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What’s Vivaldi’s business model?
- HamburgerEmoji 5y agoI've been trying to think about whether this is good enough for me to move to Vivaldi. I wish they offered a direct plan where I'd pay per month to use a browser with no ads, no telemetry, etc. The incentives would be aligned and there'd be no weaselry with them loading up new releases with bookmarks populated with their sponsors or whatever, and me deleting them.
- Matthias1 5y agoVivaldi adds a new sponsor bookmark around every six months.
- kuu 5y agoI don't really know Vivaldi. They mention that they do not track you, but do they make some effort to avoid being tracked by others? For example: firefox reduces the timestamp precision on your mouse events to prevent fingerprinting Does Vivaldi do something similar?
- hulitu 5y ago> For example: firefox reduces the timestamp precision on your mouse events to prevent fingerprinting ... while sending all URLs you visit to google for "safe browsing".
- matsemann 5y agoDon't spread FUD.
- 1cvmask 5y agoI always find it funny when they accuse people who point out glaring flaws and obvious truths of whataboutism. People should freely point out incongruences and hypocrisy. There is no better way to fix things, or at least to be buyer aware.
- jmnicolas 5y agoDoes it happen even if Google isn't the default search engine? If yes, where do I disable it? Depending on your answer, this might be the last straw in my relationship with FF.
- jfk13 5y agoI don't believe the claim was at all accurate; see the other responses about how Safe Browsing works.
- judofyr 5y agoI thought that they downloaded the list and checked locally (ref https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/posts/how-safe-browsing-works-in-firefox/ https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/posts/how-safe-browsing-works-...). Has this been changed recently?
- abbe98 5y agoFirefox fetches URLs hashes from Google and then checks the URLs you visit against that list. Only if there is a match Firefox will send the hash(not the URL) to Google to verify that there isn't a hash conflict.
- EastOfTruth 5y agoI disable that feature even though I don't think that they send every URLs for this purpose.
- jmnicolas 5y agoIt's kind of gray: Privacy One of the most persistent misunderstandings about Safe Browsing is the idea that the browser needs to send all visited URLs to Google in order to verify whether or not they are safe. While this was an option in version 1 of the Safe Browsing protocol (as disclosed in their privacy policy at the time), support for this "enhanced mode" was removed in Firefox 3 and the version 1 server was decommissioned in late 2011 in favor of version 2 of the Safe Browsing API which doesn't offer this type of real-time lookup. Google explicitly states that the information collected as part of operating the Safe Browsing service "is only used to flag malicious activity and is never used anywhere else at Google" and that "Safe Browsing requests won't be associated with your Google Account". In addition, Firefox adds a few privacy protections: Query string parameters are stripped from URLs we check as part of the download protection feature. Cookies set by the Safe Browsing servers to protect the service from abuse are stored in a separate cookie jar so that they are not mixed with regular browsing/session cookies. When requesting complete hashes for a 32-bit prefix, Firefox throws in a number of extra "noise" entries to obfuscate the original URL further. On balance, we believe that most users will want to keep Safe Browsing enabled, but we also make it easy for users with particular needs to turn it off.
- bogwog 5y agoSo basically, it does send your URLs to Google. Maybe not all of them, but an unspecified amount of them. Also, Google pinky promises that the data they collect from this isn't used for tracking purposes.
- jfk13 5y ago> So basically, it does send your URLs to Google No, it downloads hashes from Google, and checks the URL locally against those. See https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/posts/how-safe-browsing-works-in-firefox/ https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/posts/how-safe-browsing-works-...
- bogwog 5y agoThanks for the link, that explains it much better than the snippet in the post I replied to. It seems like it actually is way more private than I thought. FF downloads the database of flagged sites from Google and stores it locally (only partial hashes of URLs though). Only when a match is detected in the local database, FF sends the full hash of the URL to Google to double check, since the local database only has partial hashes to save space (so false positives are likely). It also apparently sends extra noise as part of the payload, so that the request isn't obviously tied to a single URL (in case Google is able to reverse the hash to track your browsing habits, or something like that) That sounds pretty private to me. A side-by-side comparison of this implementation to the one in Chromium would be interesting. I wonder if browsers like Vivaldi go the extra mile like FF does? (not: that post is over 5 years old, so it's possible that the implementation may have changed since then)
- Shadonototra 5y agoI don't know but firefox sends what ever you type in your address bar to mozilla, that is concerning
- yoasif_ 5y agoNot really true - you can see my post for details https://www.quippd.com/writing/2021/10/10/firefox-suggest-an-anatomy.html#the-good-news https://www.quippd.com/writing/2021/10/10/firefox-suggest-an...
- mcintyre1994 5y agoYep, they have built in ad and tracking protection enabled by default.
- lmkg 5y agoVivaldi is pretty pro-privacy. Every time Chromium adds a new API with privacy implications, Vivaldi makes a blog post publicly committing to disable or remove it from the version they ship. E.g. the most recent update, the headline feature is disabling the Idle API by default: https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-gets-more-private-delivers-an-all-new-capture-pwa-support/ https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-gets-more-private-delivers-... They also had a pretty long post about why FLOC is bad, and I believe have committed to retaining Manifest v2 for extensions. Other prominent privacy or privacy-adjacent features include a built-in ad-blocker and heavy investment into on-device translation features. I'm not sure how much work they put into preventing fingerprinting techniques. I don't get the sense it's a high priority.
