You won’t pay enough for it to make sense to support. That’s the harsh reality. Every single ‘altruistic’ browser has ended up on the dole of adtech because consumers will not pay even $0.01/pageview and publishers believe they’re worth $0.10-$1.00 per PV. I worked with an amazing founding team at Google and launched this [0] across many sites across the internet. People able to pay enough to fund the open web don’t, and people willing to pay realize that it gets pricey, fast.

[0] https://blog.google/technology/ads/helping-publishers-recove...

The main thing to come out of that was ad blocker blocker blockers, which seem to work quite well.

Give us a break, nobody has done more to ruin journalism that Google manipulating ad auctions (bernake), rewarding click bait (doubleclick), and forcing small papers serving local markets to compete for search placement with massive companies like the NYT.

Google helping with “Adblock” is a farce considering research has shown a key reason people use as blockers is to protect their privacy…from Google.

Imma be honest I don't care about privacy as much as I care about having to actively go out of my way to close an ad.

Yes, that’s absolutely the primary driver, but the #2 reason for adoption is privacy and security concerns. Google still doesn’t understand this, hence the farce that is “Privacy Sandbox” which is utterly delusional.

I don’t understand what internet users not willing to pay for published content has to do with creating a browser that’s just a browser.

Like Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla did for a long time.

Google subsidized billions per annum to Apple and Mozilla to fund browsers and be the default search engine. So the open web is subsidized by ads. Nobody is willing to fund the alternative.

Give me a Spotify for reading. I don't want to subscribe to Economist, New Yorker, Atlantic, Walrus, NYT, etc. Sometimes I want to read from one, sometimes another and all together to expensive to subscribe to all.

It's not altruistic, its stripping the browser down to its most basic essence. It is the core functionality. Why do we humans have such a hard time acknowledging an abstract thing without dirtying it with our stupid ambitions?

Nothing good is viable with the current tech "economy", where software is an endless death-march of feature-bloat to justify the unlimited (also known as cancerous) growth required by venture capital or public markets.

But I bet a couple guys could pull off an Opera 2.0 and make a nice living for themselves. You only need a couple thousand paying users at a very modest subscription fee to cover a couple of developers' salaries

Incremental revenue in the name of growth

These same tech players have complected the specs for the web/html/http so that only they can build browsers. There is no need for this, but here we are. And the whole Web Industrial Complex went right along with them because complexity is a nice revenue stream. Simplicity doesn't provide the rent seeking footholds that they predatory companies all exploit.

How much do the ads pay? I thought $0.001 per page view would be considered amazing?

Can an operating system just be an operating system and not force ads into its start menu? Microsoft has already answered this as a NO, so I guess we already know the answer to your question from Microsoft’s perspective.

Linux (NixOS) working fine without ads here :)

I'm saying this with extreme snark, but wait until smart homes become more commonplace and you won't be able to walk past your thermostat without Amazon pitching you new filters every six weeks over the smart speakers. Yes, there's many if's there, but the point is mostly profit motive usually trumps good taste.

Re: Windows, if we're not paying for it anymore are we still the customer? Even if that's a yes, it represents a cost for msft, so they seem to be looking to extract any amount of value out of it that they can. I doubt I'll use it past Win10, the downsides just keep piling up.

Windows is not free. It may come pre-installed on a ready made build, but they purchased a license, and you must purchase a license for a custom PC.

Windows costs nearly $200. If only that counted as paying.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/windows-11-pro/dg7gmgf0d8h...

Browsers could just be browsers if people paid for them. But they don't. If you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

Show me a browser I can pay for that isn't full of bloatware crap and I'll pay for it. I've spent $15 this week alone on software, some of it I just donated money because it was useful once. I am the wrong commenter here to be telling "you're not paying", because I literally pay for all/most of the services and software I use, though I do understand I'm an outlier to some degree.

Safari? I don’t know what counts as ‘this bloatware crap’ but if you haven’t looked into it perhaps it could meet your definition.

Actually, I just started using Safari at home recently, and I love it. Most Apple stuff, while locked down to some extent, seems to give me the freedom to actually be productive and do the tasks I need to do pretty easily. Sure, you have to adopt the "Apple Way" and use their software in somewhat the way that they designed it to be used, but for the most part it's really flexible and able to be used to achieve all of my goals in a simple way, without much fuss. Windows is laughable today and Linux is open and free but also has a minimal level of "fuss" you need to do in order to keep it working and get new software working. With MacOS I find I have to do almost zero maintenance and most of my time is productive. I'm going to switch my work PC to Mac as well as soon as this pile of silicon I'm using dies.

