Brave browser fixes the internet, can now bypass Google AMP pages

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Brave Screenshot
Brave Screenshot (Image credit: Brave)

What you need to know

  • A new Brave browser update will bypass Google AMP pages.
  • The new browser will automatically skip Google AMP and take users directly to the destination URL.
  • AMP has long been something privacy advocates have claimed should be avoided.

Brave, a popular web browser across multiple devices, has announced a new feature that will allow users to bypass Google AMP pages when clicking through from Google searches.

The new feature, which is available as part of the latest Brave Nightly and Beta releases, will prevent Google AMP pages from being displayed and instead forward users to the original destination address instead. The announcement came via blog post.

Brave is rolling out a new feature called De-AMP, which allows Brave users to bypass Google-hosted AMP pages, and instead visit the content's publisher directly. AMP harms users' privacy, security and internet experience, and just as bad, AMP helps Google further monopolize and control the direction of the Web.

Brave will automatically redirect users where possible and they'll never even see the AMP page. That also means that Google code will not be expected on-device, preventing it from running any of the tracking activities that it is known for.

Brave will protect users from AMP in several ways. Where possible, De-AMP will rewrite links and URLs to prevent users from visiting AMP pages altogether. And in cases where that is not possible, Brave will watch as pages are being fetched and redirect users away from AMP pages before the page is even rendered, preventing AMP/Google code from being loaded and executed.

Google AMP now effectively offers a cached version of the web page that people would normally access. Google says that's supposed to increase performance, which it can do. But it also allows Google to have more visibility of what people are accessing, something that privacy advocates have long railed against.

Brave says the new feature is rolling out to those Nightly and Beta builds on the desktop now and an updated iOS app will be available soon.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.