The Backstory
A while back I completely
maxed out on super twirly, flashing and stupidly animated ads every time I opened a browser to visit a website. All this extraneous crap was driving me crazy. So
I decided to try the Brave browser, which some geeks in my tech podcasts have long been recommending.
Now don't get me wrong. I fully understand the need for people creating content to support their creation work with advertising. But I have lost all patience with over-the-top, in-your-face flashing banners and twitching graphics that serve as a de facto entry barrier to many websites. Fortunately for us all there is a browser that puts these ads in their place and sometimes even eliminates some of them.
To learn more, I asked my AI assistant to answer this question:
- "What is so great about the Brave browser?”
You can scroll down a few paragraphs to see my assistant's nicely detailed and summarized response.
However, if you'd rather just jump right in and
start playing with Brave on your own you can simply go to https://brave.com/, download it for yourself and get started.
Brave fixes YouTube!
Here's my favorite Brave setting: "Open YouTube links in Brave." Because the video plays inside Brave rather than the YouTube app, you benefit from Brave’s built-in ad blocker and privacy protections, meaning zero video ads. Needless to say, I never go to YouTube anymore to watch videos. I have completely wiped out all YouTube ads by watching YouTube videos exclusively through the Brave browser. It makes YouTube usable again!!
I'm sure there's some really cool stuff going on under the hood to make this possible. The bottom line is that you are using a powerful tool that has automatic ad blocking and privacy shields while running on the superfast, open source Chromium web engine. If you're like me, once you use Brave you'll never go back to Chrome or Safari or any other browser with a hidden agenda.
Four Steps to Cranking Up Brave
In practice, there are four steps to activating Brave when you're doing a Google search. (Of course this assumes you've gone to your app store first and installed it! Duh!)
1. Complete the Google search & decide which site you want to go to.
2. Go to the site and open it. (And ignore all its twitchy ad solicitations.)
3. Find the three dots in the upper right corner of your browser screen and click them.
4. Choose "Open in Brave Browser."
That's it! The animated ads and other garbage have been slapped back, giving you a much more pleasant and focused browsing experience.
(Note: Brave browser is available for Apple and Android devices, as well as Windows, Mac and Linux devices. So whether you're on a portable device or powerful desktop device, you can take advantage of braves features. See: https://brave.com/ )
Detailed AI Summary: What's so great about the Brave browser?
[Content within the quotes below was generated by my AI assistant. -MG]
"The Brave browser is highly regarded primarily because it offers robust, out-of-the-box privacy protections and significantly faster page loading speeds compared to traditional browsers like Google Chrome. Built on the open-source Chromium web engine, it combines the familiar performance and extension compatibility of Chrome with a strict, privacy-first philosophy.
The core features that make Brave popular include:
Built-In Privacy & "Brave Shields"
- Automatic Ad Blocking: Brave blocks invasive ads by default on every page you visit, including YouTube ads, without requiring third-party extensions.
- Tracker and Cookie Blocking: It automatically blocks cross-site trackers, third-party cookies, and bounce tracking.
- Fingerprint Protection: It prevents companies from identifying your device through browser fingerprinting techniques.
- HTTPS Upgrades: The browser automatically forces websites to use secure, encrypted HTTPS connections whenever possible.
Enhanced Performance
- Faster Speeds: Because it strips out heavy ads and trackers before a page even loads, web pages load noticeably faster than they do on standard browsers.
- Lower Resource Usage: Blocking background tracking scripts reduces RAM consumption and device processing power compared to memory-heavy browsers like Chrome.
Advanced Security Features
- Tor Integration: For maximum anonymity, Brave includes a private browsing mode that routes your traffic directly through the Tor network.
- Independent Search Engine: It defaults to Brave Search, which operates on its own independent index of the web to deliver search results without tracking your search history.
- Built-in VPN: For device-wide security, Brave offers an optional, subscription-based Firewall + VPN.
Added Ecosystem Utilities
- Brave Talk: Free, fully encrypted video calling built right into the browser with no extensions or sign-ups required.
- Brave Rewards: An optional opt-in ecosystem where users can choose to view privacy-respecting ads in exchange for Basic Attention Tokens (BAT), a cryptocurrency used to tip favorite content creators.
- Easy Migration: Because it is Chromium-based, you can seamlessly import your Chrome bookmarks, history, and passwords, and use any extension from the Chrome Web Store."
Conclusion
So why not just jump right in and
start playing with Brave on your own? Simply go to https://brave.com/ and download it for yourself.
Enjoy!
