Just installed Vivaldi. Wow. Thanks.

You can hold shift to select multiple tabs and then do all these operations, like mute them all, group them, display them tiled... and I feel like I'm just scratching the surface.

It feels like the last time there was a big feature competition between all the browsers.

Feature snapshots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4wyvKMRVeY&list=PL72e6dBabY...

Firefox also supports multiple tab selection with the Ctrl or Command key. This feature was added in version 62.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1458010

you can do this in chrome though...

It's true you can do some of these in each browser, but not all of them. Chrome on mobile lets you split screen tabs, but seems to require an extension on Desktop.

I think you can do tab grouping through a flag, but I haven't really pushed it.

Opera has gestures, but the system in Vivaldi seems more robust.

I tried Vivaldi a while ago and, while I really liked it, it didn't justify not being open-source. I'm not one of the OSS elitists, but the browser, like the OS, is just one of those basic things that I want full control over.

I'm a huge fan of FOSS, but do you really think that you have full control over any modern piece of software? I think that underestimates how many people actually work on such a project and how many new updates we're getting on a daily basis. Nobody is more than %-wise controlling that stuff anymore. And this % is based on regular financial(!) investment in developer-hours but not in what software you use.

PS: I just fetched a project I'm actively working on. Last fetch was Friday afternoon or Saturday morning. >50 new commits fetched today. Until I'm finished reading and understanding all of them, there will be >500 more I suppose.

It's not about meticulously reviewing every commit for every project that I use, obviously nobody has time for that. For me the most important part is being able to fork the project if you want to add features or are unhappy with the way the original project is going, you don't merely have to beg the maintainers to add a certain feature, you can do it yourself. And perhaps more importantly I'm not screwed if, for one reason or an other, the original maintainers decide to drop the project.

It's very important to me that emacs is open source not because I review every single commit (I don't) but because it means that I can commit a lot of time tweaking and learning the ins and outs of the editor without worrying about having to switch to a different one a few years from now when the original devs get acqui-hired by Facebook and they stop working on their project.

Also, simply making the source-code visible to all, helps keeps the honest guys honest. That's true even if the licence isn't truly Free and Open Source.

No-one dares to commit spyware to GitHub.

> No-one dares to commit spyware to GitHub.

I see where you are coming from, but this is simply not true. You can argue nobody concerned with his own reputation commits spyware to a public repo, but malicious actors are usually not concerned with that or try to stay anonymous in the first place.

Here is a recent example of malicious commits to a github repo: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17458329

> You can argue nobody concerned with his own reputation commits spyware to a public repo, but malicious actors are usually not concerned with that or try to stay anonymous in the first place.

It's not so black-and-white though, hence "keeps the honest guys honest". Are Microsoft and Google 'malicious actors'? They're hungry for our data, but they often only do it when they don't think we'll be able to find out what they're doing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17749330

The fact that the source code is available does not guarantee that the blob is the product of that source.

This is why there is the "Reproducible Builds"[0] initiative from Debian folks.

[0] https://reproducible-builds.org/

That's true and, to me, has been brought on the spotlight from Microsoft practices around VSCode. On the other hand, for an OSS project, building the binary is not that hard.

> or me the most important part is being able to fork the project if you want to add features or are unhappy with the way the original project is going

Which is not "complete control" and that was the point I was arguing against. That having source code access enables you to gain some control over your own life is not a point I was arguing against.

Additionally another point: even if you fork you can't keep that fork alive without manpower. Nowadays all the dependencies and apis change all the time as well.

The purpose of the open source requirement is not so I can figure out what is going on and exert control.

The purpose of the open source requirement is so that many other people -- some much smarter than I am, and others only a little smarter than I am -- can figure out what is going on, and then post warnings to me about why I should avoid it.

I completely agree. The rapid flux in these huge browser projects makes personal security audits impossible even if you are one of the top 10 super-rigorous C++ devs in the world. Would be nice if some project forked the browser of their choice and then got some very careful well-respected teams/rockstars to audit it, and from then on, applied only security fixes and outright-rejected dubious stuff like WebUSB, google auto-login, etc. With Chrome and Chromium, sure, you get a very good security team working on it for you at Google, but you also get changes which are not in your best interests and/or undermine security directly or indirectly like, well, WebUSB. This is not ideal.