- merlinscholz 5y agoSadly, as long as they are closed source, there is no way to check their privacy guarantee.
- Ndymium 5y agoYou can find the source at https://vivaldi.com/source/ https://vivaldi.com/source/ and in addition to that is the HTML/JS UI which can be found in the installed browser data (though as minified JS files).
- laurent123456 5y agoI've tried Vivaldi on all my devices for several months but it has several annoying quirks: - Videos are jerky compared to Chrome. It doesn't matter if hardware acceleration is on or off, and it's at least on macOs and Windows. - Scrolling is either slow (if hardware acceleration is off) or shows a blank page as you scroll (if hardware acceleration is on). Chrome works fine with hardware acceleration. - Caching is weird. Often it would show me an old version of a page, and I have to refresh to get the latest version. For example at some point it shown me a version of a Docker Hub page that was 2 months old. The same often happens on GitHub too (I think it has something to do with caching pages that are fetched via JS). Happens on both mobile and desktop. Never seen this problem on Chrome. As a result I just went back to Chrome. I don't like the tracking and all, but at the end of the day I need basic features like loading pages, playing videos or scrolling to work. In fact, I'm surprised they don't simply try to use Chromimum more closely - they probably add a layer of "optimisations" which only creates more bugs than it's worth.
- nsonha 5y agoThere is something about this browser. I've been trying to use it as the main browser since it's first launched, but it always feel kind of janky. Can't remember the specifics since last I tried was circa 2019.
- jikbd 5y agoThey rewrote the entire interface of chrome in JavaScript with obvious consequences.
- theprotocol 5y agoThe worst one for me is the lack of visual feedback after clicking on a link. It makes me question whether I clicked properly and leads me to click again.
- tssva 5y agoI've had the same issues along with it being a big drain on my laptop battery life. Also it doesn't support touchpad gestures for forward and back navigation which as tiny of a hill that may seem to some is one I'm willing to die upon.
- wejick 5y agoVivaldi is my default chromium based browser right now. Firefox still be the default browser, however there are many site offering extra features for Chrome based browser. For example the video filter in Google meet doesn't work on Firefox. The amount of customization is no joke, i love this feeling of being truly power user.
- phowat 5y agoI'm on the same boat. The only reason FF is still my main browser is because of multi account containers. If Vivaldi implemented that I'd switch instantly.
- walton_simons 5y agoMine too. I think it's great. So many quality of life improvements. For starters, all the tab handling options. Being able to specify where new tabs open, and where you go when you close a tab. Tab stacks are amazing — five minutes after learning how they work, I was already wondering how I'd managed for so long without them. Being able to tile multiple tabs in the same window. The list goes on and on. The neat, compact interface. The sidebar that gives you a searchable list of closed tabs. Smaller things, like being able to see the entire URL in the address bar again. There are a few rough edges here and there, and it certainly doesn't feel as responsive as Chrome, but I highly recommend it nevertheless, especially to those who get frustrated with the main players removing more and more features with each new version.
- log101 5y agoTldr; we don’t make money
- authorityofnil 5y agoThis is plain wrong, as the article clearly lists all the ways Vivaldi makes money
- log101 5y agoDid you "really" read it? How much money do you think they make from bookmarks or recommendations?
- authorityofnil 5y agoYou can make quite substantial sums, seeing as Mozilla makes tens of millions with default engine choices: https://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2006-audited-financial-statement.pdf https://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2006-audi... So yes, I do think they make money aswell
- log101 5y agoI was going give Mozilla as an example, thanks for pointing that out. Now please go and check how Mozilla is doing financially :) Even Mozilla is having hard time making profit, Vivaldi is sure is an ambitious project but my point is sorts of income mentioned on the site doesn't mean anything, they need more than bookmarks...
- passthejoe 5y agoMozilla is BATHING in money. https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/mozilla-fdn-2019-short-form-0926.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/mozilla-fdn-201...
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- foolinaround 5y agovivaldi and brave are competing for the same set of users... i currently use and am happy with brave... hopefully both do well...
- lucienmaxwell 5y agoThis is pretty true. I currently use Brave as my personal browser and use Vivaldi for work. Been doing this for at least a year and am very satisfied.
- ricardo81 5y agoFF is my default but I'd likely fall back to Vivaldi if FF continue with schemes like ads in search suggestions (or more to the point, start making a 3rd party call which apparently they currently don't do). Appreciate the transparency in that their search engine selection is based on them being paid, and include Google purely because it's the market leader.
- hrnnnnnn 5y agoBeen using Vivaldi more and more on Android these days. Since the big update Firefox is literally unusable for some tasks. For example the other day I needed to switch apps to get a value to put into a form. When I switched back it reloaded the page, losing the form state.
- bluecatswim 5y agoYep, Firefox android is impossible to use if you do anything non-trivial and has so many quirks. It's been over a year since the rewrite so I don't know what they're doing.
