Brendan Eich, the inventor of JavaScript and the ex-CEO of Mozilla, got media’s attention again, only this time it is for his new invention: Brave web browser. It is based on the Chromium web browser and it aims to block website trackers and ads. Take a look at the two screenshots of CNN website in Google Chrome and Brave for comparison:
CNN website in Google Chrome shows advertisement
CNN website in Brave does not have advertisement
All the advertisements on CNN website are blocked by Brave along with many trackers, and if you are curious about how many ads are blocked, you can click on the shield icon on the top right corner in Brave to open Bravery Panel as shown below:
From the screenshot we can see that there are LOTS of advertisements and trackers on CNN website, but thanks to Brave, all of them are blocked. You can also fine-tune Brave shield setting such as blocking scripts and enable fingerprinting protection. Since Brave blocks ads and trackers automatically, it not only protects user’s privacy, but also speeds up the loading time of the website.
You may ask if Brave blocks all Internet ads, how can publishers and website owners make money? Brave allows readers and users to choose a monthly contribution in exchange of minimal ads, and the contribution will be divided among the publisher sites they visited. The publisher can collect their earned contribution after it exceeds the payment threshold (currently $100).
Brave is currently in beta and is available on Windows, macOS, and Linux. I am using Brave on my Windows 10 PC and am impressed by its speed and clean design. If you would like to give it a try, you can download Brave from its official website. One note though: there is only 64-bit version of Brave for Linux platform, so if you are running Linux on an old 32-bit machine, then you will not be able to install it (time to buy a new computer).
