Brave Rewards with Brave Search so that users may earn BAT, a virtual currency, when they interact with Search ads.
Closing Words
Brave Search could become a cornerstone for Brave Software. The company has diversified its product portfolio in recent time, adding Brave Search, VPN and other services to the mix. Search especially could add a significant amount to the company's overall revenue. While it seems unlikely that many Brave users will sign-up for Premium Search, some may do so to help finance development of the web browser and search product.
Now You: would you pay for an ad-free search experience without tracking?
All they are left to provide with is the “privacy-respecting” email service. They already have an audience for their ad & I can see it being successful from a business standpoint.
Future “privacy-respecting” VPNs & services like Relay can’t be entirely ruled out either. Kind of like Google you pay with your data for 15 GB of Gmail & Drive storage.
Folks at Brave look like want to try & emulate a privacy-respecting ecosystem
However, I don’t think the audience they are targeting will be willing enough to pay or pay them. And, this definitely isn’t a good sign, looks like the whole BAT business is not sustainable in the long run.
Now if only Google were to launch Youtube premium-like service for search & Gmail then it would kill the brave overnight. Given how relentless the EU is these days I don’t doubt Google won’t try to make it happen in the future. What it will lose in ad revenue will recoup with subscriptions maybe make it a part of the Google One.
@Iron Heart
> What browser are you using? Bet it’s a browser developed by a GAFAM company,
>They are Google-free
> Switching away from the open source Chromium codebase is in no way desirable.
You use the Brave browser right? You know what browser codebase that software uses? Oh wait? would it be the browser codebase Chromium? the chromium codebase developed by perhaps the biggest most powerful ad-tech company of all time? Google? Lol. Total ignorance much? Hows that google pixel phone holding up? Have you contributed to Googles treasure chest by purchasing a new pixel phone for Christmas? Google makes the best phones right? The best browser codebase right?
What Iron Heart really thinks perhaps = “I love google. Brave uses the chromium codebase because google programming is impeccable and godlike and they are just so awesome and my google pixel phone is just marvellous and just magnificent and i am secretly a fan of GAFAM software and products.”
Funny how some people like Iron H still believe the idea that chromium based browsers are free from Google. How can they really be free from google when the chromium project is primarily developed by google? and they are reliant on google for patches for security fixes from the google project chromium, where Google has the most commits to the project?
At least with Firefox it is just a search deal, and not a whole bloated codebase with constant security problems to patch, a codebase developed by an ad-tech company that have a poor record of making software/ browser codebase REALLY private and secure, CHROMIUM = A google project since its inception = A privacy and security nightmare. Lol.
Yeah, Brave Browser are TOTALLY free from Google. Lol.
@ Jody Thornton
> there have been far fewer zero day exploits in Chromium than Gecko.
Meanwhile in the real world and devoid of @Jody Thornton BS.
According to the data presented by the Atlas VPN team, the world’s most popular browser Google Chrome also has the most reported vulnerabilities, with 303 vulnerabilities discovered year to date. Google Chrome is also an all-time leader with a total of 3,159 cumulative vulnerabilities.
Google Chrome has the most reported vulnerabilities among browsers in 2022
https://atlasvpn.com/blog/google-chrome-is-the-most-vulnerability-ridden-browser-in-2022
Well, let’s start with Chrome seeing as this is a Google report, shall we? That record-breaking zero-day number, 14, was comprised of 10 remote code execution vulnerabilities (nasty) and two sandbox escapes (also nasty)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2022/04/26/google-confirms-record-breaking-14-serious-chrome-security-exploits-surprise-in-new-report/
Clutching at straws much Jody? Do you think people are stupid? and that they are not capable of doing research? Google Chrome is all-time leader with a total of 3,159 cumulative vulnerabilities.You hear that Jody?
Still whining and complaining about the Firefox reddit? Have they made you look even more foolish and ridiculous again?
Iron Heart/ Jody Thornton / madaidan would have us all believe that Chrome/Chromium based browsers have excellent sandboxing with fancy exploit mitigations. Yeah sure.
LMAO!
Completely clueless individuals who know nothing much about programming. Chromes perceived superior sandboxing does not mean a whole lot security wise, because no software is really 100% secure anyway, espescially when bloated in C++ like the chromium codebase. Firefox is not perfect either, but for sure it is a safer more secure browser to use than chromium-based browsers when looking at statistical data.