Safari in “I’m a journalist and gonna die” mode (lockdown?) is surprisingly usable and very hardened against tracking.

Unfortunately Safari cannot run uBlock Origin.

Promising

We are inviting you to pay for Orion browser by Kagi (if using macOS/iOS).

Zero-telemetry, with built in adblocker.

Business model: pay for the browser.

Your turn!

Even paid products do this kind of stuff these days.

At the end of the day, only legal requirements are going to curtail this type of behavior.

> If you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

> Even paid products do this kind of stuff these days.

Yes, if you pay for the product, then not only are you still the product, but you're a sucker as well.

It's not quite that stark, but I don't see why a company would truly change its business model just because they charge a fee. It's too tempting to "do something with all this data," i.e. treat all consumer software as spyware.

People do pay for Windows, which Edge is a part of. How's that going for you?

Microsoft hasn't been serious about charging users for Windows in a while. Free upgrades to Windows 10, free access to ISOs or tools to generate ISOs, and the penalty for an unlicensed install is no desktop background and a small watermark if you can't manage to trick windows into thinking it's licensed.

Yes, OEMs pay for Windows; probably businesses pay for Windows. It's pretty clear they've gone to an ad-supported model whether they're honest about it or not. And of course, paying for the product doesn't mean they won't suplement invoice revenue with advertising revenue.

> no desktop background

Last time I checked you could still just set the wallpaper via the context menu. It only locks the appearance settings.

I wish this phrase would die. You're the product either way. Company is either going to take advantage of the revenue stream or not regardless of whether you also pay for it.

"You're always the product and willingness and ability to pay for a nonessential service makes your disposable income an even juicer target to advertisers."

I'm pretty sure I had to pay for Windows in order to get Edge.

But I did pay. Edge is a Windows browser and Windows is very not free.

Edge is cross platform: Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/download

The plethora of FOSS browsers bundled in various Linux distros beg to differ.

In the beginning, they did cost money. Netscape offered a free version for home viewers (but charged companies - NetWare came with a user license). Microsoft sold a $29 "Plus Pack" for Windows that included Internet Explorer. That changed when Bill Gates decided to "steal Netscape's oxygen" and become the evil overlord that most people remember him as.

> and become the evil overlord that most people remember him as.

He wasn't the nicest guy much earlier than that.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code

People pay for Windows, MacOS iOS and Android based devices. Presumably they’re also paying for the software that runs those devices, ie the OS. And does anyone think that a web browser is not a core part of an OS today? Certainly MS doesn’t.

So yeah, MS is being paid for their browser. But a trillion dollar valuation is simply not enough.

> Presumably they’re also paying for the software that runs those devices

Not on Android. AOSP is free, but if you want to ship the play store then you have to also include the other Google apps. It is the Google data harvesting and advertising that pays for Android.

Companies are perfectly happy to sell you down the river to make a quick buck, too. Proprietary software cannot be trusted, because for-profit institutions cannot be trusted. They aren't in the business of serving you, they're in the business of chasing ever increasing profits.

Maybe those goals align at some point, but corporations' alignment drift makes AI look downright peachy.

Dumb question, but why don't people[1] use Chromium instead of Chrome (or Edge)? Does it still send data to Google?

[1] - I'm presuming HN people, not moms & dads.

Edge's vertical tabs are game changing, exceptionally useful and well-executed. No combination of browser extensions comes close (for me).

That's literally the only reason I use Edge. I want someone to release an "Edgium" like vscodium or, alternately, implement Edge's vertical tabs in Chromium.

This looks basically like Tree Style Tab for Firefox only without the nesting of related tabs.

TST is great, but it's nothing like Edge vertical tabs, which contain exactly the right amount of functionality for zero friction use. I have tried to get the same effect in Firefox, Vivaldi, pretty much anything that isn't Edge, but I keep coming back to Edge because it is so central to how I use the browser at a basic interaction level and, simultaneously, so simple to use that I can put up with (and deactivate) the other annoyances.

When you add "groups" (e.g., folders) it is magical.

I recently started using vivalid, which also has vertical tabs baked in. I tried some firefox browser extensions but I find them to be really sluggish and feel tacked-on.

