Brave
More info
- Creator
- Brendan Eich, Brian Bondy
- Released
- 2015
- Type
- Web browser
- License
- MPL 2.0
- Website
- brave.com
Browser, and company, that blocks other people's ads by default and offers its own instead.
Brave Software was founded in 2015 by Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and briefly CEO of Mozilla, together with Brian Bondy. The browser is built on Chromium but ships with Shields switched on, blocking trackers, third-party cookies and fingerprinting attempts out of the box. Version 1.0 arrived in 2019.
The business model is where it gets contentious. Users can opt in to Brave's own ads and get paid in the BAT crypto token, which they can then pass on to the sites whose ads they've just blocked. In 2020 the browser was caught autocompleting a crypto exchange's address with Brave's own affiliate code, which the company called a mistake. Since 2021 Brave has run its own search engine on its own index, something few rivals can claim.