The narrative that chromium-based browsers are more secure than Firefox has always sounded like total BS!
DuckDuckGo is currently better than Brave search. Things, however, are always changing.
Advertisers still get what they want, targeting users from their sensitive, private data, here search queries. This is not privacy. Use Searx for example instead.
Where oh where is my Netscape Navigator. These browser wars are getting very tiresome.
As for whether I would pay a company, it would depend. I’m of the belief that privacy, while nice, is not fully achievable; be it “real life” or (especially) the web. I primarily use Firefox, but also use Waterfox and Pale Moon as well. There is little I do that would be of interest to those tracking, and so UBO is, to my mind, sufficient.
I don’t trust American privacy protection.
@Iron Heart
The only pathetic thing here is your constant shilling. I hope they don’t pay you in BATs at least.
> The only pathetic thing here is your constant shilling. I hope they don’t pay you in BATs at least.
I am in fact only reacting to shills posting off-topic comments. If you don’t want to read comments about Brave, then why are you here, under this article? Don’t like it, don’t read it. Move on.
Oh boy this comment section is in for a treat.
As for paying for a search engine – if I have an alternative, then no. This is the case right now and so nothing changes for me.
Same with me. I use Brave Search as my default search engine. I have not seen any ads yet, and hopefully my ad blockers are effective in blocking them. But as soon as I see them, I’ll immediately be switching to a provider that allows an ad free experience.
PS The continuous browser war postings on this site have become annoying to say the least.
I think I just found the ad hominems you were speaking of. In your own post.
If Martin sees this, I politely ask to just remove your off-topic, instead of giving you your petty win to delete my comment tree. I was on topic and replied to the article’s question. You went offtopic and personal. As usual.
@Martin
I see my comment was posted as a stub since you deleted Iron Hearts profane slurs against me already.
Feel free to remove this reply too, as the original post by IH is deleted. Thanks for not letting him harass me with his petty insults.
Things I learned from this post:
– Brave has a search engine.
– If I pay Brave money, I can use it, ad-free.
Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to be a successful business model, given that I can use every other search engine ad-free already.
If it wasn’t for ghacks, I wouldn’t even know Brave existed. But it sure seems to have some fans (we, one fan) here.
@jimbo
No search engine that I know of is ad-free. Maybe ad-free *for you* as you might be using an adblocker. Try turning your adblocker off for a moment and you will see that Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, StartPage… All have ads.
> But it sure seems to have some fans (we, one fan) here.
I know for sure that a significant share of gHacks users use Brave at least occasionally, and this includes the main author Martin Brinkmann too btw. We do not feel the need to proselytize like a religion though (we are growing), unlike the community of a different browser project that is obviously afraid of their browser going to 0% market share over time. That I call them out repeatedly when they post their usual drivel is time-consuming but worth it.
You favorite browser doesn’t even have a measurable market share
@Anonymous
Except it does.
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/12/01/brave-search-launches-ads-and-premium-access/#comment-4553698
for me it’s ok, no worries at all
I am already paying for it.
Don’t get me wrong, I know about UBlock Origin but I want to see an index that is independant from Microsoft or Google and Brave is doing a great job at it in my opinion.
If we all just keep using adblockers and refuse to pay for alternative SE, Google, Bing, Yandex and Baidu will never ever have a real privacy-focused alternative (that is not juste a metal search engine) ! You may not like Brave but what they’re doing with search is good for the health of the web.
And, on top of that, they’ve always been very clear that there would be a free version with ads and a paid one without ads
As for Brave search? It is is completely inferior to Startpage and Metager. Those two search engines let you browse search results anonymously by changing the IP address of browser with “anonymous view” feature and those two search engines being based in Europe is a PLUS, because of strong privacy laws. There is no such feature in Brave search as far as i know, such as “Anonymous View” that changes the IP address of the browser like in Startpage or Metager, that feature offers a great deal of privacy, those two search engines are quality.
Since this comment section will obviously turn into a Firefox vs Brave discussion, lets talk about Firefox, because since Brave fans talk a lot of crap about Firefox here, it is only fair that Firefox fans return the favor and mention the flaws of Brave browser and Brave search.
