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I sometimes wonder if there is a market for paid browsers. As in software you pay for. I know it used to be a thing many moons ago, however I think I'd pay $20

I sometimes wonder if there is a market for paid browsers. As in software you pay for. I know it used to be a thing many moons ago, however I think I'd pay $20 or whatever to have a good browser that doesn't have anyone besides it's user base in it's mind. * Out of the box adblocker * Out of the box anti-tracking * Decent sync options between devices * etc.

TheCapn 5y ago
I'd eat my shoe if they came out with a one time purchase for anything of the sort. I'd put $20 or $30 to a browser with those guarantees no problem, but they'd likely be subscription model which is why I'm so skeptical of such a thing.
picklebutter 5y ago
The problem is that there are various browsers that do this already, for free. Brave, Vivaldi, etc You might be able to get some people to pay, but the value has to really be there for it, imho.
- lucideer 5y ago
  Yeah, you won't convince people to pay based on features. Leveraging Google's loss-leader work on Blink/Chromium and building slick features cheaply on top of that will always be an easy way to undercut any efforts there. The only way to monetise an audience like FF's is via ethos, and it's questionable whether that's enough. Wikimedia Foundation do this quite successfully, but I believe their revenue is a bit smaller than Firefox's. The problem may be that the Google deals are too generous, which traps Firefox into an overspend, crippling their ability to build alternative revenue streams that meet the same income level (why cut costs when you have enough income). Is it possible to maintain a browser of Firefox's scale at a WikiFoundation-level income of ~$120million?
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    Doesn’t Wiki Foundation income and expenses go up every year? There was the trending post earlier showing the numbers. I think expenses doubled in the last five years. So can Wiki Foundation likely can’t maintain an expense level of $120M unless they’ve stopped spending more this year. Edit: found the link. There’s discussions on HN, reddit, and other sites too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has...
    - lucideer 5y ago
      Yeah. WikiFoundation have their own problems. They're definitely not in a good position re: spending. I was more referring to fundraising just.
______- 5y ago
> A market for paid browsers Well there is Mighty[0], which plans to 'stream' your browser from the cloud for a $30/mon fee. A privacy nightmare if you ask me. [0] https://www.mightyapp.com/ https://www.mightyapp.com/
- jraph 5y ago
  And it still depends on a browser engine, which development isn't and would not be covered by the $30/mon fee. This fee probably mostly covers the cost of running the browser in the cloud for the customers. But it is a good point and I guess with enough people using this kind of thing, they could raise the price a bit and use the difference to develop an actual browser engine. Which is a tremendous task so I'm not even sure it would suffice to support every cases of the modern web.
jraph 5y ago
I believe a consultancy model, where many companies fund the development by paying for specific need could work. It seems Igalia works this way and they are involved in the development of most mainstream browser engines. I don't know how that would scale.

TheCapn 5y ago

I'd eat my shoe if they came out with a one time purchase for anything of the sort. I'd put $20 or $30 to a browser with those guarantees no problem, but they'd likely be subscription model which is why I'm so skeptical of such a thing.

picklebutter 5y ago

The problem is that there are various browsers that do this already, for free. Brave, Vivaldi, etc You might be able to get some people to pay, but the value has to really be there for it, imho.

lucideer 5y ago
Yeah, you won't convince people to pay based on features. Leveraging Google's loss-leader work on Blink/Chromium and building slick features cheaply on top of that will always be an easy way to undercut any efforts there. The only way to monetise an audience like FF's is via ethos, and it's questionable whether that's enough. Wikimedia Foundation do this quite successfully, but I believe their revenue is a bit smaller than Firefox's. The problem may be that the Google deals are too generous, which traps Firefox into an overspend, crippling their ability to build alternative revenue streams that meet the same income level (why cut costs when you have enough income). Is it possible to maintain a browser of Firefox's scale at a WikiFoundation-level income of ~$120million?
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  Doesn’t Wiki Foundation income and expenses go up every year? There was the trending post earlier showing the numbers. I think expenses doubled in the last five years. So can Wiki Foundation likely can’t maintain an expense level of $120M unless they’ve stopped spending more this year. Edit: found the link. There’s discussions on HN, reddit, and other sites too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has...
  - lucideer 5y ago
    Yeah. WikiFoundation have their own problems. They're definitely not in a good position re: spending. I was more referring to fundraising just.

______- 5y ago

> A market for paid browsers Well there is Mighty[0], which plans to 'stream' your browser from the cloud for a $30/mon fee. A privacy nightmare if you ask me. [0] https://www.mightyapp.com/ https://www.mightyapp.com/

jraph 5y ago
And it still depends on a browser engine, which development isn't and would not be covered by the $30/mon fee. This fee probably mostly covers the cost of running the browser in the cloud for the customers. But it is a good point and I guess with enough people using this kind of thing, they could raise the price a bit and use the difference to develop an actual browser engine. Which is a tremendous task so I'm not even sure it would suffice to support every cases of the modern web.

jraph 5y ago

I believe a consultancy model, where many companies fund the development by paying for specific need could work. It seems Igalia works this way and they are involved in the development of most mainstream browser engines. I don't know how that would scale.