this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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It seems to me that nothing in life is free, including browsers. Yeah, free software exists, and that works fine for many kinds of software, but not browsers. Browsers are a living thing, they have to change constantly to adapt to the changing environment. Maintaining a browser takes effort, to an extent that far exceeds that of other programs, word processing, games, image editing, etc. A browser is a primary attack surface for all manner of malware and exploits. It's web facing and it executes code provided by external sources. That last sentence should give you chills.
So all that is to say, that it is very much non trivial to maintain a browser. So it only stands to reason that maintaining it consistently won't actually happen without some amount of compensation.
So how do you pay for a browser? Well everyone seems to agree, with ads. This method is apparently quite viable as a business. But I probably don't have to tell you that there are a bunch of problematic aspects to it. User data collection (and resale) is probably top on the list of problems. It's a pretty serious breach of privacy, I hope I didn't have to convince anyone of that.
To get to my point though, Brave is the only browser I know of attempting to use a different model to support their project. They're trying to allow people to just pay for the web themselves, rather than let advertisers pay for the web while users give up all their data. It may not be a perfect implementation, but from where I'm standing I don't see anyone else even trying...
Correct me if I'm wrong though, i'd love to see other viable models.
That's a long winded way to try to excuse secretly mining crypto, far right misinformation pushing, transgender phobia, and more that Brave does / has done.
I also want to point out an operating system is a huge project to create and maintain, and yet Linux has accomplished this without all the shit Brave has pulled.
PS: technically Brave has used ads as well.
Brave does not do this.
Goggles is the first part, the owner is the second part