Brave has vertical tabs built in nowadays (though they're behind a flag, but they're more or less mature now), designed in a very similar way to Edge's.

https://imgur.com/a/dAAysvy

I'm shocked people still ask these questions or act surprised 10 years after the Snowden leaks.

That’s basically what Edge was originally (along with some silly “write notes on any web page” feature that I’ve never seen anyone use).

Yes, Chromium still sends data to Google. That's why ungoogled-chromium exists. Same question though - why don't HN people use that?

Well I use Firefox as my primary browser, but one of my reasons for not using Chromium is the lack of automatic update functionality. Most of my software I don’t want auto-updating, but for my browser, I do want a notification of updates, and a single-click to install.

(Mac user here) This is exactly why I use and love Safari.

Mac user and web dev here - I appreciate a lot of things about the philosophy behind Safari, but I've lost untold hours to debugging and working around inane Safari bugs. It is truly the modern equivalent of IE for front end devs.

It also makes my blood boil that Safari both hides the full path of the URL you're currently visiting and doesn't implement the standard practice of giving you a preview of the full URL you're about to visit when you hover over a link. These are horrible choices for usability and security, especially at a time when phishing is so productive.

> Safari both hides the full path of the URL you're currently visiting and doesn't implement the standard practice of giving you a preview of the full URL you're about to visit when you hover over a link

Safari has both of these. Safari > Settings > Advanced > Show full website address, and View > Show status bar.

Moreover, the intention behind not showing the full website address is specifically to stop phishing, since it puts the emphasis on the domain name instead of misleading paths. (Is there a phishing situation where someone could spoof the domain name? Maybe, but I imagine in that case, they could spoof the rest of the URL as well). As for the status bar, I don't think anyone would look at it even if it was enabled by default.

But why does your parent commenter - a Mac user and web dev - not know this? It should be default or super easy and obvious

Even assuming these features would help stop phishing (which I don't agree with), you can't make every single feature super easy and obvious. In addition, you can't infer anything about a design from a single user's experience with it.

And frankly, the Settings window and the View menu are not obscure places to put these options. Those are the first places you should look if you're in a Mac app and want to configure the UI.

Agreed, which is why this should be the default.

If Safari was a 1:1 clone of Chrome but without (probably) sending my stuff to Google, I'd be all over it. Millions of other Mac users too. Instead I'm using Chrome on Mac just to get many websites to even work.

> Agreed, which is why this should be the default.

Uh, which part of my comment do you agree with? Clearly you disagree with something, because that's the opposite conclusion I came to.

Why do we need yet another one clone of chrome? The majority of noticeable browsers nowadays are chrome clones. If you do not want to use chrome due to sending data to google, you can use chromium, brave, vivaldi, opera...

Maybe he doesn’t use Safari because he dislikes it so much? Would explain why he doesn’t know about these options.

Never assume anybody knows anything.

Parent commenter here. Before submitting that comment I literally checked once again to try and find these settings. I looked through the General, Tabs, Security, Privacy, and Websites settings. It didn't occur to me to look in Advanced for a display setting. I also looked through View, but never would have guessed that "status bar" is the name for the link preview feature.

I suspect the victims of phishing that they're referring to aren't running in non-default "Advanced" states

The intention behind not showing the full website address is specifically to stop phishing, since it puts the emphasis on the domain name instead of misleading paths. As for the status bar, I don't think anyone would look at it even if it was enabled by default.

Intention is irrelevant when the end result can wind up misleading. See google removing the "m" subdomain once upon a time. Also this move to hide the full url comes at the reliance of instead looking for a green shield or some type of lock icon in the URL bar to ensure you're on https as safari hides this too.

In regards to the https problem specifically, while safari will say you are browsing an insecure page if using http, they do it in a horrible way - by adding text to the beginning of the url bar. Certainly if you were trying to reduce url confusion, you would add a separate symbol and label! I can click insecure icon on chrome and other browsers to read more about how, but I cannot do so on safari -- so much for trying to reduce confusion.

* * *

There isn't a problem with the first quote.

In the second, Safari inlines the "not secure" to the URL but not in a visually clear way. It looks like "not secure" is part of the domain.

Read more about what the "not secure" and the padlock actually means.

> Also this move to hide the full url comes at the reliance of instead looking for a green shield or some type of lock icon

The move to hide the full URL is to make the URL readable for the average user. People on this site might know how to parse URL components in their head, but the average user does not inherently understand the DNS hierarchy nor do many completely understand URI delimiters.

    https://secure.bankofamerica.com.0-0.pw/login/securelogin.aspx

might look okay to a lot of people

    0-0.pw

would be a little better indicator that it isn't their bank.

