Brave announces new feature to bypass Google AMP pages
Privacy-focused browser Brave has rolled out a new feature to bypass Google's accelerated mobile pages to bolster security - and remove more of the Web from the tech giant's clutches.
Brave's new feature, known as De-AMP, will rewrite links and URLs to prevent people from accessing a website's accelerated mobile pages (AMP) version.
In cases where De-AMP is unable to rewrite URLs, it will direct visitors away from AMP pages before they are displayed, preventing AMP/Google code from being run on a user's browser.
AMP is an open-source HTML framework that Google released in 2016. The company sold it as a way to improve the mobile web experience by speeding up the loading time of mobile pages.
AMP pages are served from Google's servers using preloading techniques. Although these pages appear to originate from the publisher's website, this is not the case.
Privacy groups consider AMP harmful to users' security and privacy, arguing that it gives firms like Google greater authority over how people access content on the internet.
For its part, Brave believes the AMP framework is 'harmful to users and to the Web at large.'
It says the framework offers Google even more information on users' browsing habits and - contrary to its promise - that it is often slower than normal web pages.
'AMP harms users' privacy, security and internet experience, and just as bad, AMP helps Google further monopolise and control the direction of the Web.'
Brave also accuses AMP of harming performance and usability.
'Though Google touts AMP as better for performance, internally Google knows that AMP only improves the median of performance and AMP pages can actually load slower than other publisher speed optimisation techniques, as revealed in Google's disclosures to the DOJ, pg. 90.'
AMP is so bad for performance and usability that in many cases web users literally pay to avoid it, Brave added - and warned that the next version of AMP, commonly known as AMP 2.0, will be even worse.
This isn't the first time Google has been targeted by the privacy browser maker.
Brave's browser claims to offer 'the best privacy online,' so targeting Google is part of its business strategy.
Brave has previously accused Google of violating one of the GDPR's principles surrounding consent for collection.
AMP criticism is not limited to Google rivals. A group of 10 US states sued the firm in 2020, accusing it of using the AMP framework to control advertisements.
De-AMP is already available in Brave's Nightly and Beta versions, and will be enabled by default in the upcoming 1.38 version for desktop and Android.
A version for iOS is expected to be released soon.