Jon von Tetzchner, CEO and founder of Vivaldi Technologies, refuses to integrate AI features in its browser and wants human engineers, not AI, to write its code.
It’s hard to convince me to switch away from Firefox, but Vivaldi doesn’t seem like a horrible choice if you need Chromium for WebUSB or something.
“Customers don’t want it” is surprisingly difficult to understand for a lot of companies nowadays. Vivaldi must be run by some sort of language genius.
I’m not switching to Vivaldi, but it is refreshing to see someone say “I didn’t put X in the product because people don’t want X in the product.”
cool. open source your product and i might consider using it
The arrogance in this statement, lol. :)
I mean sure, I get it, but what I dont get is why a company would have paid engineers working on a product and give it away for free if that’s their only income stream? How will they pay their engineers? Pay for office space? Make a profit?
It’s funny that people expect free stuff but complain when their data is being sold to ad agencies. :)
Like, shit, why can’t I sit here on my throne and have companies give me free stuff and maybe I will decide to use it from the kindness of my heart. :)
Firefox is open-source, and shares the same business model as Vivaldi.
Mozilla has revenue directly from Google search that is keeping the company afloat.
You probably know this. Otherwise you should have asked yourself how they can have offices and employees with no income to the company…
Great, now cover over why you rolled over for manifest v2 shitcanning. YOU WERE MY CHOSEN ONE VIVALDI , I NEED A CHROME BACKUP
That’s not hard to explain: it would require a ton of resources to maintain a fork with manifest v2, for a small usecase. Vivaldi is a small company compared to say Mozilla.
Plus the main usecase for v2, ad blockers, is already covered by their built in one.
Vivaldi is a proprietary Chromium reskin. Use Librewolf.
Librawolf is simply firefox and I do, but there are things that need chrome. I need both of them for certain things.
For things that specifically need a Chromium-based browser, like WebUSB, I use ungoogled-chromium.
IMO Librewolf ain’t simply Firefox, and I don’t think folks wouldn’t say this if they gave Librewolf a chance. A lot of the corporate cruft/AI-adjacent stuff is removed, it’s not just a reskin with adblock. It’s a holistically better browser experience.
That’s why you’re shipping Chrome with a very attractive skin and set of add-ons, by modern measure (reminiscent of Britannica electronic versions from year 2001 or I don’t know what), that’s still not as functional, convenient and generally awesome as Opera 12.
I’m not qualified to give anyone business advice, especially JvT, just think that in web browser market the field is so dead (as in captured by oligopoly) that retrospectively they were more likely to succeed forking a subset of Web standards and explicitly positioning continuations of Opera as a client for that and not mainstream Web.
Or claiming compliance with W3C standards and rejecting WHATWG etc.
And, of course, making it a paid product again, perhaps with a free version with ads and part of features locked (as it were before they made the browser free but with Google search and Google payments from that, what could go wrong ; I suspect those people were still psychologically a Norwegian state telecom company project and wanted some “public” sort of funding with product free to use, and remember how Google was positioning itself almost like a non-commercial entity). Compared to the amount of ads on webpages, this is nothing, and back then people were still a bit more computer literate in general and that they’d understand.
That’s not a heavier task than competing with Chrome/Safari/etc was as Opera Software, and perhaps that’s not even a heavier task that Vivaldi is doing.
I mean, W3C standards at least end somewhere and are not defined by what their combined competition collectively decides as fast as they need.
But it’s been 13 years already, and back then seriously thinking of dropping/forking the Web as a platform, or at least Google “standards” of it, wasn’t possible. Now there’s Telegram attaining more and more functionality, and other messengers and siloed services, and non-siloed ones, like NOSTR and Gemini (hypertext, not AI).
Anyway, there’s just one thing I don’t understand about them, if Google killed their business, why try it again depending on Google again? Couldn’t they base it on WebKit? On Firefox?
Google didn’t kill their business. Opera moved to chromium to save money.
The end user does not give a shit what engine their browser is built on. They care that [a] it has the features they want and [b] works well. Webkit still does not satisfy [a] and neither would running a subset of web standards. Firefox I’m not sure about. That said, running off chromium has worked fine for them so far.
My best guess is that everyone is optimising their websites for Chrome for the most part, so forking Firefox would potentially be seen as a negative for users. Most likely why almost all companies fork Chrome instead of literally anything else.