While it's not OSS in the common sense, the source code is available. https://vivaldi.com/source/

Has anyone managed to compile that? All I could find was a few people getting errors and no help.

Just to add my company's browser too, http://whale.naver.com/

Chromium-based, actively developed, and has Android+iOS browsers. You can use chrome extensions with it too.

Browser is such a security nightmare, how would one want to trust from a random vendor?

What is it's selling point?

We're actually the largest tech company in South Korea, not a completely random vendor. We also own LINE messenger which is probably more known.

Thanks. You still didn't answer what is its (unique) selling point though. e.g. Why should I use it over this 'ungoogled Chromium' itself, or say Firefox?

The website has a list of features that differentiate it.

Tried it. It ignores my window manager's decorations and enforces its own, with no apparent way of changing that (unlike e.g. Chromium).

To back astonex’s point, I never tried their browser but Navernis far from a random company.

If you’re afraid of them not having enough resource or not caring enough to maintain it, the company has deep pocket and won’t disappear tomorrow.

I know naver mainly as a chat app, and it was pretty good and hugely popular in Asia at a point. There was a huge account leak a few years ago, so I guess they also should be battle tested now.

Basically it could be a strong independent browser vendor mainly interesting in capturing users in their ecosystem.

It is always good to hear about a new browser. Unfortunately the only Linux download option is a .deb package. Could you please make an .AppImage? AppImage files are a single-file run-anywhere application (think of ThinApp/App-V on windows).

More information about AppImage: https://appimage.org/

Is it decoupled from Google?

Yes there is nothing Google in it. And if you happen to use Naver services, you won't be automatically logged in like Chrome is doing.

Nah.. Just another closed source browser for `vendor lock-in`. no thanks.

edit:word

Brave seems to be focusing on a monetization model that prevents third parties from tracking its users.

Seems like a win-win.

I’m okay with them hijacking ads if that allows them to succeed and thrive.

I prefer each website be in control over their own monetization model and not dictated by the whims of a browser vendor without their consent.

If you’re monetizing with ads, you’ve already lost control of your revenue.

Whatever monetization strategy Websites choose to fund their content is up to them. If ads are the best way to support free content then that should be their choice.

Sure. And it’s my choice to block them. Brave actually offers a way to pay for content, if I understand it correctly.

Sure, you can technically starve them of micro ad revenue if you want, but if you're not going to abide by Content creators implicit contract of having their content served with supporting ads then IMO it's best for all involved that you either subscribe for ad-free content directly from them or just stop consuming their content altogether.

There are humans on the other side producing that content, they have as much right for being compensated for their efforts as we do.

That's more like wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Ad driven "free" material is chosen because it was (and mostly still is) seen to be more profitable than subscription based models. If it's not then the onus of change is not on the consumer to make ads more profitable, but on the producer to find what is.

I'm extremely satisfied that ad blocking is spreading ever more rapidly simply because I think that's the most direct way to get out of this current model of profit that leads to so many awful things. The fundamental problem is that with ad based model your customer is no longer the person actually consuming your material, but the advertiser. That, in turn, introduces 'sponsored' content, ads misleadingly ran as actual content, bias in views presented, external censorship of content to remain in the spirit of the advertiser, extensive tracking and data mining of users, and all these other lovely things. Good riddance.

> That's more like wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

What cake and eat it too? There is just Content producers producing content that they want to be compensated for and the industry agreed upon best way to do that for serving a mainstream audience is to publish free content with supporting ads.

> the onus of change is not on the consumer to make ads more profitable, but on the producer to find what is.

Wait so instead of doing what they're good at, content producers should individually be tasked with investing their resources in experimenting with different economic models to try find a viable alternative to serving content without ads? The sites with a large enough content catalog are already doing this with subscriptions, some others are using patreon, consider utilizing their ad-free content alternative when available instead of cutting off their only revenue source.

