> In their own comparison Brave is not even considerd
If their target audience is disgruntled Firefox users that makes a ton of sense. I would not consider replacing Firefox with a browser based on Chrome/Chromium. It's not that I think it a bad rendering engine, it not, but I don't like the mono-culture that has been promoted and would like to avoid contributing to it, if I can.
I still don't understand this "browser engine monopoly" argument. Engines are the most difficult part to build and coordinate around. WebKit is open source and gets contributions from across the industry. It would make sense for most people to coalesce around that single target. The browsers built around the engine are the feature-filled interfaces people care about and where competition should happen. The engine has no opinions about tracking or tabs or built-in services. As soon as we argue we need unique engines, there are now multiple competing standards for developers to target. In fact, I'd bet that future engines that cite issues with WebKit as their motivation for a fork or a from-scratch rewrite will start using the tagline "WebKit-compatible" because that standard is so important.
The issue with a single browser having dominance is that the largest contributor to that project doesn’t just control the project, they control the Web.
> It would make sense for most people to coalesce around that single target
No it wouldn't. Even the OpenSSH project has states that they'd prefer that more SSH implementation where around, due to security concerns. Bugs in OpenSSL where/are a serious issue, because of it was almost a monopoly until HeartBleed.
Having a single rendering engine be 95% of the market is not a good option in terms of overall security for the internet.
The rendering engine in Chrome is Blink, which is a fork of WebKit. Safari, GNOME Web and DuckDuckGos macOS browser still uses WebKit. Blink and WebKit is going to share some of the same issues, as they come from the same codebase, but they are two separate rendering engines at this point.
If their target audience is disgruntled Firefox users that makes a ton of sense. I would not consider replacing Firefox with a browser based on Chrome/Chromium. It's not that I think it a bad rendering engine, it not, but I don't like the mono-culture that has been promoted and would like to avoid contributing to it, if I can.