The padlock is mostly useless in today's world. It was useful in a time when ecommerce was young and otherwise legitimate sites were collecting information via http. There was an attempt to make it more useful with extended validation certs, but that solution didn't really end up being effective. Phishers could still register EV certs that spoofed other names, and adoption was too low to change user behavior.

To be fair, Safari would truncate that to `secure.bankofamerica.com.0-0.pw`, so not necessarily much better . But also not any worse than showing the full URL.

Fair enough. I'm remembering back to the original proposal from the Chrome team who were going to truncate all subdomains for this reason. But I think they backtracked some on that.

I'm confused by your point. You are claiming the padlock is mostly useless in today's world, but it's actually even more important in the world of hiding the full URL.

95% of the internet runs https.

Criminals today phish people, use HTTPS, and people have a false sense of security because of those who told them “padlock = good”. The padlock served a purpose to drive http adoption. It does more harm than good today.

Browsers should instead upgrade to https automatically on all connections.

How is having more information about the path you're clicking on misleading?

Their standards positions are the worst, too.

https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/97

Deleted because it was protected by an NDA.

Could you expand on that? Considering how Apple positions itself in terms of privacy, that’s a huge claim.

You don’t have to name names if that’s a problem, but there should at least be something credible we can look into.

Source? Is this Google Safe Browsing related or auto-completing search queries?

Pretty explosive allegation imo.

What was the allegation?

I assume GP regretted sharing it, so maybe you shouldn't?

That according to the Safari team, they sell information to select partners (paraphrasing).

Considering Apple’s public stance on those matters, that’s quite serious and should be investigated.

I love safari for my phone, but I prefer brave for my browser just because I still think chromium is the best browser, and brave has excellent security features. Plus its how I found this website, when you type "news" in the search bar it automatically re-directs you here.

Brave also has discount Tor which is nice at times.

Isn't Safari the worst of the lot? It send everything to Apple and makes it near impossible to turn that off.

Again this claim without proof. That’s a pretty damning accusation, so you should provide a source or a way for us to verify it independently.

If it is “near impossible to turn that off” it means it is possible. How?

> It send everything to Apple

Reference?

Do Brave or Firefox do this?

Brave does an enormous about of non-browser "stuff." Video calls, offline playlists, customizable news feeds, crypto wallet... they are trying to build a "super app" rather than a browser. The idea is that you can trust them because they aren't FAANG, but the problem is that if they actually were to succeed then they would be FAANG.

I haven't used Firefox in ages but AFAIK it has very little bloatware. The problem, from the perspective of a web dev, is that it has quite a few rendering quirks/bugs. These days chromium sets the standard for the "correct" way to render things.

I use Firefox and do some web development on it sometimes and I don’t really notice many/any bugs either with 3rd party sites or ones I’m making, apart from things that are unsupported on purpose like the file access API

Though I have noticed some issues in Teams but that’s about it

Brave may do all that you touched on - but it also aggressively blocks tracking. And the added stuff is not pushed in your face - blocking tracking is though.

But didn't it add stuff itself instead and got caught snooping twice?

What do you mean? At least one of the cases was is routinely overblown to high heaven by people who hate the company and haven't actually read up on what happened.

Firefox has some foundational bugs, one of which was not being able to keep my bitwarden session in the extension in Private Windows.

Have you checked the settings for the extension in about:addons to ensure that the extension is enabled for private mode? Find the extension in the list, click on it or click the dots and click 'manage', on the details tab ensure that 'Run in Private Windows' is enabled.

I apologize if you are already well aware of this and that the problem is that is more complex than that.

No need to apologize! Yeah it is actually quite different from what you have mentioned.

Actually I did some Googling around, and found that it was fixed recently - after 4+ years lol. https://www.ghacks.net/2022/02/28/bitwarden-firefox-private-...

Firefox does not if you opt out of telemetry

Casually enabled by default by the way.

In case anyone was wondering how, it's pretty straight forward:

Hamburger Menu > Settings

Privacy & Security tab on the left

Scroll down to the Firefox Data Collection and Use section (2nd section from bottom)

Uncheck all of the boxes in this section

FYI: You might be shadowbanned. A lot of your recent comments are marked as dead, without seeming low quality enough to get flags (including this one, which I just vouched for).

