Pay $60 for a cleaner browser with less features? Yes, it's a thing.

[Marc_LFD]

I'm surprised this post wasn't about apple

Safari would be more expensive.

Let's say...
Basic $99.99
Pro $149.99
Ultimate $199.99

Apple will probably do something like it now.

 

[tech3475]

I'm surprised this post wasn't about apple

If it was Apple, they would be launching Safari+ as a subscription service....featuring AI.

 

[Marc_LFD]

If it was Apple, they would be launching Safari+ as a subscription service....featuring AI.

$4.99p/m

People see "Oh just $5/£5 per month? That's cheap I'll buy it" all these subscriptions just make people pay more while owning nothing.

 

[tech3475]

$4.99p/m

People see "Oh just $5/£5 per month? That's cheap I'll buy it" all these subscriptions just make people pay more while owning nothing.

Or 'free' as part of Apple One...shortly before that receives a price rise.

 

[realtimesave]

In my original post I was going off my memory, but double checking (i.e. Wikipedia) IE was originally included as part of the paid Plus! addon.

The earlier versions of Netscape danced around paying for it e.g. commercial/non-non-commercial/nagware and physical copies.

Mosaic also did commercial/non-commercial.

And of course AOL as you mention, but could that arguably be classed as SaaS?

Now that I think about it, there were also things like the Nintendo DS Browser, although that involved hardware.

There are also other browsers such as IBrowse for the Amiga which is still shareware.

I'm too cheap to pay for shit like that hohohoho

 

[AkikoKumagara]

Meh, I use Floorp now and it gets the job done. Still has some crummy AI features, to a degree, unfortunately, but they can just be turned off at the user's will instead of being thrust upon you without any escape. Feels and functions enough like Firefox that it's based on to make it easy to use.

 

[Skv0ra]

Entertainment and critical, say banking, websites will continue to push out new protocols and NO dev will continue updates anything for that one time fee when they can just sell your data to advertisers, thus making paid browsers today utterly pointless.

 

[XFoxPrower]

Generally not, but for the homebrew community, I'd pay $60 to upgrade my browser. Think my privacy is ok at least ... 5.0 (PlayStation Vita 3.73) AppleWebKit/537.73 (KHTML, like Gecko) Silk/3.2 VTE/3.73

 

[krakenx]

Mozilla Firefox (and it's forks) is the last browser not using Chromium, and thus our last hope for an internet not controlled by Google. It's free on all platforms, has minimal restrictions on plugins so uBlock Origin still works and has a master toggle to disable AI stuff if you don't like it.

If you are going to pay for a browser, donate to Firefox instead. Even if you prefer a fork like LibreWolf or Waterfox, those projects also die if Firefox does.

 

[Citizen_404]

Entertainment and critical, say banking, websites will continue to push out new protocols and NO dev will continue updates anything for that one time fee when they can just sell your data to advertisers, thus making paid browsers today utterly pointless.

Sadly, this is pretty much true. Every megacorp out there pushes some new "feature" that the kids can't seem to live without, but really enables them to track you and harvest your data so they can sell it for $$$$.

If the internet was just about sharing information, my good ol' reliable Lynx browser would be good enough. Sadly, most people want eye-candy, and yes, there probably needs to be more for secure connections. Sigh...

 

[K3Nv4]

Sadly, this is pretty much true. Every megacorp out there pushes some new "feature" that the kids can't seem to live without, but really enables them to track you and harvest your data so they can sell it for $$$$.

If the internet was just about sharing information, my good ol' reliable Lynx browser would be good enough. Sadly, most people want eye-candy, and yes, there probably needs to be more for secure connections. Sigh...

Any time you register at any given website it stores your data.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

If you are going to pay for a browser, donate to Firefox instead. Even if you prefer a fork like LibreWolf or Waterfox, those projects also die if Firefox does.

Donating to Mozilla doesn't sound too good in my opinion.
Just looking at million payments for the CEO in past years disqualifies the Mozilla Foundation for me.
In addition to their main source of income - surprise: it has been Google - Mozilla started investing into the advertising business and jumped on the AI bandwagon. And, no, "can be disabled" has never been a convincing argument. Anything but an pure opt-in in unacceptable, not only for the AI topic.

Maintaining a complete browser engine has become an enormous task. A browser is orders of magnitude more complex than whole operating systems used to be. Security maintenance alone is out of range for a non-profit hobbyist project - not even talking about keeping up with the ever increasing complexity of web technology.

Mozilla Firefox (and it's forks) is the last browser not using Chromium, and thus our last hope for an internet not controlled by Google. It's free on all platforms, has minimal restrictions on plugins so uBlock Origin still works and has a master toggle to disable AI stuff if you don't like it.

I agree with you that the dominance, almost a monopoly, Chromium has reached is threatening. We'll have to wait if Ladybird will actually see production releases.

==========
An honest concept for funding professional development doesn't sound bad to me. I'd rather be the paying customer than the product being sold.

Spoiler: When playing "The Legend of Zelda" the decision is easy

But in reality people tend to rather pay with their life (data, time) than with money.

 

[MPRTwice]

Browser's Inside Story.

 

[thebigC]

Mozilla Firefox (and it's forks) is the last browser not using Chromium, and thus our last hope for an internet not controlled by Google.

I agree with you that the dominance, almost a monopoly, Chromium has reached is threatening.

The chromium/google internet monopoly is even scarier than a lot of people think. The team over at GrapheneOS have a great blog post about it. The TLDR is that Google is requiring an approved device in order to pass some reCAPTCHA tests. This could expand and would lock users out of a large portion of the web if they were to use something that was better for their privacy and security like GrapheneOS since it is not Google approved. Obviously this is terrible for the openness and freedom of the web. I hope it doesn't see the light of day though it is the path we are currently on.

 

[TVL]

Lol. Web browsers have been free for almost 30 years... Why not go for a monthly subscription, that's where the money is at.