> What cake and eat it too? There is just Content producers producing content that they want to be compensated for

And I want to be compensated for writing HN comments. Alas, just because I want to be compensated for something, doesn't mean I will be. Content producers feeling entitled to compensation for their free and public content are kind of forgetting the content consumers have agency too.

> and the industry agreed upon best way to do that for serving a mainstream audience is to publish free content with supporting ads.

Just because it works, doesn't mean it's not wrong. Just because it worked for now, doesn't mean it'll keep on working. Nobody is entitled to their business model working forever, or at all.

> Wait so instead of doing what they're good at, content producers should individually be tasked with investing their resources in experimenting with different economic models to try find a viable alternative to serving content without ads?

Yes. They have the content, and want to exchange it for money. It's literally their job to figure out how to do this.

> The sites with a large enough content catalog are already doing this with subscriptions, some others are using patreon

Good. As it should be.

> consider utilizing their ad-free content alternative when available instead of cutting off their only revenue source.

Again, not my responsibility. Especially given that the social contract of the Web is, by design, that if your server responds with 200 OK + data, I get to render that data however I like.

I don't "know" as a viewer how ad-based business models work. In fact I generally assume that ads have to be clicked on to make money. Since I haven't clicked on an ad in years, does that make me a freeloader? I'll assume that once eye-tracking is commonplace then publishers will get paid only when viewers look at their ads. If I avert my eyes, am I stealing? On the other hand: why can't an ad-blocker plugin still trigger a payment for the ad view, while preventing me from seeing it?

> why can't an ad-blocker plugin still trigger a payment for the ad view, while preventing me from seeing it?

The ad-blocker won't load the ad at all for two reasons. 1) Performance. Less to load (and process, and render, etc) means faster load times, less bandwidth consumption, lower CPU usage (think about all those extra scripts), etc. 2) Privacy. If your computer contacts the ad network at all, then it could track you.

Because the blocker fundamentally can't load the ad or contact the respective network while also doing its job, triggering a payment would seem to be more or less impossible.

>In fact I generally assume that ads have to be clicked on to make money.

Not at all. Most of the industry moved away from CPC a while ago due to how dodgy it skews data. Most clicks end up being bots on shady websites Vs actual people. Viewabilty is what the good agencies are advertising against now; with the hope that you'll navigate to the advertiser's site down the line.

> There are humans on the other side producing that content, they have as much right for being compensated for their efforts as we do.

They have a right to ask for compensation, and a right to require it. They have no right to be compensated, if they choose to give away the content for free. That would be saying they have a right to force people to be generous.

Whining about ad-blockers is simply being manipulative, it's trying to guilt-trip people into abandoning their self interest for free. The implicit social contract of the Web, the way HTTP protocol and Web browsers were designed, is precisely what allows for ad-blocking. Browsers are user agents, and what you send in response to a HTTP request is mine to render how I like. Publishers have a proper, correct way to ensure compensation on the Web - it's called a paywall. I pay, then I get content. But they prefer ads, because it's easier. It's easier to bleed people out of their sanity (and privacy) than to ask for money. It's easier not having to write quality content that would be worth paying for. But that's a choice publishers make.

This is the most important point: nobody is entitled to their business model working. If ads aren't working for you, change your business model.

Part of the problem is that the entire debt-based economy is based on extracting more dollars from consumers.

> Whining about ad-blockers is simply being manipulative, it's trying to guilt-trip people into abandoning their self interest for free.

Your attestation usage of "manipulative" is attempting to manipulate in itself. Like I said everyone is technically free to do what they want, but it doesn't change the fact that starving content producers of micro ad revenue goes against their wishes which in most cases deprives them of their sole revenue source.

> The implicit social contract of the Web, the way HTTP protocol and Web browsers were designed, is precisely what allows for ad-blocking.

No the web is not a social contract, it's a combination of technologies. The social contract exists between Content Producers and Consumers and the Web is the platform to enable delivery of that content. The implicit social contract is for Content producers to create content consumers want which is consumed in the way they want their content served. A "blocker" by definition blocks supporting resources that producers wanted their content served with - which in most cases is their primary revenue source for producing that content.