I mean, if firefox didn’t kneecap themselves every so often then probably people would also optimize for firefox. One example, WebUSB. I can configure my keyboard from a website. No need to install any 3rd party native app. On chrome, you have webserial on Android even. So I do have PWA that I can use to read sensor over serial via OTG. Not only that, chrome also support PWA install even on desktop. Firefox removed PWA ability to be installed on the desktop. That’s why technically electron is not needed if companies aren’t so greedy to spy on your pc using more invasive method. Just ship the html, css, assets and js then let the browser be the sandbox. No need to ship the browser itself.
I’ve tried Vivaldi before in the past and it’s UI and cluttered interface turned me way off. I’ve got my own concerns about it still that hasn’t made me jump to it. That being, it relies on the Chrome Web Store to install extensions. If Google themselves decided not to have something on that store and you’re using it on Vivaldi, well you’re SOL.
That’s an advantage for Firefox, that has its own extensions. Some of us are stuck with Firefox despite their interestingly bad choices and historical lack of fulfilling promises on their own behalf. There are still key advantages with Firefox than most browsers.
And even if some of us are tired of Firefox anyway, we’ve got its forks to use.
That being, it relies on the Chrome Web Store to install extensions. If Google themselves decided not to have something on that store and you’re using it on Vivaldi, well you’re SOL.
Note you can sideload extensions essentially. Google’s been fine afaik, but if they did suddenly go crazy it wouldn’t be that hard for Vivaldi and other chromium browsers to run their own store.
They have improved the UI quite a lot recently imo.
I’m the inverse. The amount of customization and power user features are what makes it my daily driver, though I agree the reliance on Google isn’t good. Also having their sync data stored e2e encrypted with my own private key is a nice touch. Though if a heavily customizable fork of Firefox with features like that was available I’d likely switch. I don’t have the time to maintain a highly customized userchrome.css that could break with every update, unfortunately
It’s been a long time since I used Vivaldi, but I find Zen browser fits what I remember of Vivaldi.
just as “most users” don’t want ai baked into their browser, “most users” probably don’t use any addons, or use only one–an adblocker. ad blocking (with configurable filter lists) is built into vivaldi already, no separate addon needed. works well-enough.
that said, the chromium base and its dependency on google to provide the ‘addon store’ is vivaldi’s main detractor, because google has been putting the screws to anything that threatens their business as a data harvesting advertising company.
vivaldi does have some features not found in other browsers or other chromium browsers (excepting some in common with opera). the one i appreciate the most is the configurable toolbars, both items and their positions… similar to how you can configure firefox’s main toolbar.
i do occasionally need a chromium browser for specific tasks. vivaldi is the one i use. usually as a ‘portable’ installation that is easiest to trash when i’m done. it’s also the one i use for a couple streaming sites because it does use chrome addons (but also is not chrome, either).
Some of us are stuck with Firefox despite their interestingly bad choices and historical lack of fulfilling promises on their own behalf. There are still key advantages with Firefox than most browsers.
That’s why I use Librewolf/Ironfox on my laptop/phone. All the benefits of Firefox and none of the half-baked promises or bad decisions!
I feel like I could have written this comment word for word. But luckily you already did so now I only have to write this short one.
Would give it a try if it wasn’t proprietary.
Vivaldis not bad. Good for work where you need different profiles; not crazy resource intensive
And for people like me with a problem closing tabs, the memory management is excellent, killing off anything that hasn’t been used in a while.
You can do that in Firefox too tbf
I’m on librewolf just now having used vivaldi for about three years as my daily. Great browser, I just fancied swapping the chromium problems for gecko problems for a while :D
It’s my secondary browser. Pretty much just for HDR on YouTube. Firefox still can’t do it.
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Would be a really really expected deciding factor for a secondary browser though.
Lmao
Idk about not resource intensive but it does browser things happily.
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My husband has a lot of nostalgia for opera (long story, don’t ask) but some of the dubious connections there made them a non-option for us as we got more into internet privacy. He was super happy when I switched him over to Vivaldi.
I was an Opera user for a decade. I think there designers left to start Vivaldi.
I never heard that connection but I do know it was sort of intended as a spiritual successor to opera, so if true, that would make a LOT of sense
Been using it for years on my phone. It’s great. Some webpage doesn’t work well with it though but imo those are the site not worth visiting.
Been on the wolf for quite some time, but I gotta respect Vivaldis values
I’m going to stick with Firefox but also because they take the same stance.
Excel when they aren’t. Firefox bundles AI with their browser. Sure they let you turn it off. But it’s turned on by default and still there.
I’m fine with that, I’m not about to turn on them when I’m given a choice and they do many other great things
Well, that’s true… For the moment
Can you say more? Do you mean that people may want AI in the browser soon? I’m just curious.
Most likely they notice the pattern that corporations are inherently slimy, selfish, and shortsighted. It might be anti-ai now a days but how long will that last?
