We may live in an era some call the golden age of browsers, but not all browsers are created equal. Safari works well for most of Apple’s customers and is the second most used browser on planet earth.
Yes, there’s Google Chrome, Mozilla’s new and fast Firefox, whatever Microsoft pushes onto their customers these days, but browsers have competition and one of them is doing what isn’t easily done by the major browser makers. Make. Life. Better.
Blockchain Browser
Most browsers we use these days have walked slowly through iterative improvements in recent years; ho hum, bah humbug, same old, same old. Here’s one that is different and it’s so good at what it does already that it’s worth using; not necessarily to replace Safari or Chrome or Firefox completely, but it can help to make the world a better place.
This minimalist browser is called Brave and it could easily bring a brave new world to browser users and publishers. First, Brave clocks ads and trackers. That’s a good thing for users but not so good for website publishers.
Brave blocks ads and trackers by default so you browse faster and safer. You can add ad blocking extensions to your existing browser, but it’s complicated and they often conflict with one another because browser companies don’t test them. Worse, the leading ad blockers still allow some ads and all trackers.
See? Two sides to every coin. By blocking ads and trackers Brave speeds up the browsing process.
Brave can tell you how many trackers and ads have been blocked and how much time you’ve saved by using Brave (instead of waiting for gargantuan websites to load up in the browser window). All that blocking makes for a faster and safer browsing experience.
OK, blocking ads for speed, safety, security is one thing, but how does Brave help website publishers who depend upon advertising revenue to keep the doors open and the lights on?
Blockchain. John Russell explains:
One of the selling points of Brave is that it uses its token (BAT, Basic Attention Token) to disrupt the current financial norms of online publishing. The company wants to reward users for browsing the web, while also helping to make advertising less intrusive and more relevant. In another important focus, it wants to use BAT to let readers reward content makers whose websites they visit.
In essence, Brave is working toward a secure micropayments system which rewards publishers when Brave browser users visit their websites. To get the whole shebang started, Brave has raised more than $40-million to further development and now plans to give browser users hundreds of thousands of BAT tokens to use.
Simply put, browse the web and website publishers get paid by Brave browser users. That’s a new take on how to combat the growing anger and distrust over advertisers and trackers that permeate the interwebs.
That’s a fairly major move given that Brave claims to have one million monthly users and, on the publisher side, over 1,100 websites and 600 YouTube channels as content partners. YouTube was added to the platform last month.
Brave allows browser users to contribute to websites in two ways. Automatic micropayments divided among the websites you visit most frequently (that also use Brave’s micropayments system), or you decide which sites get paid.
This is an idea whose time has come. Even Apple is in collusion with Google and other advertisers by accepting payment to place Google as the default search engine in Safari. What’s in it for Brave? First, it gets a nominal cut of donations, and could receive a cut from accepted advertising. Some revenue may even be shared back to Brave users. Brave’s BAT technology ensures that money goes where it should.
It is a utility token based on the Ethereum technology that can also be used as a unit of account between advertisers, publishers, and users in a new, blockchain-based digital advertising and services platform. The token is not a digital currency, security or a commodity.
I think of it as a mashup of Bitcoin meets blockchain. Tokens are not digital currency but are required to track and transfer usage and value.
Regardless, this could very well be the wave of the future and a shot in the arm that both website publishers and their visitors need to create more harmony in their relationship.
Could. Give it a try.
Mac360 isn’t set up on Brave BAT technology. Yet. We have advertisers, all of whom are focused on Apple-centric products and displayed in a traditional method– but completely without trackers. That’s why Mac360 and other AppleVillagers websites load so quickly in your browser window. No trackers. Not even an analytics tracker.
