From this post:
Vivaldi's approach to privacy almost made me laugh, "we block others from tracking you so we can do it ourselves"
When you install Vivaldi browser (“Vivaldi”), each installation profile is assigned a unique user ID that is stored on your computer. Vivaldi will send a message directly to our servers located in Iceland every 24 hours containing this ID, version, cpu architecture, screen resolution and time since last message.
If being fingerprinted by hardware wasn't bad enough, your literally assigned a unique id, don't even bother defending vivaldi on this one.
Vivaldi is proprietary so no one can audit the browser, no one can fork it to remove spyware, you base everything on blind trust.
Their new tab is bloated by tracking companies meaning on each new tab a query will be made to amazon, youtube etc. Sure you can remove these, but most people won't and it shouldn't be included by default.
Its default search engine is bing, how great, so "we at vivaldi care so much about user privacy that we recieve monetary gain from microsoft by sneaking that little search engine in, which a huge percentage of our users will use as they're not aware of the privacy issues because they trust vivaldi"
We at vivaldi block trackers so we can boast about it, but our adblocker is disabled by default because we dont want anyone using it.
Google safe browsing is on by default with no proxied option
It uses googles blink engine, which is fairly common so i can't hate on it for this alone, but bare that in mind.
I used edge as an example, dont actually use edge for privacy.
I find the complaints about default search engine and new tab bookmarks strange. Firefox does the same thing, and like Firefox, it's likely a significant (if not the main) source of revenue.
Edit: I don't think Vivladi's tracking is worse than edge if it's a per-profile ID. Edge uses a hardware ID that will be used to track you across profiles. The list of transmitted information also seems pretty reasonable.
The fact the browser is not completely open source is more concerning to me than the other points. Everything else doesn't seem much different than what Firefox does by default.
Firefox is still a better option simply by not contributing to the Google monopoly, but Vivaldi still has features going for it. Firefox is sometimes praised for customization, but Vivaldi has many more UI options and wasn't considering removing a compact mode like Mozilla was. Like Firefox, it supports custom CSS and even has a community for it on its official forums.
If I had to choose between Chrome, Edge, Brave, and Vivaldi, I would go with Vivaldi because it isn't an advertising company like the other three, and it's clear that their main focus is on creating a useful browser for power users.
Luckily, I don't have to choose because I will be sticking to my Firefox+uBlock Origin combo for as long as I can.
I wouldn't make the argument about default search engines myself especially if it isn't a privacy oriented browser.
I think I'd actually go with Brave because it's open source but yeah fortunately we don't have to choose.
Brave was originally my preference for a Chromium-based browser, but what put me off is all of its crypto bullshit and its controversies. Being open source didn't stop them from rewriting URLs or effectively stealing donations.
I also disagree with their stance on ads. This comment from the linked reddit thread sums up my opinion on that. Brave supporters will say that ads are opt-in, but it's still clear that ads are a main focus to the company, something I'm fundamentally opposed to.
I'm not a fan either but I guess I'd just rather use an open source browser, you know? Obviously I'm a big Firefox fan so I haven't given this much thought :) I really don't like it when I see Brave being recommended on the privacy communities tho
I can definitely understand that perspective. The transparency of open source software is pretty important for something like a browser.
I don't like seeing Brave recommendations either...