- chaosite 5y agoThis has not been my experience. Firefox Android is perfectly functional, fast, and blocks ads too.
- selfhoster11 5y agoHow many tabs are you using?
- chaosite 5y agoNot that many. But it's not something that I'm doing specifically for Firefox, my style is to close tabs after I'm finished with them.
- bluecatswim 5y ago
- CivBase 5y ago> The only exception is Google – we don’t make money when you search with Google. However, we know that some of you use this search engine daily, so we include it in Vivaldi. Interesting. I immediately wondered how Vivaldi can fund development of their browser without Google bucks, but I suppose that might have something to do with why they switched to Chromium.
- MomoXenosaga 5y agoBusiness model is letting Google do all the work. Totally understand everyone adopting Chromium instead of doing the hard work.
- toyg 5y agoThis really is the issue with all these Chrome clones - as nice as they might end up being, they keep Google steadily in control of the real thing underneath. The price of outsourcing development of your backbone components is a fundamental loss of power.
- passthejoe 5y agoNow that Chromium doesn't allow bookmark sync, Vivaldi is one way to get a very Googly browser without going to Chrome.
- dartharva 5y ago>at Vivaldi, we don’t track or profile you. Nor do we collect usage data. In fact, we believe that the unnecessary collection of data is dangerous and has no place in your browser. Great. Would be better if you also release Vivaldi's source code to public scrutiny instead of just expecting users to take your word for it.
- Eikon 5y agoThen I hope you'll also build it by yourself.
- lillecarl 5y agoMost software I use is not built and packaged by the person who wrote it.
- yissp 5y agoThey could support reproducible builds, then any third party could verify the binary they distribute hasn't been monkeyed with.
- IceWreck 5y agoIf its open source then packagers will do the job for me
- onkoe 5y agoThere is almost certainly one package maintainer out there who would love to do that ;)
- ODILON_SATER 5y agoI've been using Vivaldi for over a year and I am very happy with it. To the point that I find FF inferior when I use it on my old linux machine. I love the customization offered. Thank you for the product
- cph123 5y agoBeen a Vivaldi user for quite some time now, a number of years, and I love it. It has so many nice features without needing to install lots of extensions.
- abdulmuhaimin 5y agoAll these browser company talking about privacy and tracking, all the while letting Google dictate the development of their browser, is really laughable. No thanks. Not basing on Chrome should be the default if they truly care about such things
- dralley 5y agoThe fact that it's closed source doesn't help either
- dandare 5y ago> Some use your data in ad networks, push promoted content or use other invasive methods to fund their development. We don’t. "We don’t - directly. Instead we make deals with search engines and bookmark partners who's business model is exactly as described above. In other words, we too live off you data, but we outsource the hard lifting to our partners. "
- bsdooby 5y agoI still use and like Opera. Vivaldi feels a bit bloated. On the other hand, some features of Vivaldi are really cool (RSS, mail client).
- amazing_stories 5y agoI used to like Opera for the built-in mail client but had always used Firefox out of principal. I've grown weary of FF's shenanigans and once I discovered Vivaldi had a mail/rss/calendar/notes built-in I jumped on it and I can't see myself using anything else, ever. I like having everything all in one monolithic app.
- bsdooby 5y agoYeah, agree. What I like in the current installment of Opera are its built-in WhatsApp, Telegram clients.
- mLuby 5y agoVivaldi's business model was primarily Patreon. He also had a steady side hustle teaching music and composing for the local orphanage's renowned orchestra and choir. #SoPure Vivaldi first went viral with his album "The Harmonic Inspiration." He'd regularly dedicate his content to his top-tier subscribers, among them celebrities and members of the 1%. His best-known work, the chart-topping "Four Seasons," is considered classic even to this day. @TheRedPriest (as Vivaldi was known) was censored for airing LGBT content and was cancelled by his employer; luckily both situations were quickly reversed in his favor. While Vivaldi undoubtedly became an influencer (of J.S. Bach in particular), during his life he often wasn't trending with the right demographics. One time he had to sell NFT-equivalents of his work at the market low just to move back to Vienna. Shortly thereafter his lead investor got cold feet and went belly up; without financial support, Vivaldi soon died poor. Edit: whoops name collision my bad.
- yread 5y agoYou haven't told us whether Google was involved
- stonecharioteer 5y agoThis is the most reddit comment I've seen on HN
- musicale 5y agoVivaldi's business plan: Become a priest and violin virtuoso. Teach music at an orphanage. Compose hundreds of excellent musical pieces from concertos to operas to oratorios. Gain powerful and wealthy patrons and celebrity, then die in poverty after musical tastes change, remain forgotten for hundreds of years, and be rediscovered to grand acclaim! Counterpoint: "Vivaldi didn't write 500 concertos - he wrote the same concerto 500 times!" (repeated by the less-prolific Igor Stravinsky, composer of the "Riot of Spring" and other works; Stravinsky famously described his own fans as "very naïve and stupid people.")
- acheron 5y agoHe worked at a Venetian convent and directed a girls’ choir.
- philonoist 5y agoI hope somebody starts a project to do all Vivaldi's customizations but based on firefox.
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