Despite the continous whining and bitching about Firefox here by a certain “Self Proclaimed Soothsayer” who presents himself as some type of browser-GURU on numerous articles about Firefox, *Cough Cough a certain BAT-FAN, (Probably thinks he will get rich from collecting BAT,,, lol) doing his absolute best to have the last say on all things Firefox related in articles that come up about it, one should be wise enough to never believe some of the ABSOLUTE-BS he spreads here on these discussions. An argument can easily be made that Firefox remains far and above the more private and secure browser when compared to Brave and other chromium-based browsers.
Pros tend to know this, geeks tend to know this. Pros use Firefox, amateurs tend to use chromium-based browsers. Pros use Linux, amateurs tend to use windows or mac. The most tecnically minded computer geeks are almost always Linux or Firefox fans, preferring FOSS over proprietary.
Chromium-based browsers have terrible security/privacy/customizability when compared to Firefox. Windows and Mac have terrible security and almost non existent customizability when compared to Linux.
Look at recent tech news about all the exploits found in useless chromium-based browsers like Brave?
Brave Browser was one of the first third-party Chromium-based browsers to release an update that addresses the security issue.
See here,,, https://www.ghacks.net/2022/11/26/google-releases-security-update-for-chrome-that-is-exploited-actively/
Also see here ..
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/11/30/google-chrome-108-update-patches-28-security-issues/
28 security issues? ABYSMAL!
See this clownish argument from a certain Brave fanatic here on that article
Iron Heart posted > All I want is to argue against provably false claims – the false claim being that Firefox is more secure. This can’t be proven via the actual code of the browser, as Firefox demonstrably lacks various exploit mitigations.
,,,,,,,,
Look at the absolute stupidity from “Iron H” foolishly FAILING TO MENTION the severe exploit that existed in the wild for chromium based browsers such as Brave recently, Firefox had no such severe critical vulnerability such as the chrome/chroium based browsers vulnerability. Yet, Iron Heart claims that Firefox lacks various exploit mitigations? LMAO! ignorantly pretending that Chromium based-browsers did not have a recent severe security vulnerability that google had to patch? LOL An absolute joke of a codebase is chromium, but Iron Heart may just be a bigger joke. It is chromium that lacks exploit mitigations statistically speaking.
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/11/26/google-releases-security-update-for-chrome-that-is-exploited-actively/
Did Firefox have such an exploit as bad as chromes? No! Now ask yourselves which browser was more secure to use the last month? Firefox or Google chrome/ Chromium-based crap?
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/11/29/firefox-107-0-1-fixes-a-hang-and-other-non-security-issues/
FIREFOX HAD NON-SECURITY-ISSUES.
This is why people like Iron Heart and that stupid and outdated information from a certain blog he spams should be laughed at as being absolute stupidity, a complete lack of critical thinking and lacking high quality real world advice. People like them are easy to debunk, because they spread nonsense. Glad to see more people mentioning that blog as very out of date which it is lol. There are also other problems with that blog, namely the absolute BS recomendations for proprietary software over FOSS which any security professional or privacy community worth their salt would laugh at as some type of joke.
Severe security issues in the double digits every month for Chrome. Lol.
Google have amateur programmers? Chromium is an amateur codebase? Well with all the security problems that Chrome/Chromium gets? it seems Mozilla has better programmers. Lets not forget that Mozilla invented RUST. What does google ever do with Chrome or chromium codebase? Fix security issues in the double digits every month? and fix severe critical exploits in their crap browser Chrome and crap codebase chromium every month or so,,,
Since Brave relies on the Chromium codebase, it suffers similar security issues to Chrome. Chromium is a codebase primarily written by an ad-tech company and built primarily for a proprietary browser from the ad-tech company GOOGLE. It is a bit retarded for anyone to expect the Brave browser to be more secure and private than Gecko which has been built for the FOSS browser Firefox.
Standard Firefox is arguably more advanced than all other browsers security wise as a general rule, because over 10% of the code is written in safer programming language RUST and the code overall is a lot leaner/safer than code in chromium. Firefox is less bloated and not as popular as Chrome, which means that for anyone that wants more security in a browser, Firefox being less popular and having decent security by default is a good choice, rather than opting to use chromium based browsers that lack the security and privacy of a hardened firefox. Pros tend to know this, amateurs do not.
