- Google really messed up.
It's official.
I'm deleting Google Chrome.
And I can promise you,
the title of this video is not clickbait.
After using Chrome for years,
I'm finally deleting it for good.
So why am I deleting it?
In January, 2023,
Google is making a change
that is going to cripple ad blockers.
I'm a firm believer that ad blockers
greatly enhanced the viewing experience
and I'm not willing to put up with this change.
In prior recent comparisons,
I've looked at Safari and Opera,
but I've never been able to fully switch away from Chrome.
I did use Opera for a while,
but I ended up switching back to Chrome
due to the constant bugs, glitches,
and concerns over data privacy
due to the company who owns Opera.
So back to Chrome it was,
but this time I am officially deleting Chrome for good.
This all started when Google announced to change
to the Manifest Extension Platform.
This is the platform that developers use
to make Chrome extensions.
The rollout of the new Manifest V3
will begin in January, 2023,
and the old Manifest V2 will be fully phased out by June.
So this means that June is effectively
when ad blockers are going to be crippled.
I've had a desire to get away from Google Chrome
for a long time because, well, Google is a data company.
They already have enough of my personal information
through Gmail, Google Maps, Google search, YouTube,
all the Google products.
And Google Chrome is just another way
of collecting user data.
But the Manifest V3 rollout
is the straw that broke the camel's back.
I finally have enough reason
to delete Google Chrome for good,
and I'm starting my journey by checking out Brave.
As soon as I downloaded Brave,
I felt strangely right at home.
I had this weird deja vu feeling.
Did I even switch browsers?
In reality, I did have to disable some settings
like the Brave Wallet and Brave Rewards,
but once I configured a few things,
I felt right at home.
I think that's partly by design
and partly because Brave is using Chromium,
but more on that later.
What annoyance I faced with Brave was the syncing feature.
I set up Brave on my laptop
and wanted to sync everything to my desktop,
and boy, was that a pain.
I had a lot of trouble getting the feature to work
so I had to keep enabling sync and disabling sync
because it kept getting stuck.
But I do hope they can improve the sync feature
in the future.
One of the most important things I look for in a browser
is whether or not it supports Chrome extensions.
I use extensions like 1Password, Rakuten,
Honey, vidIQ, and TubeBuddy,
some of which are only available on Google Chrome.
But there is a slight loophole to that statement.
Browser set are built on Chromium,
can run Chrome extensions,
and that's why Brave is actually able to run
all of my Chrome extensions perfectly.
So Brave feels a lot like Chrome.
Brave runs my Chrome extensions
and it even has advanced features like profiles.
This is a powerful feature of Google Chrome
that not many other Chromium browser support.
Opera doesn't have profiles, but Brave does.
And it's another reason I felt right at home with Brave.
At this point, you might be thinking,
"Well, if Brave feels so similar to Chrome,
why make this switch?
And what about Manifest V3?
If Brave runs Chrome extensions,
then wouldn't ad blockers also be crippled in Brave?"
Brave has already made a statement
saying they will still continue to offer leading protection
against invasive ads and trackers,
and this comes in the form of Brave's built-in ad blocker.
The ad blocker does not use Google's extension API
and it's native to the browser
so this effectively bypasses the roadblock
that Google is trying to set up.
Since it's not reliant on Manifest V3,
it's not gonna be crippled by the rollout in January.
It's clear that Brave is a privacy forward company
and they're gonna do whatever it takes to keep ad blockers
and other privacy-minded features
in the browser for the long run.
The Brave ad blocker also includes settings
to block cookies, trackers, and scripts.
But here's my reservation about the Brave ad blocker.
In some ways, it kind of feels like a conflict of interest
because Brave actually sells its own private ads
to be displayed in the browser.
Now, these ads are not displayed on webpages.
They're not banner ads.
They're not obnoxious popups.
They're not videos that are gonna play in the background.
Instead, these ads could appear
in the form of a background image on the new tab page
or a card in the Brave newsfeed or even a push notification.
And you can disable Brave ads
and choose not to see them at all.
But I have some concerns that maybe in the future,
Brave ads are not going to be optional.
And since the Brave ad blocker is native
and built into the browser,
couldn't Brave essentially start
displaying ads in other places
and choose to not block their own ads.
But I think it's likely
that Brave would not do something like this in the future.
It seems fundamentally against their mission
and they've made this clear
through stuff like the Brave Rewards Program.
If you choose to enable Brave ads,
you can actually use Brave rewards
to get paid for viewing the ads.
So essentially, Brave is taking the revenue
that they're getting from advertisers
and distributing a small fraction of it to you
for viewing the ad in the form of BAT,
or the Basic Attention Token.
This is a cryptocurrency created by Brave,
but you could redeem it for cash, gift cards,
or just keep it as crypto.
And on that note, for crypto and NFT users,
Brave has some native features like IPFS support
and a built-in crypto wallet.
The crypto wallet is really convenient for storing your BAT
or if you wanna get your feet wet with crypto
without setting up a third party wallet somewhere else.
You can also browse Web3 domains
and decentralize sites like my very own craylor.crypto
without the need for a browser extension
or further configuration.
Right now, only a handful of browsers
natively support Web3 domains
and I'm glad to see Brave is one of them.
Brave has really impressed me with all its features.
It's easy to like Brave because it's built on Chromium.
But Chromium introduces risk to user data
because it's built by Google.
So what is Chromium?
It's Google's open source web engine that powers Chrome.
You may not realize it,
but Chromium powers a lot of web browsers.
Chrome, Opera, Brave, Microsoft Edge.
These are all powered by Chromium.
Since the code is open source,
it can be customized and modified
to immediate browser's needs.
This is how Brave is able to have their built-in ad blocker
and other features.
But is it possible that Google is collecting user data
and sending it back to their mothership?
After all, Google is in the business of data collection.
And why would they just offer this open source product
out of the kindness of their heart?
Many users have pointed out
that Chromium is kind of a giant question mark
when it comes to user data privacy.
Web engines like this
take millions of lines of code to function
and no one really knows what's going on behind the scenes.
Building your own web engine is a massive undertaking.
And that's why the only main competitors
at this point are Firefox and Safari.
Even with all the downsides,
I just can't get away from Chromium browsers
until developers put resources
into making extensions available on other browsers.
Plus every website supports Chrome due to its market share.
That means these websites are going to load properly
on Chromium browsers.
I can't say I made an attempt to switch
to a non-Chromium browser,
so if you wanna see what my testing was like in Safari,
I have a video on that you can watch here.