> it's called a paywall. I pay, then I get content.

Great, then use it when that option is available, as a benefit you wont see ads and producers get compensated.

But I hope you're not naive enough to think that a paywall works for all content and all audiences? It's great when it does, content producers get a reliable and predictable source of revenue but there's a reason why ad-supported free content is used, it's not because it's easier, it's because it's viable.

Content creators have unilaterally decided that it's ok to sometimes infect their "customers" with malware and give their information to hundreds of third parties.

Content creators have been acting like assholes and now they're seeing the consequences.

Crying crocodile tears of unfairness won't change that, it's just wasting people's time. If those content creators can't get people to pay for their content, it means their content is worthless.

   The implicit social contract is for Content producers to create content consumers want which is consumed in the way they want their content served. 

This is just very misguided, by using a completely producer-centric view. The web is merely not a network to connect businesses with customers. When your users are applying a technology to avoid rendering adds, it is a market signal. But the signal isn't simply "I don't want to pay for this content", it is far more likely "stop tracking me across sites and logins".

I certainly agree with you that content producers should have a mechanism for the possibility of revenue, but this is a two way street. Advertising networks have worked for some things , but are becoming more and more invasive, and hence more and more problematic. If enough people reject the model, content producers need to be either looking for a new model or looking for ways to improve this one. This stuff isn't rocket science.

I hope you're not naive enough to think that a user is obligated to have his computer render the exact thing a server sends, no questions asked.

> but it doesn't change the fact that starving content producers of micro ad revenue goes against their wishes which in most cases deprives them of their sole revenue source

Choice of revenue source is, well, a choice. It's not like we're talking about some poor third-world kids, for whom the only choice is between starvation and building ad-powered content farms. It's all just people who asked themselves, "how can I make me some money?", and out of countless of possible business models, chose this particular one, which is giving stuff away for free, attaching a malicious secondary payload to it, and hoping that this secondary payload will generate some money.

> No the web is not a social contract, it's a combination of technologies.

It's that combination of technologies that create this contract. Those technologies create a particular platform, with particular set of rules. It provides ways of giving things away, as well as asking for compensation. It provides ways of saying "strings attached". Unfortunately, many people choose to use the "give things away, no strings attached" path and then, after giving a thing away, demand to be paid. And it's even fine, as long as they realize many people will just brush their latter demand away, as it's silly and improper.

> The implicit social contract is for Content producers to create content consumers want which is consumed in the way they want their content served.

Oh, no no no. Not the last part. Why on Earth I, as a consumer, would agree to a producer dictating how I consume the content after I get it? I have the right to consume it the way I want, and the Web tech stack is built around preserving this right. The producer's right is to structure the content for particular consumption. A paywall, or showing ads before content, or dumping it all in a PDF, is a way of doing that. The consumer's right is to destructure what they get and consume it the way they like.

(As an analogy - if a restaurant wants me to not eat tomatoes, it's free to offers only meals without them. But it would be ridiculous for them to serve me tomatoes and then have a waiter hovering over me, ensuring I don't eat them. Or a waiter dictating I have to eat all of the things on my plate, and in a particular sequence.)

> Great, then use it when that option is available, as a benefit you wont see ads and producers get compensated.

Offer it to me, and I shall use it if I want your content badly enough, or not use it and go elsewhere. That's fair.

> I hope you're not naive enough to think that a paywall works for all content and all audiences?

I'm not. Fortunately, there are alternatives, including donations/patronage, or writing your content off as marketing expense for something else (e.g. articles published for free in hope you'll buy the author's book on the same topic, or just publishing in order to gather trust and goodwill).

(EDIT: and also, there's the elephant in the room - a lot of content can exists solely because of ads. Or, in other words, it couldn't be monetized in any other way. Why? Because it's crap. If that content dies off completely, I say good riddance.)

> there's a reason why ad-supported free content is used, it's not because it's easier, it's because it's viable

It's viable for now (and becoming less so, hence all the whining about ad-blockers). But so is polluting rivers when you're running a factory. Just because something is viable, doesn't mean it's good.

