I have seen many people in this community either talking about switching to Brave, or people who are actively using Brave. I would like to remind people that Brave browser (and by extension their search engine) is not privacy-centric whatsoever.
Brave was already ousted as spyware in the past and the company has made many decisions that are questionable at best. For example, Brave made a cryptocurrency which they then added to a rewards program that is built into the browser to encourage you to enable ads that are controlled by Brave.
Edit: Please be aware that the spyware article on Brave (and the rest of the browsers on the site) is outdated and may not reflect the browser as it is today.
After creating this cryptocurrency and rewards program, they started inserting affiliate codes into URL’s. Prior to this they had faked fundraising for popular social media creators.
Do these decisions seem like ones a company that cares about their users (and by extension their privacy) would make? I’d say the answer is a very clear no.
One last thing, Brave illegally promoted an eToro affiliate program making a fortune from its users who will likely lose their money.
Edit: To the people commenting saying how Brave has a good out-of-the-box experience compared to other browsers, yes, it does. However, this is not a warning for your average person, this is a warning for people who actively care about their privacy and don’t mind configuring their browser to maximize said privacy.
Would you pay for a browser upfront?
Yes, if it avoided this headache of ads, spyware and any other intrusive monetization. I’d pay for any category of software I wanted to use for this reason. Which is how software used to be sold before people got used to not paying for anything upfront and instead paid for it in hidden data harvesting.
Would you pay for each update as well? It’s not MS Word where you can still be using Word 97. You need constant updates.
Usually the up front cost of the software would fund some number of years of updates. Then after that you would pay for a new version.
Sounds like a subscription would make more sense. Which exists BTW, there are subscription browsers.
subscription means don’t pay lose access. So no, not a subscription.
But as soon as you stop getting updates, a browser is as good as useless. It’s a security nightmare and you shouldn’t use a browser that isn’t up to date.
Problem is, having loads of people using an outdated browser because they don’t want to pay for updates could cause problems for everyone. Browsers need to be kept up to date.
Except the browser isn’t the only thing that needs to have revenue, websites also do, so buying a browser upfront doesn’t negate the need for ads
I’d pay for a browser upfront if free solutions didn’t already exist.
That’s the problem though, isn’t it. Free solutions do exist, so browser makers have to find other ways to monetize
There are plenty of free, open sourced, browsers that don’t monetize their users.