Brendan Eich: Father of JavaScript and Co-Founder of Brave

Brendan Eich is best known for being the father of JavaScript. In 1995, he created JavaScript while at Netscape. Three years later, he co-founded mozilla.org. From mozilla.org, Brendan spun out the Mozilla Foundation in 2003. He is responsible for launching the Firefox browser and helping revolutionize the browser market. Currently, he is the co-founder of Brave, a new browser built on Chromium that sits on TC39, the ECMAScript standards body for JavaScript.

In 2002, amidst the degradation of Internet Explorer and a lack of market competition, Brendan launched Firefox. In addition to user experience improvements, Firefox addressed the need for better developer tools that Internet Explorer was failing to provide. “I used Firefox to restart the browser market and get developers interested in better APIs at the same time Web 2.0 and AJAX app development were being popularized,” says Brendan. This convergence of new tools and the prototyping of ideas of what the web should be created the foundation of what the web is today.

While browsers used to compete on performance, now, in 2017, JavaScript performance is not a concern. The biggest issue facing users today is lack of privacy with ad tracking. Brendan’s software, Brave, focuses on blocking third parties from tracking users and taking user data profiles.

“The value exchange system on the web is broken. It was not done well and consumers are suffering from a degrading web experience. We need to experiment with having anonymous identities, anonymous ads, and blocking tracking software by default. This is what we’re doing with Brave,” says Brendan.

Brave creates a better user experience by blocking ads and trackers by default. This also makes it three to seven times faster than Chrome. Brave also has iOS and Android versions which block third-party scripts and ads. In lieu of ads, Brave allows users to anonymously donate to the sites they frequent with the hopes of creating a more authentic web. Brave hopes to help facilitate the future web standards for payments, ads, and anonymity.

Written by Tracy Lee

Photography by Daniel Garcia

Article originally appeared in Issue 9.3 “Future”