Mozilla’s former CEO is launching a game-changing new web browser

After a controversy surrounding his past donations caused Brendan Eich to resign from his position as the CEO of Mozilla back in 2014, he decided to launch a new startup that aims to fix what he considers to be one of the biggest problems on the Internet: advertisements. His startup is developing a new web browser called Brave, a Chromium-based browser that comes with built-in ad-blocking software that Eich claims will make it faster and more secure than any other browser out there without add-ons. What makes Brave so interesting, however, is that it doesn’t just block ads, it replaces them with other ads that don’t slow down browsing and don’t track users, and then shares the revenue from those ads with the owner of the website, the provider of the ad, and the user that’s viewing the ad. 

Brendan Eich is making a comeback. He’s the creator of JavaScript and one of the founders of Mozilla, the organisation behind the Firefox browser, so he knows a thing or two about the web. But in 2014, after being appointed CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, he found himself at the middle of a firestorm. Eich had donated to Proposition 8, a failed Californian ballot initiative that aimed to define marriage as between one man and one woman. When news of the donation became public, he was highly criticised, and ultimately resigned from the role. Eich is now launching a new startup, called Brave, that aims to “fix” a problem with the modern internet — adverts. Advertising is sick, Eich says. It’s intrusive, tracking users with “cookies, tracker pixels, fingerprinting, everything,” and slowing the internet down to boot — and as a result, users are increasingly turning to ad blocking software to eliminate them altogether. Eich’s solution: A new web browser that blocks all adverts by default — and then replaces them with new ones. Brave (the browser) is going to have adblocking software baked into it. This, Eich told Business Insider in an interview, will have two benefits: Privacy and speed. First, privacy. Modern advertising is invasive, building up profiles to target users more effectively with ads. This is why people use anti-tracking plugins have proliferated. Brave “preserves data sovereignty, anonymity,” Eich said.