Took a while but we got to "work for free for visibility"

Well, sure. If you want to do something but can't find anyone who wants to pay you for it, then you need to accept that this work has infinitesimal value, and either don't perform it, or leverage it into something people will pay for.

Or don’t try to make money off of it and make it because you like making it.

I agree with your statements above. Just pointing out that revenue is not the automatic goal of every human endeavor.

Yes, that too. In fact this is my favourite subset of the Internet. It's usually of the highest quality, and most trustworthy.

Isn't that what the ad supported model is? You give something away for free in the hopes of getting visibility and exposure. Then you sell that exposure to an ad company.

Must I also keep the TV un-muted and watch the advertisements?

I heard an interview with an advertiser where the advertiser actually claimed that you don't have the right to go to the kitchen during advertisting breaks.

Some minds are just completely warped.

Content creators lost all support or concern from me by supporting privacy destroying ad networks.

So I block all ads and all trackers.

I keep one browser in vanilla condition in case I run into a government site that won't work with the blockers.

> it's best for all involved that you either subscribe for ad-free content directly from them

Most don't offer that choice.

> There are humans on the other side producing that content, they have as much right for being compensated for their efforts as we do.

I think I missed that right in our constitution--you must respect other's wishes to impose ads on the content that is otherwise freely accessible on the internet. A “right” is hardly the right word—“social courtesy” may be better.

I hope you drink fair trade coffee.

(I know that stealing from white man is bad, third worlder in a far away land is not bad but I'm too autistic for the hypocrisy our society lives by)

> Brave actually offers a way to pay for content, if I understand it correctly.

And that's great if a large volume of your visitors are using Brave, but that's certainly not the case for us. Granted, this is anecdata, but I suspect that it holds true for many other sites.

(On a personal note, I'm afraid I object to Brave simply on the basis of its gratingly pretentious name: I've known plenty of people who are brave, whether it's because of things they've done, or because of terrible suffering they've endured, but I'm afraid I see nothing about that web browser to justify the name.)

> On a personal note, I'm afraid I object to Brave simply on the basis of its gratingly pretentious name

I wouldn't blame you.

In any case, this is more of an ethical preference than a serious statement about the viability about Brave's specific monetization model... any product that gives the consumer more choice without entirely depriving people of revenue is welcome to me.

Fine. BUT sites should be responsible for the ads running on their site and held financially or criminally responsible. Adtech is infested with intrusive tracking which is legally dubious in my jurisdiction. To say nothing of the security implications of allowing random unvetted transient 3rd parties to run code. At this point I see a good content blocker as a security measure more than an ad blocker.

That's what we have now. It hasn't exactly been working out for the users.

In a lot of places Users who don't want ads can subscribe to access ad free content. If that was a superior monetization strategy most websites would adopt it.

Or get an ad blocker or use the browser being discussed. Regardless of your desire for websites to be able to serve ads, the users are mostly in control of whether they want to see the ads.

Thanks for the tips. I hadn't heard of Vivaldi or Brave.

> I'm not a fan of Brave's hijacking of ad spaces so my preference is currently vivaldi

I'm not affiliated with Brave, but IIRC that requires opt-in from both the owner of the user AND the website. So it seems like a bit of a stretch to call it hijacking, when the website, ads are being "hijacked" from needs to opt-in to this.

It blocks ads by default and from all I've read replaces it with their own against publishers wishes:

https://www.businessinsider.com/newspaper-publishers-send-ce...

https://www.wired.com/2016/04/brave-software-publishers-resp...

Where is the opt-in from the website who are getting their ads blocked/replaced?

Check out the browser. By default no ads are shown. Everything is opt-in at all levels.

The idea is to remove the coercion from ads. Users will earn 70% of all gross ad revenue. The remaining 30% will be split between publisher and the browser.

Users can get paid to tolerate ads, or they can choose to see no ads. If users see ads then users, the browser, and sites all earn money. If they don't then nobody earns money and they get to experience an ad free internet.

