As far as I know, Brave wants to identify itself as Chrome to avoid discriminatory treatment, but Brave can be identified on “WhatIsMyBrowser.com”, can find out why and fix it? Thanks!
screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/63rq7mh.jpeg
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It is not a bug but a feature done for privacy.
Chrome has 80% market share while brave has 0.05% market share. From privacy and fingerprinting point of view, it is better to cloak your browser with the chrome User agent.
Also, it done for compatibility purpose. That is to avoid breaking websites for brave users where the website make not recognize brave as a browser but will recognize chrome and render the website as if it was rendering for chrome.
In a hypothetical scenario where brave has 500 million market share (10%), it will have its own User Agent and whatismybrowser will say Brave instead of chrome in the results.
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Even if we want to build other alternatives, it’s terrifying to see the power of Google. 
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Indeed. This world is only operated by a handful of businesses overall. I mean, Google owns most of the internet. Facebook/Meta had its hands in things, getting content creators to add plugins on all their websites, which allowed them (Facebook) to track, store, and sell our data.
And yeah, it’s sad that even “anti-Google” browsers like Brave are still running on Google provided browsers. Sure, supposedly code is stripped to take away anything going back to Google, but who ever knows how that all works. It wouldn’t shock me in the future to learn there was a backdoor hidden somewhere.
In terms of the real world, you also have to look at who owns what. Many “competitors” are actually owned by the same place. For example:
Signet owns Belden Jewelers, Ernest Jones, Goodman Jewelers, H. Samuel, JamesAllen.com, Jared, JB Robinson Jewelers, Kay Jewelers, LeRoy’s Jewelers, Leslie Davis, Mappins, Marks & Morgan Jewelers, Osterman Jewelers, Peoples Jewellers, Piercing Pagoda, Rogers Jewelers, Shaw’s Jewelers, Weisfield Jewelers, Zales
Disney owns ABC, ESPN, Touchstone Pictures, Marvel, Lucasfilm, A&E, The History Channel, Lifetime, Pixar, Hollywood Records, Vice Media, Core Publishing, Maker Studios, Steamboat Ventures, ATV, RTL 2, RDS, Tele 5, Kividoo, Synergy Group, Earth Star Inc, Hulu, 21st Century Fox, Freeform, Marvel, and a TON of other companies I’m not aware of. Mostly though, they own the majority of media
Expedia Group owns Expedia.com, Vrbo (previously HomeAway), Hotels.com, Hotwire.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, trivago and CarRentals.com
Proctor & Gamble owns All Good, Charlie Banana, Luvs, Pampers, Ariel, Bounce, Cheer, Downy, Dreft, Era, Gain, Rindex, Tide, Bounty, Charmin, Puffs, Always, Just a period, Tampax, This is L, Braun, Gillette, Joy + Glee, Venus, The Art of Shaving, Aussie, Head & Shoulders, Herbal Essences, My Black is Beautiful, Old Spice, Pantene, Ambi Pur, Cascade, Dawn, Febreeze, Gain, Microban, Mr Clean, Salvo, Swiffer, Zevo, Crest, Fixodent, Oral-B, Scope, Align, Clearblue, Metamucil, Pepto Bismol, Prilosec, Vicks, Ivory, Native, Olay, Safeguard, Secret, Snowberry, SK-II, etc
List goes on for places owning the same restaurants, internet/phone companies, etc. There isn’t a lot of real competition out there these days
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This is absolutely not true. Can’t believe the amount of bullsh*t you’re spraying over these forums.
Chromium is fully open-source. It’s been scrutinized hundreds of thousands of times. The probability of a “backdoor” having been unnoticed is below zero.
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OK, let’s be fair here.
While I agree that ‘owning’ most of the Internet is maybe hyperbolic, they do have very wide observational capability on a huge, and one might (subjectively) say, concerning swath of it.
Regarding the backdoor thing – I agree the probability is very low. “Below zero” I think is hyperbolic as well. And while I am also a fan of OSS development, it’s not a guarantee against something being inserted – accidentally or deliberately.
It’s a heck of a lot of code.
