Brave is based on Chromium and it still supports manifest v2.
Brave offers everything Firefox does and more --- like privacy by default (which Firefox could but won't do for obvious reasons) --- all without millions in direct Google payola.
Brave supports manifest V2 because the Chromium upstream hasn't removed it for enterprise use yet. As soon as that changes, Brave does not have a plan to continue maintaining V2. What you call Google payola is really the independence that allows Mozilla to develop a browser engine that isn't being actively crippled by Google's initiatives. That's the important piece. Brave is not a sustainable play because they have no way to fund a forked version of the chromium browser engine when Google inevitably cripples it to invade our privacy even further.
Safari's extensions had a similar change-over to a ManifestV3-like system, with the same arguments: increases performance (very important for mobile) and puts more safeguards on extensions doing funky privacy-hostile stuff.
Yes, ManifestV3 nerfs adblocking, and Google loves that side effect. It will hamper Brave' internal adblocking engine.
I think the big interesting question is: if Brave figures out how to add improvements to ManifestV3 that aid adblocking without sacrificing performance or privacy/security, will Google accept the PRs?
No, it's inferior in every way possible because it's not meant to be used to enforce privacy but to allow multiple users on a same computer to use a same browser without seeing each other history and setting.
For each profile, you would have to install again every extension, set every setting, every bookmark,.. of course no sync between your main profile and others.
Can't right click on link to open them in another profile.
No automatic opening of profiles when you go on a specific url
And so on.
On the other hand, brave will push it's crypto crap, web3 and 'bat coins' everywhere.
