A blockchain platform can be designed to not give the developer direct control over things like pricing, or anything at all. I don't know if that is what Brave is planning with its ad platform mind you, but it's certainly possible, and would be a differentiator only possible by building on top of a distributed ledger. A good example would be the blockchain itself, where every cost users incur, like transaction fees, is determined by end-user action (e.g. the miners and users), rather than through collusion by some set of owners.

> A blockchain platform can be designed to not give the developer direct control over things like pricing, or anything at all

The developers don't control the price... It's a market between brave/publishers/users.

Are you saying Google's engineers would be able to affect the price? That possibility has no affect on the product's success. That's like saying Amazon engineers can go and change the price of items so we should replace Amazon with a blockchain.

>That's like saying Amazon engineers can go and change the price of items so we should replace Amazon with a blockchain.

Not Amazon engineers, but Amazon itself could raise fees if it attains a comfortable de facto monopoly.

If it does than, then it can get out-competed by Rainforest, which is a clone of Amazon but with lower fees. Then if Sahara comes along and copies Rainforest but uses the blockchain for payments, they won't be able to compete because they will have to pay for blockchain network transaction fees and potential blockchain network backlog (unreliable payments compared to say funding a Google Wallet or some such)

That depends on whether the market leader benefits from network effects. All other things being equal, the market leader in a naturally monopolistic industry, like say social networks, has a much more compelling product than competitors. That allows the market leader to extract monopoly rent.