The new owners of Link Bubble made it open source yesterday, but that's just the beginning of what Brave Software (led by former Mozilla CEO and JavaScript inventor Brendan Eich) has planned for the project it purchased from dev Chris Lacy. The company has started explaining its vision for Brave, and it's an ambitious one. Brave will redirect links to HTTPS, block tracking cookies, and (most importantly) strip out ads that invade your privacy. Unlike other ad-blockers, Brave will be able to insert friendlier ads that will help support publishers.
So, why do this with Link Bubble as a base? We asked Brave co-founder Brian Bondy about that, and he said that both he and Eich used and liked Link Bubble. Buying this app gave them a head start on the Android version of Brave, which will retain the floating functionality of Link Bubble. Rather than continue focusing on being a launcher for links, the revamped Link Bubble/Brave will be a "full browser" with a new blocking engine and support for the Android NDK.
No one is really happy with the state of ads on the web—Artem regularly rants about the stupid stuff we put up with as an advertising-supported website. Brave Software points out that as much as 60% of the load time of websites can be attributed to ads and trackers. If you take that out, things are obviously a lot faster (the above video is the iOS version, but Bondy says the Android version is similarly fast). However, Brave Software is also sympathetic to the way most websites (including AP) are operated. If everyone used ad-block, many publications would be unable to operate. So, the revenue from ads inserted by Brave will be split with the sites you visit (sites can sign up to get a share of the ads displayed for them). Brave doesn't get any of your data.
The ads allowed by Brave will be anonymous and won't disrupt page flow. The company says it has developed a cloud robot that finds these spaces on pages, so you won't end up with a bunch of wasted space. Brave hopes to start out giving about 55% of ad revenue to publishers, but that could increase to as much as 70% as the browser gains more market share. Users could even earn a small sliver of the ad dollar in the form of Bitcoin, then be able to send that money to their favorite websites. Brave also won't kill native ads run by sites that don't rely on trackers.
Brave Software is a for-profit business, but it has a very populist pitch. If it can turn a profit while also protecting user privacy, filtering out junk ads, and supporting publishers, that would be pretty rad. We don't have a firm date for the move from Link Bubble to Brave, but an early build has been made available to testers. We'll be taking a look at that soon, so stay tuned.
Source: Brave Software