From the Business Insider article:

> With Brave, publishers get around 55% of revenues: 15% go to Brave, 15% go to the partner that serves the ads, and 10% to 15% goes back to the user

So they went from 55% for the publisher... to 15%?

Yeah but brave controls all these levers.

Actually, because they're using BAT as the medium of exchange, hypothetically anyone could build another browser / client / extension that could be used and users wouldn't need to worry about any sort of "lock-in".

Brave certainly blocks ads by default, I personally don't see a problem with that. Users can't install adblocker addons in browsers, not much different than downloading an adblocking-by-default browser.

I can't immediately find a source for the publisher opt-in thing. But brave definitely hasn't been doing anything like that in 2016 as your articles suggest, because they only just started now with beta testing brave ads[0]. From my personal testing of brave a couple of times, with the ad opt-in activated, I have also never seen this happening.

And publishers (now) seem willing to join[1].

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/20/blockchain-browser-brave-s...

[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/ad-blocking-brave-browser-gets-dow...

Since it's going to be using chromium as a base then theoretically you could install whatever extensions you want to it right now, but that's still in beta

Note that Vivaldi is closed source. If you're looking for open source only, consider Firefox.

Vivaldi is publishing its source at: https://vivaldi.com/source/

Its CEO announced more details about their source code: https://jon.vivaldi.net/a-few-words-about-open-source-vivald...

They’re publishing their Blink changes under the same terms as Blink.

Their UI code is source-available proprietary software.

> In addition, all of our UI code (included in normal packages) is written in plain, readable text. This means that all parts of Vivaldi are full audit-able and open from that perspective.

I.E. not downloadable. That's neither open nor open-source.

For projects large like a browser, not sure how having everything open sourced helps users. No one can audit it well enough anyway. Only track record can tell its security and stability.

I'm not a huge fan of the ad hijacking, but I find the proprietary license for Vivaldi more off-putting that the open license that Brave uses.

Brave can also be run just as a blocker

Another one: http://otter-browser.org/

Maybe a bit more "punk" (no company, OSS effort).

Many features that made Opera great still don't work in Vivaldi - last time I checked, RMB+wheel tab cycling was completely broken. When it works, the UI is slow and laggy.

Going from old Opera to Vivaldi feels like switching from Sublime to some Electron garbage.

Brave by default is not hijacking ads, just block all and you can pay to the webs you visit with a cryptocurrency

One I made: https://cretz.github.io/doogie/. Admittedly a bit behind on Chromium (updated locally for myself, deploying this week) and no macOS support yet.

Update: released with latest Chromium version

I always hear about Vivaldi as an alternative but how sustainable is their business?

Is this run by a passion of ex Opera CEO?

If this is just a struggle without enough business model to back it to last at least 10 years, I don't think it counts as an alternative.

I really wanted to like Vivaldi but it deals with a lot of tabs far worse than Chrome ever did and Chrome is utterly abysmal with more than 50 tabs (while I am easily pushing 400 tabs on Firefox with good performance behavior).

I believe Brave is the only one of these released under a free software license.

One issue here, is that none of these are good cross platformers for mobile. iOS and Android both force you to use their render engine afiak. That's why Edge uses Webkit on iOS and Blink on Android...yet Edge (proper) uses...the Edge engine. Mobile is so much of the world's web usage now...it's basically impossible to decouple them from their root OSes. Imagine if Windows in the 90s or 00s forced every competitor's browser installed to use Microsoft's render engine.

Only iOS forces you to use WebKit which is why it's used by Chrome/Edge/Opera. It's not impossible to decouple them, you're prohibited by the license from using an alternative browser engine.

Android doesn't have any such restrictions so Firefox on Android are able to use their Gecko engine.

Thanks for the correction, either way, I view it as a problem that you can't (easily?) decouple in iOS. Some of these browsers listed have no mobile version, at least not ones fully baked. That alone forces people into the hands of the mobile defaults like Chrome and Safari.

I'm not clear why it matters that it's not available for iOS? All iOS browsers must use WebKit which is what's Chrome's Blink engine is based on and what all browsers mentioned above use.

