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I have felt like a perennial browser refugee for a while. For about 20 years now (since OG Firefox was at peak and Chrome was not yet launched), every new brows

I have felt like a perennial browser refugee for a while. For about 20 years now (since OG Firefox was at peak and Chrome was not yet launched), every new browser promises the same things, gets popular enough, then does a full or partial 180. While I like the pitch of this browser, I find it a little difficult to take it at the face value, especially given there is no info on the founders, or whether it is run as a company or a non-profit etc. Perhaps someone in this thread could answer: which company/org structure provides best guarantees against gradual, slow, multi-year rot that seems to take over everything? I would happily pay a small monthly subscription fee for a browser if it has strong legally protected privacy guarantees.

ashikns 1y ago
I feel the same. For now, I've made peace with having to switch to "whatever is the latest maintained fork with privacy defaults" every 6 months. Hopefully Ladybird becomes a usable browser sometime soon.
satyapr93 1y ago
You can look into Ulaa browser by Zoho. It fits your description.
- hoistbypetard 1y ago
  That's wild. I've been a Zoho customer for some time, and I've never heard anything about that.
cookiengineer 1y ago
In my opinion that's Ladybird at the moment. It's hard to predict what future generations of developers are doing, but right now Ladybird seems to have the right values embedded into their nonprofit structure. All the other browser projects have to be enshittified eventually, and therefore have to fulfill other interests than their users' interests to get there.
neya 1y ago
For what it's worth, I like Orion - built by the same team that built the Kagi search engine. It's a shit browser for developers (inspect panel crashes half the time and other bugs), but I trust it way more than Chrome or even Safari. For development tasks - if I need to, I simply switch to Firefox.
novok 1y ago
The hard answer is the project cannot attract the good engineers anymore because it eventually stops being a growth project. Without being a growth project, you don't get investment into what you want to do anymore and there is less potential growth in your career and income.
Mattified 1y ago
> which company/org structure provides best guarantees against gradual, slow, multi-year rot that seems to take over everything? I don't think any such guarantees exist, unfortunately.
WadeGrimridge 1y ago
it’s made by the same person who made cobalt.tools
- bodge5000 1y ago
  That makes it a lot more credible in my books, still not sure about a chromium browser but it takes it from a hard to a soft pass
- extraduder_ire 1y ago
  This makes !cobalt appearing as an example on the /bangs page make more sense.
lionkor 1y ago
> which company/org structure provides best guarantees against gradual, slow, multi-year rot that seems to take over everything? German e.V. [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_association_(Germany) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_association_(German...
EasyMark 1y ago
Browsers are always going to be "as-is, best effort" . No one, not even google is going to stick out their neck and protect your privacy, that's up to you, and especially not "legally" as that has aspects of easily being sued when privacy/money is involved. Certainly not for a "small monthly fee". Best you're going to get is open source and security community scrutiny of said open source code

ashikns 1y ago

I feel the same. For now, I've made peace with having to switch to "whatever is the latest maintained fork with privacy defaults" every 6 months. Hopefully Ladybird becomes a usable browser sometime soon.

satyapr93 1y ago

You can look into Ulaa browser by Zoho. It fits your description.

hoistbypetard 1y ago
That's wild. I've been a Zoho customer for some time, and I've never heard anything about that.

cookiengineer 1y ago

In my opinion that's Ladybird at the moment. It's hard to predict what future generations of developers are doing, but right now Ladybird seems to have the right values embedded into their nonprofit structure. All the other browser projects have to be enshittified eventually, and therefore have to fulfill other interests than their users' interests to get there.

neya 1y ago

For what it's worth, I like Orion - built by the same team that built the Kagi search engine. It's a shit browser for developers (inspect panel crashes half the time and other bugs), but I trust it way more than Chrome or even Safari. For development tasks - if I need to, I simply switch to Firefox.

novok 1y ago

The hard answer is the project cannot attract the good engineers anymore because it eventually stops being a growth project. Without being a growth project, you don't get investment into what you want to do anymore and there is less potential growth in your career and income.

Mattified 1y ago

> which company/org structure provides best guarantees against gradual, slow, multi-year rot that seems to take over everything? I don't think any such guarantees exist, unfortunately.

WadeGrimridge 1y ago

it’s made by the same person who made cobalt.tools

bodge5000 1y ago
That makes it a lot more credible in my books, still not sure about a chromium browser but it takes it from a hard to a soft pass
extraduder_ire 1y ago
This makes !cobalt appearing as an example on the /bangs page make more sense.

lionkor 1y ago

> which company/org structure provides best guarantees against gradual, slow, multi-year rot that seems to take over everything? German e.V. [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_association_(Germany) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_association_(German...

EasyMark 1y ago

Browsers are always going to be "as-is, best effort" . No one, not even google is going to stick out their neck and protect your privacy, that's up to you, and especially not "legally" as that has aspects of easily being sued when privacy/money is involved. Certainly not for a "small monthly fee". Best you're going to get is open source and security community scrutiny of said open source code