What would happen if Brave Inc sold themselves to Google?

I recently wrote a controversial post asking about Brave Inc’s intention to get sold for a very high price to large tech companies like Google. The post received a lot of attention as was featured on the second spot in the r/BATProject subreddit (excluding pinned posts). Since it got so much attention, I thought of elaborating on what might happen if Brave Inc was sold to Google.

Here’s what I asked:

According to this article:

So what does Brave want Google and Facebook to do once they realize the danger? “Buy us at right price, possibly,” he replies. “I think Google might, as they would not be able to duplicate our model now without antitrust issues. They would of course consider copying rather than buying.”

Does Brave Inc intend to sell itself to a bigger company if they provided the right price?

I was expecting an official answer from the BAT team but haven’t received any so far. Here, let me share my thoughts on what might happen if Brave Inc is brought by Google.

If Brave Inc is brought by its current competitor Google, the biggest threat for BAT holders would be stalling development of the Brave Browser. If stopping development of Brave benefits Google, then Google might want to slowly stop Brave’s development.

Google can’t stop development of Brave right away because of the whitepaper which kind of acts as a legal contract of trust between the Brave / BAT team and the BAT community.

Google might argue that BAT is a utility token and legal protection doesn’t apply to it but recent decisions by SEC strongly indicates that BAT is most likely a security token. BAT was recently labelled as a security token by exodus wallet developers. This provides significant level of legal protection to BAT holders (if it is true cause it is still not 100% confirmed yet whether BAT is a security or utility token).

If Google buys Brave Inc, they most likely will have to pay a price higher than one billion dollars. If Brave team and shareholders wished to run away with that money, then BAT holders may contest that in the court saying that BAT holders have rights to it since BAT ICO investors provided 35 million dollars in funding to the BAT team.

Personally, I don’t think this will ever happen. This whole debate starting because of Brendan Eich’s statement “Buy us at right price, possibly,” in reference to a question about what Google or Facebook might do if Brave’s business model is proven to be successful. He was most likely making a joke.

Brendan is well known in the tech community for having a very high reputation and trust. He is highly competent and well respected for his sincerity. I don’t think he will do something like that which will diminish his reputation.

This post was originally published by me on Trybe.one. I am crossposting it here. Trybe is a quality content focused blogging platform. Sign up to Trybe with my referral link here to get free 100 TRYBE tokens.