Some people who prefer inferior browsers like Brave think they are being all cool and trendy by hating on Firefox. Brave can not even spoof the screen size, that is a privacy disadvantage. Such a disadvantage theoretically makes Brave browser users look way more unique than people using hardened Firefox and Librewolf which likely have a far larger user base than Brave statistically speaking. Tor on Brave is the most stupid thing ever, why it would even exist as a feature is anyones guess, just like that BAT idea, why would you want crypto mechanism combined with ads in the browser? I would not trust such crap especially with “Javascript enabled and the browser being built on insecure constantly exploited Chromium codebase, especially with javascript on by default in Brave.
A lot of people foolishly ignoring the facts that such a browser relies on Chromium codebase , a codebase primarily written and built by an ad-tech company, that gets heaps and heaps of security problems nearly every month, and those are only the ones known about, god only knows what other vulnerabilities exist in such crap. I do not think Brave have the quality of programmers that Mozilla has with Firefox.
Have fun Iron Heart, i don’t think BAT will make you get rich lol. I don’t think promoting Brave over Firefox here makes you look in anyway more intelligent than Firefox fans that call out your absolute BS and frequently make you look like a total clown, because of your determination to promote an inferior Browser/product relentlessly when superior options exist.
@Peter > , just a cynical attempt to cash-in on the privacy-minded crowd?
Well researched privacy crowds would never recommend chromium based browsers over Firefox as a main browser. If they do recommend a chromium-based browser over Firefox, i would just ignore them as their knowledge is lacking.
I would not even class Brave as a real Privacy browser when compared to Firefox, it can not spoof screen size like Firefox can, it is based on insecure chromium, javascript enabled by default, lacks customizability in settings, has similar security problems to chrome because both browsers are based on chromium codebase = a codebase getting constantly exploited in the wild month after month, many tech news sites mention all the severe security problems that chrome and chromium based browsers get, that should make people want to switch to Firefox instead, but a lot of people just use what is more convenient. Such insecure codebase such as chromium is abysmal. I don’t mind Firefox being a slightly slower browser as long as it is more secure than inferior options like chromium-based browsers.
Statistics are statistics
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/11/29/firefox-107-0-1-fixes-a-hang-and-other-non-security-issues/
FIREFOX HAD NON-SECURITY-ISSUES.
The inferior options
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/11/30/google-chrome-108-update-patches-28-security-issues/
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/11/26/google-releases-security-update-for-chrome-that-is-exploited-actively/
Security nightmare, and anyone who says that chrome/chromium based browsers are more secure than Firefox, just really seem to have no idea what they are talking about, and do not have statistical evidence to back up their argument when one compares the security issues that chrome gets and firefox gets.
The excuse that chromium-based browsers get more security issues due to them being more popular seems to be an excuse that Brave/ Google fans like Iron H make for google because of their lack of good security in their inferior chrome browser and the inferior chromium codebase.
Who invented RUST again? Mozilla. Lol.
Watch now as Iron Heart will come along to make excuses for his favorite company Google!
Apparently he uses a google pixel phone. Quite the google fan he is. Nothing wrong with that though. Lol.
Ciao.
Now You: would you pay for an ad-free search experience without tracking?
I don’t need to. Never have. Anyone who reads this newsletter, and anyone with a slight degree of tech savvy, already knows about Firefox (or other browser of choice; that just happens to be mine) + Adblock Origin.
I’m not sure who Brave is appealing to here. Really clueless users?
@iron
Obvious trolling attempt could not be more obvious.
> Adblock Origin.
> Really clueless users?
Yes. One has to be really clueless to not know that it’s called uBlock Origin, you “expert”.
No.
No thank you. Glad I stayed away from Brave all this time.
So they lure you in and the they start f*****g you, just like all the others. I will never ever use Brave search, and now I’m not recommending Brave to anyone anymore either. Greedy bastards.
They always said there would be an ad-free but paid version. How are they supposed to afford server and dev costs without any form of income ?
As much as I can disagree with a company making insane profits on the back of users’ privacy, as much I can understand the need of funds. That doesn’t mean I’ll contribute if I can avoid it and i’m aware of the intellectual incoherence this implies. So, to answer the question “would you pay for an ad-free search experience without tracking?” the answer is yes provided I have no alternative. Twelve Web/Image/News/Video search engines here, of which 3 are metasearch engines. They’d be only eleven should I remove Brave Search… which I’d likely do without uBO given I’d have then to endure ads when 11 other search engines here run ad-free.
