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Brave defends privacy against Google's Web Bundles

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@pvmihalache
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Google still dominates the market, with over 70% of the internet users using Google Browsers. But in 2019 was born a fast, private and secure web browser for PC, one that will become Google's first real competitor. Brave Browser was designed to give users unmatched speed, security and improved privacy.
On top of that, Brave users can earn Basic Attention Token (BAT), and receive their share of online revenue. Users attention towards published content is monitored by the browsers, but never leave the device, and better advertising is delivered. BAT is credited for the attention and for adds distribution.

The Brave Shield fights against ads and software that will track users preferences and demographics, allowing them to surf the internet freely. By doing that, the internet speed is higher, and the cookies are not bulking up into the computer's memory. Brave Shield will stop spam and any other form of offensive and malicious content.

Google's Web Bundles

This new Google feature is designed to ensure the integrity of a web page and its sub-resources but in the process, it can disable the add-blocker and will let users exposed. Basically this feature will reduce the users privacy. As the defender of internet security and privacy, Brave decided to stand against Web Bundles, through his senior privacy researcher. Peter Snyder published an post where he highlighted Bundles threats against privacy and how google web specifications can destroy content blocking and code scrutiny. The new Google web specification will bundle the files which are building a Web page and all other codes and components into a single file with a .wbn extension. The .wbn file can be delivered from a content delivery network node, accessing the page quicker than when it is accessed from the server. However, the extra speed comes with a risk, as the Web Bundle removes the URL and gives Google control over the .wbn content. By using the content delivery network nodes, users automatically agree to access the whole package, including additional cookies, trackers and maybe viruses or trojans. The direct result of Web Bundles will be increased speed with security risks, one which I am not willing to take.

Is Google Web Bundles the killer of privacy?

By accessing the website through the URL, the user can take actions and report it if it looks abusive, therefore the user has control, security and privacy. When the code or information cannot be clearly identified from a larger package, reporting it becomes more difficult, as Web Bundles will set private namespaces to all URLs making privacy tools unable to identify the offensive content.

"The concern is that by making URLs not meaningful, like just these arbitrary indexes into a package, the websites will become things like .SWF files or PDF files, just a big blob that you can't reason about independently, and it'll become an all or nothing deal," Peter Snyder - Brave Senior privacy researcher

Will be good to follow if Google will accommodate critics or ignore them and use their dominant position to implement the Web Bundles by force. If they will ignore the critics, will be a risky move as they will show that they are driven by profit.

The Brave alternative

Brave Browser works for their users to create a better internet browsing experience. By eliminating all ad trackers and advertising components, the browser offers extra speed when accessing web-pages. Also the advertising model will avoid showing the same and same adds. Even if the trackers are removed from the build-up, Brave doesn't block commercials within the search results, therefore users can find their desired products when looking on various markets or just searching for an item.

Users can opt-in to see adds or to block them completely. Brave users who opt-in to receive ads will be rewarded with BAT tokens, which can be kept into the Brave Browser, moved to Uphold or other wallets or given to publishers as support for their sites.

I also have Presearch installed on my Brave Browser, collecting PRE tokens for my searches and surfing. Adding some extra tokens in the portfolio never hurt anyone, only gave the chance to gain extra income on the long term.

While Google Chrome was storing all my moves, and was spamming me with the same adds, and Brave Browser proved to be the fastest browser on the market, with an excellent reward system and no ad trackers, for me was an easy choice to decide which one to use.

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