A mobile browser is a completely different Application then a Desktop browser so you're still going to be using a different "Browser" Application, so I guess I don't understand why my choice for using the built-in Safari on iOS would impact which Desktop browser I'd choose to use?

Because the focus on decoupling from Google, etc is to prevent control of larger corporations and from data intrusion. Mobile is a huge facet of search/browsing now. If you are only decoupling 50% of web usage, you aren't making much of a dent on the behemoths to change their behavior.

Then I really don't get it, Safari is the most dominant browser on iOS and on Android you can use whatever you want - so you never have to use Chrome anywhere.

I'm not sure what you don't get. It's not just about Chrome. Decoupling Google services from Chromium is more than about Chrome itself, it's a backlash against Google and data collection at large. You could just promote Firefox instead of Vivaldi, but you didn't. Why not? I assume because you like choice...and that choice should continue to extend on mobile platforms.

> I'm not sure what you don't get.

Because you're not clear on what exactly your grievances are with Vivalidi/Brave/Opera using the Blink rendering engine and how exactly does using Safari on iOS or Firefox on Android enforce Google data collection?

> It's not just about Chrome. Decoupling Google services from Chromium is more than about Chrome itself, it's a backlash against Google and data collection at large.

You need to read up on what Chromium is, its an Open Source Chromium browser Chrome is built on without Google Services (i.e. what Chrome is). A large differentiator for Vivaldi and Brave is their privacy first browsers that don't track you:

https://vivaldi.com/features/privacy-security/

https://brave.com/features/

> You could just promote Firefox instead of Vivaldi, but you didn't. Why not?

Because the whole premise of the article is for making a modified Chromium browser fork, when they could instead use one of the existing actively developed Chromium browsers founded by browser engineers. I have no issue with Firefox which I use as my secondary browser, but the replacement for my main browser Chrome would need to be another Blink-based browser.

But I still have no idea what the rendering engine used in Mobile browsers has to do with anything.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)

If you don't understand what I'm trying to say after 5 or so replies, I don't think I'll ever be able to communicate it.

> I view it as a problem

What kind of problem? It makes web browsing stable as the internal engine is tested by Apple without third party bringing their own with updates at random moments and from web developer's perspective, they get a predictable result within iOS without effort and from those, I don't see a problem from users' perspective too.

Maybe you work for Mozilla.

If you think Apple's software updates provide "predictable results" you can't have been paying attention for the past few years.

> from web developer's perspective, they get a predictable result within iOS without effort and from those...

> Maybe you work for Mozilla.

Maybe you're a lazy web developer.

The only thing I miss on iPhone is Gecko. I often run into website that doesn't render properly in Safari and at that point I want to have an alternative rendering engine that would solve the problem. Currently I have to find a desktop computer for it.

This has become such a problem lately, because some of the websites I often use and need to get important information from have this issue, so I always have to be sure that I'll have desktop computer around or carry an Android tablet with me.

Next time I buy a phone, it will be Android unless Apple changes their policy on browser rendering engine. If I knew this worked the way it works, I would have never bought the iPhone in the first place.

Did it also bring stability when Microsoft bundled IE with Windows? Because I'm not sure how you can differentiate the two (and I doubt most would think that was good for the long term health of the Internet).

Choice is bad.

Anyone remember the 1980s Apple commercial referencing Big Brother? Hilarious in hindsight.

https://youtu.be/2zfqw8nhUwA

> you're prohibited by the license from using an alternative browser engine

Interesting. Isn't that what Microsoft was tried and convicted for in the 90s?

> Isn't that what Microsoft was tried and convicted for in the 90s?

No, Microsoft was tried and convicted for illegally leveraging an existing monopoly.

The particular actions weren't necessarily illegal outside of the context of a pre-existing monopoly.

You're correct with iOS, but Android allows browsers to have their own rendering engine (see: Firefox with Gecko.) Microsoft just didn't want to invest in porting EdgeHTML to Android.

Been eyeing Vivaldi for a long time, still waiting for their Android browser.

Thanks for this, what do you use for password syncing?