@Tom Hawack
Literally every search engine does ads, which you can block with your adblockers. Brave Search is no exception, they offer a paid ad-free tier now. Do you have to use it? No, as I said, there are adblockers. This is not any better or worse than what DuckDuckGo or StartPage are doing.
Technically most search engines will have ads or any type of partners to get money from, but the ads are not blocked since they are done by clicking on them, you know the ones that are like the first 10 results and they are all adds? well, I am talking about those, but that means only cosmetics can deal with them, so they get hidden, not blocked… minor (big) difference. Starpage ads can be blocked though, so it depends on the implementation. Brave whitelists the script but hides the ads in aggressive mode for example.
But talking about Brave, well, rewards are optin, and these Search ads will be like the ones you see in the News in the Homepage, probably few images where you can click if you care, nothing that cannot be hidden by using cosmetics, well, the ones in the News section can’t be hidden, because extensions don’t work there, But unlike Yandex, Brave doesn’t lock Brave services to act as a ‘scheme’, where they know adblockers won’t block anything.
But at least Brave is building their own search engine, unlike 90% of Search engines like Startpage (which I use sometimes) but it uses Google and DDG or Qwant or any other, they all get Bing API results 100%, send information to Microsoft and Google about every search, call it privacy and get easy money by displaying their ads or whatever.
Just look at Vivaldi’s ‘partners’ list, it includes Bing, so they are not even protecting you from Bing at all if you don’t disable that, Bing is default search engine in *most* countries for Vivaldi, and even if clown CEO talks crap about Microsoft, he still loves their money, so if you make a search, well, you are completely giving 100% of info to Bing, unlike the 75% information you were giving by using Bing in the first place.
So at least Brave is trying to be independent in a way, but I agree about how people are crying because Brave is doing the same other search engines are doing, but apparently people ignore how Brave is building their own Indexer, and how these ads can be hidden like on every other search engine.
Brave search is rubbish:
for that last two weeks it has ignored the minus sign I use to exclude terms from the results.
Basic functionality: not there!
Do you ever get their “prove you are a human” test when you are trying Brave search? I get it nearly every time I try it. And like you, I’m also not impressed with the search results or the functionality. I’m assuming it will get better over time.
One thing I will say in Brave’s favor, I do not mind contextual advertisements or text based advertisements on a web page. As long as they aren’t tracking and using my private data, I don’t care if they are there at all. So I will give Brave bonus points for a better ad strategy.
Yes let’s trust the crypto browser company who allows trackers through their integrated blocker and has lied in the past, that those ads are “private”. Watch a year from now we will get a duckduckgo style story coming from Brave.
So Brave wants to become the Spirit Airlines of browsers. Guess that big tech VC money Brave got in the past doesn’t pay what it used to.
@Aluminium
How is your browser that is funded by Google doing? I heard they are still a search engine leech with no real business model of their own, is that still true?
@Iron Heart
I had no idea Archane, Brave and Otter was secretly funded by Google, I guess I should be more careful.
Maybe I should switch to Brave as my primary browser, after all they are completely Google-free, they don’t use the Google extension store and they certainly don’t use Chromium.
Why do you use what about Firefox arguments every time sometimes has a legitimate criticism of Brave? Why do assume if somebody has a criticism of Brave then they must be Firefox fans? If Firefox is so bad, then why do you use them as the standard for all other Browser to be compared against? Are you a closet Firefox fan pretending to shill Brave with intentionally silly arguments to secretly push for Firefox?
@Aluminium
> I had no idea Archane, Brave and Otter was secretly funded by Google, I guess I should be more careful.
You must think that gHacks readers are exceedingly dumb, because you believe that it is readily overlooked that various Firefox shill posts were written under the pseudonym “Aluminium”. Also, Otter… Try better with your lying next time, Otter does categorically not even work on most websites.
> after all they are completely Google-free, they don’t use the Google extension store and they certainly don’t use Chromium.
They are Google-free in the sense that the browser does not phone home to Google. Switching away from the open source Chromium codebase is in no way desirable.
> Why do you use what about Firefox arguments every time sometimes has a legitimate criticism of Brave?
Hm, I don’t know. Maybe the constant Firefox shilling under Brave-related articles, which is awfully similar to guerilla marketing by the way, could be the reason. Maybe, I am sure this completely unrelated of course! Pfft, yeah. I don’t think so.