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No, it’s true. Maybe wrong word choice in saying “owning” but when you look at how much data they have their hands in, they practically do. Let me see if I can try to highlight why I say that.
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Google has over 271 products, including its search engine. In addition, it owns more than 232 companies.
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Most websites are using products from Google and tracking your information or even advertising to you. This includes MORE than 1.4 million websites were using accelerated mobile pages (AMP).
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Google generated $146.92 billion in ad revenue in 2020. (earned through Search, but also through their companies they own that target you with ads as you visit sites)
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Many companies are now using Google Cloud for their websites or data. This includes Twitter, PayPal, UPS, Facebook, Yahoo, Intel, and over 1 million companies. In addition to the official source I linked, you also have https://www.contino.io/insights/whos-using-google-cloud-platform and https://www.statista.com/topics/8048/google-cloud/#dossierContents__outerWrapper which will show you a little.
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Ever notice when videos are shared, it tends to be from YouTube? (Yes, Tiktok has been growing and competing, but still. Most websites I’ve seen with videos are using YouTube for it.)
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Chromium is a Google product
Chromium is a free and open-source web browser project, mainly developed and maintained by Google . This codebase provides the vast majority of code for the Google Chrome browser, which is proprietary software and has some additional features
Like I said, it wouldn’t surprise me. We’ve had issues roll over into Brave before, where it still carried Google data and devs had to quickly take action to remove it. The code and time it takes to do things is far more complicated than you can imagine. If it was so simple, then why would Chrome, Edge, Brave, and all other Chromium browsers experience issues as often as they do?
As to open source, I’m not going to pretend to become an expert on that. Yes, it means people can all access code. What I’m not sure of is how that works in terms of being able to modify said code or even to create something that is then able to interact with it. Overall it’s a double edged blade that relies on the idea that there’s more “white hat” hackers and all than there are black hat. In other words, more people spending time and energy to find faults than there are those who are trying to exploit them.
It does happen though. Such as you can see where there was a backdoor in 2020. Then there’s this one from this year. And yes, we do have people finding these exploits, including this person who got a $15,000 bounty
These vulnerabilities and issues happen often enough to know that it can’t all be seen or stopped. This is why I said it wouldn’t shock me if we ever learn there’s something more there, a backdoor is what I was calling it, that still had some connection to Google that people just haven’t noticed because it blends in somehow. Hopefully not happening and less than 1% chance, but key phrase is still wouldn’t shock me.
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If you click on the links you provided, you will read Microsoft Azure has twice Google Cloud’s market share and Amazon Web Services has thrice.
It’s not Google’s fault if Brave are incompetent.
Vulnerabilities are a very long way from your intentional backdoor tinfoil hat conspiracy theories. People at Google would be very dumb to put a backdoor in Chromium where everyone can see it instead of putting one in Chrome close-sourced components.
There may not be a backdoor in Chromium, but its connection with Google becomes too dangerous. Honestly, I hope the project will become fully independent.
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As far as ‘intentional backdoors’ go, if you look at my example from earlier, it doesn’t have to be difficult. And in a widely distributed development model, opportunities abound – compromise the account of someone with commit rights, make the change innocuous enough, and mission accomplished.
You can call it what you want but it happens.
But at the end of the day, if you don’t like the browser or the people who contribute to it, don’t use it. Pretty simple really.
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Tell that to @saoiray who thinks Google is plotting every single minute of every single day to add backdoors to Chrome.
Talk about dominating the conversation. Saoiray, did any of that wall of text have anything to do with the topic?
Indeed. Talgeeze gets in that mood and does it all the time. Just seems to like to stir up drama.
Yep. I quoted what it had to do with and responded. Even more as I went to clarify, such as showing how Google has its hands in a lot of things. It all loops around to how Brave is based on Chromium, hence as OP mentioned…can’t hide its identity as Chrome.
That said, answer does differ a bit compared to what OP meant in regards to how Brave will appear to be another browser and all, as a way to reduce fingerprinting. But since chh_68 answered that, I joined in and responded to vince281’s comment.
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