[oakfr]

This article seems to spawn many threads on online advertising, but the initial comment from the author seems to be more around a system/architecture issue (i.e. why should a browser require backend servers). I am writing this comment here to see what people think about this question specifically.

[jonathansampson]

Brave proxies Google endpoints (see https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-... for a list). This is to prevent users from making unintended contact with Google. This particular error ("Access Denied") encountered by the author could be from Google, but could also be from a transient issue with the Brave proxy serving a 401 response (or similar).

Sampson (Brave Team)

[jonathansampson]

Resolved: User had a very out-of-date build of Brave. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471236 for more details.

[oakfr]

Thank you for your reply!