Firefox is not “the reference” for me. The Firefox fans (fanboys) try and force this discussion on me by bringing it up themselves, and by making false claims about competitors at the same time. You are acting like I start this shit, when literally anyone with the ability to read can see the truth of the matter. The comments are not exactly hidden.
@Frankel
> Agreed and he is doing more damage to Brave with his posts than helping them.
What is doing damage here are the bullshit claims made about Brave that have been debunked many times already, but you are repeating them anyways to try and damage a competing project. When I point out the fact that these claims are more or less hot air not backed up by anything, I am not damaging Brave I think. I can’t do worse than your blatant misinformation, which is more or less the bottom of the barrel really.
@IH
>They are Google-free in the sense that the browser does not phone home to Google. Switching away from the open source Chromium codebase is in no way desirable.
I would like to add 2 points
1. Extensions downloaded from Google’s extension store are invisible when downloaded through Brave, This is because of Brave’s patented BE-Cloak technology. So Google has no idea what extensions are downloaded through Brave.
2. Switching away from Chromium is indeed no way desirable, because of Chromium’s fuzzing and exploit-away FUD 2000 technology, there have been far fewer zero day exploits in Chromium than Gecko.
Braves user numbers speak for themselves. It is basically inexistent:
[https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-200901-202211]
@Frankel
Any such measurement won’t work, smart guy, because Brave is using Chrome’s user agent and would be counted as Chrome.
Here are the facts, and they are likely bigger now in fact:
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/01/07/brave-browser-users-doubled-again-this-year-to-over-50-million-monthly-active-users/
Addendum:
0.05% market share for Brave:
[https://kinsta.com/browser-market-share/]
It is worse than I first thought. Firefox has a factor 153 higher market share than Brave.
@Frankel
Firefox has 200 million monthly active users, Brave has 50 million active users (January 2022), likely more now. This is factor 4, today more likely factor 3, not factor 153. Very smart, you are not, young padawan.
@IH
Which part of the claims is BS? Brave charging money for ad free search, or Brave taking big tech VC money? Those were the only claims I could see.
@Aluminium
I didn’t specifically talk about your BS, although complaining about ads when liteally all search engines do ads is BS, and so is complaining about a paid tier no one has to use as there are adblockers. This is borderline trolling.
VC money complaint is hypocritical and laughable when the browser you support takes money from Google and has no actual business model of its own.
@IH
Again, why are you using Firefox as the standard to measure other browsers?
You are saying Brave taking big tech VC money is no big deal because Firefox takes Google money.
Are you one of those people who screams,” What about Jeffery Dahmer!!” every time you get pulled over for speeding?
> Again, why are you using Firefox as the standard to measure other browsers?
Because it is being thrown in my face? I did not desire to discuss Firefox when I read this article.
> Are you one of those people who screams,” What about Jeffery Dahmer!!” every time you get pulled over for speeding?
No, I am just someone who can recognize the massive, unasked for hypocrisy of your statements for what it is.
Wait a minute Iron Heart. I have supported you in the past, but I can’t let you go calling out others for hypocrisy when you say things like this:
>VC money complaint is hypocritical and laughable when the browser you support takes money from Google and has no actual business model of its own.
>What browser are you using? Bet it’s a browser developed by a GAFAM company, or a company that is funded by Google via search engine leeching. None of your complaints are free of hypocrisy
You say that Brave taking big tech VC money is excusable because Firefox takes Google money. The problem with this argument is it can be easily reversed. Firefox taking Google money is excusable because Brave takes big tech VC money.
I supported you because I thought you supported Brave, but it has become clear that you are a Firefox troll trying to shill for your favorite browser by putting out stupid and hypocritical statements that are “supposed” to be in favor of Brave.
It is clear you intend undermine Brave by making Brave users look stupid. I am done with you.
@Aluminum
Agreed and he is doing more damage to Brave with his posts than helping them.
LOL imagine being this clueless. Let me waste my time to explain to you and other trolls how wrong you are.
1. What Brave allows are ANALYTICS, not trackers, there is a big difference.
2. When Brave started, they only did 3rd party trackers and 1st party malicious trackers because when you are in a domain, blocking 1st party trackers and ads, will not do much. They already changed that, which is done by setting Brave in Aggressive mode.
