Brave, the new web browser that removes ads and blocks third-party data tracking, is on its way to the public. After removing almost all “bad” ads from web pages, Brave will fill those spaces with its own “clean” ads in an effort to improve the user experience without completely canceling out ad revenue from websites.
Brendan Eich, former CEO and co-founder of Mozilla, is working with a team to develop Brave, which has yet to reach the beta stage. You can read more details about the browser here.
I got a developer version of Brave (0.7.9) for OS X and started exploring what exactly sets it apart from other browsers.
Ad removal
Opening up an article on Mashable immediately shows that Brave, on the surface, has succeeded in removing advertisements. Here is a comparison of a Mashable page loaded on Google Chrome and the same page loaded on Brave:
Brave removes advertising, leaving blank spaces where the ads would be, but after a moment those spaces tighten up and get filled with normal web content. Here’s how that looks:
I took a look at some other websites and the same thing happened, although Brave didn’t adjust content into the blank spaces of every website. On some sites, Brave inserted a placeholder image of what will presumably be an example of where the browser will place its own ads.