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.
I would argue it is a Google project, not a Google product. I would say the same of webp and Android. The original project may be made by Google, however every implementation is vendor-specific and may not have any calls back to Google. So, saying “you are assured zero privacy” is not helpful when the lack of privacy can be prevented by the vendor.
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When someone builds a skyscraper and then you take one small unit in it and paint the walls a color you like and change the light fixtures, would you say that you built the skyscraper?
Because that’s what Brave (and everyone else who builds on top of Chrome codebase) does.
When the builders then decide to remake the wiring in the whole building so it doesn’t work with your new light fixtures you bend over and take it because you don’t have a choice - you have nowhere near close enough resources to remake the whole wiring for yourself.
That’s Google’s power over the forks.