3. Brave has(had) to whitelist some scripts because Adblocker gets detected if they are blocked, the only reason to stop that is use redirect and redirect like uBlock does, which weren’t supported for a long time, until now, some months ago Brave added redirect support, then recently, like a month ago they added redirect-rule support, and today with the 0.6.0 release of the adblocker in Nightly they added support for priority values for both modifiers. Which means, brave doesn’t have to whitelist anything anymore and no workaround has to be done in order to use redirect/redirect-rule.
Also, Brave added removeparam support today btw.
4. Even if Brave allows (or whitelists, which is the proper term) stuff you don’t like, you can easily block them, whatever you can’t block, you only need two brain cells to workaround it, but trolls like you I am sure have never even tried to do anything and you only want to spew your ignorance to the internet.
Brave ad business is not even forced on you, it is OPTIN… unlike Google’s business which you can only optout by using adblocker, which is not effective sometimes. So I don’t know why you even care, if you clearly don’t use Brave and you don’t use Brave rewards, you shouldn’t even care about it.
At least Brave has built and done R&D unlike other companies where they get money from ‘partners’, Brave has their own search engine so it is hard to believe they will get a good search engine deal ever. So at least they found a business they can be independent in a way.
Just compare it to Vivaldi, Vivaldi, by default whitelists search partners, including Bing. and nobody complains about it, and they barely do anything with their browser, since their adblocker is so badly made, they will get fairly affected by manifestv2 removal, plus the same guy doing the adblocker is working in the Sync so… but they waste time in more useless stuff like mail and social stuff in the browser.
I mean, like I said, you can easily load your own adblocking lists and remove Brave default ones if you want, you only need 3 brain cells, I have done, so that means anyone could do the same, but like I said, you probably just talk crap with your keyboard warrior ‘anon’ type name, you can’t even say your usual username because you are probably half people talking crap about Brave in every Brave story.
But at least you can stop some ignorance and get some facts checked, I use Brave because of the adblocker, and use uBlock as a way to check if there is a rule I need to correct where it was blocked in uBlock but not in Brave. Brave has the ways to block everything 100% it just misses features to be 99% compatible with uBlock lists, but I don’t go and cry about it and do the workarounds I can, and use custom filters to override anything I don’t agree with, but apparently typing your comments takes less time than blocking whatever analytics or brave ads or whatever you call ‘trackers’ in your ignorance.
Yup. You can never trust a Silicon Valley based company, especially not ones funded by venture capitalists. Those venture capitalists don’t just dish out free money out of altruism, at some point they’re going to start turning the screws.
Also the screenshot in the article really is a typical grifters dialogue. The only thing missing is a few words in all capital letters.
Can we now finally agree that Brave was never “our” browser, just a cynical attempt to cash-in on the privacy-minded crowd? The moment you intergrate ads or data harvesting, your free product is no longer free. Sell your product/service for actual money. If you can’t, it’s because what you offer sucks and you should take the hint and do something else.
@Peter
> Can we now finally agree that Brave was never “our” browser, just a cynical attempt to cash-in on the privacy-minded crowd?
It is privacy-respecting by default, what else do you want? This is more than what you can say about other browsers including Firefox.
> The moment you intergrate ads or data harvesting
Showing contextual ads based on your search is not data harvesting. If I search “car” and car ads are displayed, they did not collect about me. They receive the search term and this is where the ads are coming from. Data harvesting is creating a profile about me, so e.g. displaying car ads because I have searched for cars some time ago, even though my current search is “Microsoft Office”. Brave does ads in the same way DuckDuckGo and StartPage do ads and I have not heard anyone claiming that these ads are not privacy-respecting.
> If you can’t, it’s because what you offer sucks and you should take the hint and do something else.
No browser or search engine that I know of is paid, look around you. They are all free of charge and funded by ads some way or another. Get over it, Premium access for Brave Search is just an additional service just like e.g. Mozilla VPN is an additional service that Mozilla advertises in Firefox. Do you have to use such service? No. You can also block search engine ads for free btw.
@Anon
> Yes let’s trust the crypto browser company
Yes they have a business model that exceeds being a search engine leech.
> who allows trackers through their integrated blocker
The usual fake news coming from you, never gets old I suppose: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/02/12/privacy-browser-braves-user-concern-over-facebook-whitelist/
Repeating it does not make it true.
> and has lied in the past, that those ads are “private”.
