Tag: browser

I enjoy exploring new services and products that have the courage to challenge well established existing companies. Brave is a new cross-platform browser available as an alternative to whatever you are using now. A classic tech business model seems to be doing what your competitors don’t and for alternatives to Google Chrome (Apple Safari, Firefox) this seems to be blocking ads and protecting against the collection of personal information. Brave is in this camp. This makes Brave very fast and it offers convenient controls for avoiding ads and cookies.

The image above shows the security controls and yes there are ads (I always use the Free Tech for Teachers site when I want to check for banner ads, but these are not the type of ad that is based on your browsing history).

I have mixed feelings about ads as a content producer. Users seldom click on the Google ads that accompany my posts so I make very little money from my offerings. This is not a concern to me, but I am interest in what this could mean to others committed to generating reasonable compensation for producing their content.

Brave has a plan for this situation. Brave intends to allow users to offer micropayment to the sites they visit. I have encountered this one time before. The idea is that as a user you commit a certain amount per month and this money is then offered to those you visit (and designate). I am interested in doing this as a consumer, but I am waiting to I am home and have access to my desktop machine because it appears that the synchronization of multiple platforms is yet quite primitive and the cross-platform payment option is not yet available. Payment and collection requires bit currency systems and I assume this will be an impediment until things are easier.

Reports I have read on the Brave business model have me confused. This ComputerWorld description seems to imply that Brave will partly fund itself by substituting its own vetted ads for existing ads. I read the Brave material as offering this as an option and not a requirement.

I promise a followup to this post as I have time to explore the funding model. For the time being, I think that Brave is worth exploring just for the speed advantage it offers. Note that many of the plugins you count on when using Chrome will not be available, but these enhancements will likely be coming if the company takes off.

One of the themes I seem to write about a lot is the value of competition. Competition in the market takes care of many problems. In general, the companies that do not treat customers well or who sit on their accomplishments and do not seem to improve their products or services are passed over as other companies with these commitments become apparent. For example, my support for an open Internet (net neutrality) stems from this value. For many of us, there are few or no options for how we connect to the Internet and no hence customer support and innovation suffer.

I think it is important to support competition when possible. When we lock our activity into a single service or product and do not constantly explore alternatives, we end up narrowing our own options and possibly the options available to others. I see this happening with browsers. I see this happening in my own behavior. I have the opportunity to use multiple hardware devices and we all have the opportunity to use the Internet in different ways, but I feel myself sliding into total reliance on Chrome. This may not seem like a significant issue to dwell on, but consider possible long term consequences. The different browsers associated with different companies are associated with different profit motives. Google is funded by ads. Ads are more valuable (to the provider) when targeted to users. Hence, Google benefits by knowing about you and using this information to its advantage. Apple seems more and more to have positioned Safari as the anti-Chrome. Apple makes money on hardware and I assume just maintains a quality browser as a hedge against domination of the Internet space by others. Since Apple is not dependent on ad revenue, the Safari browser can argue that it protects the privacy of users. However, because Apple is focused on its hardware, it is not as interested in creating software products that are cross platform.

This post was prompted by something I read about Firefox. Firefox was long my browser of choice, but then I found Chrome and kind of drifted away. I feel bad failing to live up to my own values. I am not certain of the existing connections between Firefox and Mozilla because this relationship seems to change with time, but the open source movement (Mozilla) has played such as a valuable role in the development of technology and I hope remains a constant hedge against total commercialization of the valuable resources we may take for granted. Hence, my suggestion for today – try a different browser over lunch.