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No, it doesn't bode well =(. To be honest, I wonder if the webbrowser 'market' has been fundamentally broken ever since the Netscape days. Effectively ever sin
by icegreentea2 3y ago
No, it doesn't bode well =(. To be honest, I wonder if the webbrowser 'market' has been fundamentally broken ever since the Netscape days.
Effectively ever since IE broke Netscape's back, every single major web browser has been funded either off the back of other business units (IE, Chrome, Safari), or funded by search engine deals. No customer has actually had to really contemplate 'what is the value of a browser' in like 25 years. No one actually has a sense of how valuable a browser actually is (except through the perverse metric of how many ads can you serve to the user via default search...).
I think it's telling that all of Brave's new revenue streams aren't actually -from- their self-professed mission.
- atdrummond 3y agoOpera did have a business model that worked monetizing the browser itself through sales - until smartphones fully supplanted feature phones.
- Timon3 3y agoThat's not quite the full story. Since 2000 Opera showed ads if you didn't pay for it, and they removed those in 2005, a good bit before smartphones really started. In a way they were ahead of the curve, considering how popular ad-based models with optional removal purchases are these days.
- inemesitaffia 3y agoThe ads were still there as of last year in mini.
- agumonkey 3y agoInteresting, it would be fun to give an estimate based on firefox browser team size and other contributors