There has not yet been any kind of evidence for Brave Rewards not being private, it is literally a local algorithm picking these ads from a generic list of ads, and that algorithm does not rely on any outside servers. This can be confirmed by literally looking at their open source code. Go ahead, show me your proof to the contrary, or is that yet another lie / fake news on your part?
> Watch a year from now we will get a duckduckgo style story coming from Brave.
Pointless speculation. Also, you dislike both DuckDuckGo and Brave Search? May I ask what you use instead? Google or Bing? lmao
@Brad
> You can never trust a Silicon Valley based company
Then good luck finding a browser, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla – are all Silicon Valley companies. What are you left with? Chinese Opera? Again, lmao.
> especially not ones funded by venture capitalists
Yeah man, because that is much worse than being literal GAFAM (Apple, Google, Microsoft) or almost completely funded by Google (Mozilla), literally the biggest data leech in the world. Nothing problematic there.
You people are, for lack of a better word, delusional. You also happen to be lying. Nothing new on gHacks though, large parts of this comment section are this horrible.
>Now You: would you pay for an ad-free search experience without tracking?
Firefox + uBlock Origin + uMatrix/noscript already exist.
The fox gekkers! All spoils in life shall be free.
never forget .. Brave is an advertising company, backed by venture capitalists and deeply invested in crypto .. who happen to also make a browser for their own ends
@this is not a paid advert
What browser are you using? Bet it’s a browser developed by a GAFAM company, or a company that is funded by Google via search engine leeching. None of your complaints are free of hypocrisy.
> What browser are you using
whataboutism? what about the size of your hands? what about the moon landing? was it a hoax?
I can tell you for a fact, that it is a browser developed by a not GAFAM company and all of it’s design decisions are not influenced by any outside party in exchange for money
lets say it is gecko, for argument’s sake. Mozilla made a business decision to fleece google of 500 million a year, and that agreement is for the default search engine in certain regions. There is nothing more to it than that. Nothing is collected or sent to google about individuals by Mozilla, and users are free to change the search engine. Google has no say directly in what Mozilla decides to do with Firefox.
let’s say it’s webkit: Apple made a business decision to fleece google of 3 billion a year …
You keep insinuating that there is something nefarious going on with these search engine deals, without a shred of evidence, even after all these years, and full open source code and not one iota of evidence
@this is not a paid advert
> lets say it is gecko
So Firefox, color me surprised.
> here is nothing more to it than that.
There is. Google knows that most people would switch back to their search engine anyway even if Mozilla was partnered with someone else. There is zero need to pay Mozilla, unless they need them as an antitrust shield which is likely the actual reason. Safari is not multi-platform competition. A de facto monopoly needs the pseudo-competition.
> Google has no say directly in what Mozilla decides to do with Firefox.
Why does Firefox not have an adblocker by default? Why are most privacy settings in Firefox opt-in instead of default, even if they cause no visible breakage? Hm….
> not one iota of evidence
The fact that Firefox is purposefully not privacy-respecting by default and that Google does not necessarily need the deal except to prop them up, is enough evidence for me.
> fleece
Going by your definition of the term, Brave “fleeces” VC money.
Your obvious off-topic Firefox (+ extensions that are available literally anywhere) advertisement aside, this article discusses the search engine, and not the Brave browser.
Curious that you complain about something you do for years by now in Firefox threads :)
@Frankel
> Curious that you complain about something you do for years by now in Firefox threads :)
Glad you are finally admitting that you are here as an advertiser. Some honesty at last. Also nice try at going ad hominem at me, as if my comments consist of pure hot air similar to your comments. I don’t think so.
Your tactic is classic: You derail until Martin deletes the comment subtree.
Self-victimizing doesn’t suit you, nor will anyone buy into it :)
@Frankel
> You derail until Martin deletes the comment subtree.
Derail? I am not the one posting off-topic advertisements here. And this comment section contains so much misinfo and lies, this would be an actual reason to delete it.
> Self-victimizing doesn’t suit you
Where did I do that? The only thing actually suffering here is gHacks. We are here to discuss a change of the Brave Search engine, not to discuss obvious fake news and undeclared ads for a competitor project.
You had to post another one after Martin deleted your previous comments with slurs? Next time it gets archived in the internet archive that people can see who really is posting ad hominem attacks and profanities.
One day the admins of this site will get tired with you.
Also small issue: Martin deleting your personal attacks and slurs is **not** censoring your free speech.
I just put it on the internet archive next time, so people can see what derogatory words you post.