Brave - The Little Browser That Could

I love Brave. Every time I log on and see how many ads and cookies were blocked and time that I saved my mental health gives a high five to my soul.

The Brave browser today:

• Doubled their user growth from 2020 to 2021 (24M to 50M)

• Claims to be 3x faster than Google Chrome

• Brave has over 21 million daily active users and 55 million monthly active users.

Browser wars have been waged since the beginning of the Internet. Back in 2012 the ratio was split relatively even between Internet Explorer (30%), Mozilla Firefox (23%) and Google Chrome (30%).

Apple’s default Safari lingered along with 10%. Me, since I’ve always cherished the underdogs and misfits chose Opera (~4%)

Most of the internet users just go with the default settings and get used to it. Once you “make it yours” by adding bookmarks and add-ons from Google Chrome Extensions the chances of switching will drop.

The pain and perceived effort to change the platform just isn’t worth the squeeze.

Which btw… is the reason why B2B software companies put huge efforts into helping you migrate from old to new platform.

Imagine jumping from not-so-perfect CRM with tens of thousands of contacts and open deals to a seemingly way better one. The risk is just too great.

The second reasons why you’re using either Google’s, Microsoft’s or Apple’s browser is, they are serving it to you on the silver platter. Their reach and distribution is immense! The browser integrate with all the other applications you’re already using and ties into the marketplace of native and third-party solutions (I’m talking about browser extensions here).

The extensions were the reason for me to change my beloved lite misfit browser Opera for Google Chrome. The value of extra tools outweighed the underdog affinity (sorry Opera!).

The market looked pretty much locked-in but as you might be aware, the corpo solutions gives you a lot but also takes a lot - in that case your privacy.

Google makes 80% of money through ads - most of it through Google Search. This might change really soon with AI, but it’s still a cash making cow that keeps on giving and supporting huge industry of marketers in content and PPC.

But that means you have to give cookie consent and let the browser track all your history and serve you creepy ads everytime you’re online.

Just a price of being online, right?

In a way, yes! The privacy is the first to go when convenience of getting all the information is there.

What’s annoying is all this bulk cookies started to slow down the browser. This with combination of annoying pop-ups and banners annoyed the heck out of everyone.

You could got rid of them by installing an Ad Blocker but even that added to the bulk of operations using the Chrome browser.

When there’s a problem, there’s an opportunity.

Enter Brave.

Jab, Jab, Right Hook, Uppercut of Brave - The Privacy-focused Browser

Ya boi don’t want to be watched online so the privacy and data security became important. The hero I need enters the chat.

Brave Browser

Brave, founded by Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla, is an open-source browser focused on providing enhanced privacy features and a faster browsing experience. You had me at “faster”.

Brave out of the box offers:

• Jab 1 - Built-in ad blocker: By default, Brave blocks ads, trackers, and third-party cookies, thereby protecting users' data and reducing page load times.

• Jab 2 - Privacy-focused search engines: Brave's default search engine is DuckDuckGo, a search engine that doesn't track user activities or store personal information.

• Right Hook - Enhanced security features: Brave includes features like HTTPS Everywhere, which ensures that users connect to encrypted versions of websites whenever possible, and fingerprinting protection, which prevents websites from uniquely identifying users based on their device settings

• Faster browsing experience: YOU ARE SPEAKING MY LANGUAGE BRUH! By blocking ads and trackers, Brave claims to offer faster page load times compared to other browsers. Result - smoother browsing experience and reduced data usage for users.

The best thing to counteract the main pain point of switching - Brave is built on Chromium - the same platform Chrome uses for its own browser.

Which means - all your bookmarks, extensions, and habits are migrated with a few clicks.

The results followed.

How they got the users on-board

By making the pain of switching super easy.

Usually switching software feels like getting a colonoscopy (I don’t actually know how it feels but I assume it’s not pleasant) - you know you have to do it, but you really don’t want to.

Companies that make migration easy have such an advantage. With Brave it felt more like moving your beach blanky and umbrella from noisy, windy part of the beach to the peaceful and serene part.

While it’s not perfect, the onboarding breakdown from growth.design folks will give you the idea how smooth it is

Warning Signs and Dangers

Even though Brave is a success story, and most of their users don't want to switch back to Chrome, they are taking only 1% of the browser market. (Ain't that crazy - 50 million users is only 1% of the browser marketshare).

Even though Brave has been doubling their user growth every year, the dangers are there. With AI approaching fast, they will have to stay vigilant and offer competitive product. Bing is already taking some of that marketplace back from Chrome.

Their growth has been falling off in the past month, so it's going to be interesting to see how they reach to the changing market.

3 Savage Tweets

3 Wicked Songs

The music scene lost an absolute legend this past week. I have to include my favorite track of Ryuichi Sakamoto (RIP) in this newsletter. The Ironsides's the Web sounds like a prelude to Quentin Tarantino's alternative Jackie Brown movie, and lastly finishing up with a track of one of my favorite stoner rock artists.

If you liked this week's newsletter, please forward it to one friend who's into tech, marketing, and business.

Have a wonderful week!

🤘🤘

d.