What's weird is that some of your comments aren't dead, and typically shadowbanned users have all of their comments auto-marked as dead. It's possible those got vouches though.

Firefox nags about getting a Mozilla account, uploading your history to Mozilla servers tagged with your email. Very private. Mozilla’s only step towards privacy is that it opens tabs all the time telling you how much Big Browser care about your privacy.

And don’t get me started on Firefox nagging people to use Mozilla VPN, and their push towards DNS over HTTPS, as in “Trust me dude, I want your logins, your passwords, your DNS and your VPN, and pinky swear I’m just a charity with benevolent intentions, Google just gives us money for… stuff.”

As a Firefox user I have no idea what you are talking about.

I am a Firefox user, and I think it better than the alternatives I'm familiar with, and I think I at least partially know what they are talking about?

I think the "opens tabs all the time telling you how much Big Browser care about your privacy" is primarily referring to the tabs that are sometimes opened when you restart the browser for the first time since a new update has been installed, telling you the sort of stuff that is in the new update, or sometimes talking about other projects they have.

Or like, "hey, try colors" or whatever.

I disagree with their insinuation that the push of their VPN etc. is for a nefarious purpose due to their receiving some funding from Google.

I just never look a the tabs it opens after an update. Unfortunately that's the exception the ad blockers can't catch, but at least it's just one click every 30 days or so.

It’s every time I open Firefox, which seems to be every few days.

We’re in the paradox that it is possible to claim there is no ad on a browser because you don’t look at them when they appear. Similarly, people who are satisfied with a government stance will see no problem in violently repressing opposition. Defects only appear when you are on the other side.

But they do appear, and they educate the users such as my parents into creating a Firefox account or assuming that Firefox equals privacy, which is clearly not the case.

> We’re in the paradox that it is possible to claim there is no ad on a browser because you don’t look at them when they appear

I didn't make that claim. I just said I immediately close them and don't mind them much because I basically only restart the browser when I reboot the PC (so about once a month because after that all kinds of bugs start to appear).

Of course I see them as problem, I assumed that was obvious from the rest of my comment.

colorways by a sneaker designer. Priorities: straight.

Agree that Mozilla building independent sources of revenue is a good thing.

Firefox no.

Seriously, EDGE has tons of useless stuff, so much you have to scroll the "..." menu in order to get the the freaking settings, and now a popup is asking me to enable some VPN or something? I didn't ask for a VPN, nor some coupons, nor Microsoft rewards, nor games, it's bloat...

Nor that horrific "Discover" button that looks like a dollar store logo (which is probably not an accident).

A browser costs a shitton of money to make. Even if you are just forking you need a lot of manpower. So no, you will never get a completely free browser that doesn't suck (slow, late to get security updates, can't render things right...)

Modern Edge isn't a ground-up browser, it's just a fork of Chromium with Microsoft bullshit instead of Google bullshit.

I think you are supporting his point.

Yes, use lynx

I think we should have 3 security levels in the browser: Level 1) Static content, no scripting allowed 2) Scripting allowed (like the current state but more restricted) Level 3) App like where you can allow the app to access certain resources. The TSL shield/lock could have a number in it 1-3 where 1 is the highest level of security. And you have to manually click it to go to level 2 or level 3. Sites would have to use the noscript tag to beg users to enable scripting abilities. Most websites that are not app-like should consider rendering their content statically. Browsers would start out with level 2 as default, but like what has happened with web sites without https/TSL/SSL they would be "shamed" by the lock/shield icon. Unless the site has a security-level 1 header, then the site should load with highest security.

There's nothing less to expect from these fucking commercial browsers from giant companies. For the last 5 years+, I've been steadily noticing how they start small and "innocent", and once they reach a userbase, they will keep coming with shit baked in hard that will leak you to the world, invade you on your face, become a spy in your digital life, or just completely entangle you and make you a product of their open market.

Do not invest too much in any browser. This will make it easy to hop when they go to shit. Avoid using anything sticky such as password saving, bookmarks, and synchronization. Instead use other tools you control for that. We have so many browsers to choose from. I can adopt a new browser within minutes because of my setup. The same principle should be applied to any proprietary software or platform.

Done. You need a protocol where it's impossible to not be a browser.

https://gemini.circumlunar.space/

Pick your browser, I like Lagrange.

https://gemini.circumlunar.space/software/

Now we just need content.