Brave has feature to bypass Google’s AMP pages

Brave has released a new version of its browser that makes it possible to bypass Google’s AMP websites. De-AMP extracts the AMP part from URLs so that users can visit the site in a normal way.

The new function is called De-AMP and is available in the Nightly and Beta releases of the browser. In version 1.38 for desktop and Android, Brave wants to enable the feature by default. On iOS, that feature will follow at a later time. In the browser, pages loaded via Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages are redirected to the regular page by default, if possible. Google introduced AMP a few years ago as a technology to make website loading faster, mainly by requesting the pages via Google’s own servers.

According to Brave, AMP is harmful to users in multiple ways. For example, Google could collect more information about visitors via AMP websites. Brave also thinks that visitors to a website via an AMP link cannot properly assess whether they are on the right website. Finally, Brave denounces the fact that Google uses AMP to “monopolize” the web.

The new version of the browser has multiple ways to block AMP links. The browser will modify websites that frequently link to AMP pages by causing them to redirect to regular pages in the future. If pages are still opened as AMP links, Brave recognizes the AMP markup and then directs users to the correct page.