I’ve already discussed the ad revenue model. Then there’s the concern about sharing your browsing data with a company that also has your Google search data, Andriod mobile data, YouTube browsing history, reads all your Gmail messages, can see all your trips on Google Maps and these are just the well known Google services. For example, Chrome shipped a change that when you sign into any Google service, Chrome automatically signs you in to Chrome. Google has come under fire lately for privacy concerns. As a private company, they’re incentivised to use their power for personal benefit over what is good for the web. Many people believe this is having an adverse affect on the web because it gives Google huge power over web standards. Why would anyone switch from Chrome to Brave?Ĭhrome has a large market share, somewhere between 60-70%. For example, If you agree to distribute £100 of BAT tokens per month and spend 5% of your browsing time this month watching MKBHD tech videos, he will get £5 in BAT. Brave will distribute the money based on time spent on each site. Users can buy BAT tokens and configure Brave to distribute them to their favourite sites.

These are blockchain based tokens stored in Brave’s built in wallet. A new model would be required.īrave’s answer to this new model is Basic Attention Tokens (BAT). Meaning, the primary method by which content creators get paid would no longer be advertising. If Brave was widely adopted it would kill the internet’s ad revenue model. According to The Guardian only 22% of U.K internet users use adblockers, as of 2016, and I’ve seen similar numbers for the rest of the world.

However, people who use ad blockers are still in the minority. Personally, I used an adblocker with Chrome, so that doesn’t affect me. But below the surface Brave is trying to be more than just a web browser. But Brave is built on Chromium so it feels familiar to Chrome users. On the surface Brave is just another browser, like Firefox or Safari. If Brave’s browsing experience is good, I plan to switch perminantly. However, with growing controversy about Google’s data collection practices and Chrome’s dominance, I decided to test Brave and figure out whether it’s worth switching. A few people recommended that I switch to Brave. Brave Browser has been around for a few years, it became more usable when the company released a new version that was built on Chromium.

Brave chrome