Brave Web Browser Will Link To Wayback Machine On Offline Pages

For many, the browsers wars have more or less ended with just two or three key players in the market. That's not stopping others from trying to carve out their niche, often pointing out glaring flaws or lapses in the major web browsers. Brave, whose pedigree includes Brendan Eich of Javascript and Mozilla fame, is one such browser and it has partnered with the Internet Archive to bring dead web pages back to life.

Hitting a 404 or any other mysterious three-digit number on a web site isn't uncommon. Pages can go down for various reasons, from a technical server problem to improperly migrated links to changes in government policies. Sometimes those outages are temporary but there are also times when you might think them gone for good.

The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has, for years, working to preserve the Web's history by offering archived versions of web pages, sometimes multiple ones even. Not everyone, however, is aware of its existence much less how to use that handy tool. That's where Brave comes in.

With the latest version of the Chromium-based browser, Brave will automatically offer a link to the Wayback Machine when the user encounters an unavailable web page. They won't even have to copy and paste the URL and can simply click on the button to witness the magic of the Internet's biggest record keeper. Of course, don't be surprised if not everything is available on the Wayback Machine as some websites aren't exactly archive-friendly or may have even asked to be removed from the archives.

The archive integration isn't just for 404 pages, too, and works with other conditions that result in an inaccessible web page. In case that's not enough to have you running to Brave, you can also have a somewhat similar experience by installing a separate browser extension available for Chrome, Firefox, and even Safari.