If you want to contribute to Vivaldi, you can do that in a number of ways

Arnel Šarić Sharan :verified:

@jon I didn't know you have a deal with those browsers. So basically, I search via them on Vivaldi and that's it? Cool.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@sharan , yes, we have deals with these search engines, Startpage, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Qwant and Yahoo. If you use them as default in Vivaldi, that will generate revenue for us.

Javier Pérez

@jon as a happy Vivaldi and DuckDuckGo user, an honest question: Don't all those search engines also use just Bing or Google and pay them in return? Does a truly big-tech independent search engine actually exist?

Scotty Trees

@jon you are using chromium, which is controlled by Google. If we’re being honest, that’s not really being against big tech when you’re literally using big tech to power your entire browser. Nice market spin though. #Firefox

FearlessJuan

@jon I remember that the only search engine that wouldn't provide revenue for Vivaldi was Google. I switched to Bing to support you guys. Now I'm trying DuckDuckGo. It has a nice AI Chat untracked anonymous feature: https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/aichat/

ಚಿರಾಗ್ 🌹✊🏾Ⓥ🌱🇵🇸 (he/him)

@jon Except you're built on Google's Chromium, so anyone using your browser is further entrenching Google's monopoly in the browser wars. I get *why* you chose Chromium, but don't act like you're anti-big-tech when your browser does, in fact, further entrench Google's power.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@flooper , there are various attempts going on. The latest is this one:

Ecosia and Qwant, two European search engines, join forces on an index to shrink reliance on Big Tech | TechCrunch

Qwant, France's privacy-focused search engine, and Ecosia, a Berlin-based not-for-profit search engine that uses ad revenue to fund tree planting and

TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)

I think it is important to get alternatives for sure. Big tech needs competition. I also think it is important to support browsers and search engines other than the Big tech ones, even though there may be some reliance on Big tech even for them.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@FearlessJuan , yes we no longer have a deal with Bing.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@chiraag

The reality is that most all browsers today are built on Chromium and I do not see that changing anytime soon.

I have built a browser from scratch before. Opera. Sadly, after I left, Opera ditched their own code.

There is no option for us not to use Chromium. There just not is. It is also a pretty good code.

There is a reason why Big tech wants us gone. If you want to support them, that is your choice.

lori

@scottytrees @jon Somehow the idea of contributing (let alone donating) to a proprietary technology seems off. I'm old enough to remember when volunteer work was only socially acceptable in the nonprofit sector, before unpaid internships and the like were invented. Of course, Mozilla is gaming nonprofit status in various ways and also dealing in binary blobs. The sad truth is that there are no good answers. I think this is because the web standards have become too complex to be implementable at garage project scale.

https://astoundingteam.com/wordpress/2020/04/21/standards-bloat-is-a-thing/

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@lori @scottytrees

At times I think some may forget that every company needs a way to generate funds. Even one like ours, that is owned by the employees (with me being the largest shareholder).

We generate revenue from the search deals we do and from the bookmarks and direct match we include.

We also provide the donation option. Our users have been asking for that for years and we are thankful for their support.

Kerfuffle

@jon I don't get "Direct Match". Not the name, and not the way it got pushed. It got auto-enabled after last patch, which was basically a way to sneak in sponsored search results, which were irrelevant to my search. My first thought was that my browser had been compromised. If the goal was to garner interest & trust in the sponsor partners, this wasn't the way.

ilpalazzo

@jon
Greetings!

I am a fan, what can I say, I'd been using Opera since it had ads, 8.5 afair, till the last presto version 12.18 became unusable and the standalone mail client way longer than that.

Obviously I jumped on Vivaldi right when I found about it. I am very happy that you recreated old Opera functionality (and then some), because that's what I wanted to get.

I love the mail client for its different paradigm - don't do folder filtering, instead use contacts + real time full text search. I had a very heavy business mail account 2005 - 2010, it was so fast in Opera, by the time my oultook colleagues found anything in their mail I was long done & gone making coffee. It was sad to watch sometimes.

One thing I miss is aesthetics. Opera had a very elegant UI (at least till Vista showed up with its fake glass). I udnerstand Vivaldi goes for 100% pragmatic look determined by technology and it's fine i guess. We could do way worse but I yearn for times of chunky icons and bars full of 3D buttons when we were young.

Also, features for tab hoarders on withdrawal (highlight duplicates in windows panel, highlight the same domain, stack duplicates etc).

Anyway I work in IT and install Vivaldi on most machines that come through my hands.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@kerfuffle ,

DIrect match is not new. It has been in there for quite some time. I guess it is the first time you see it.

We are trying to find a balance where we provide you shortcuts to sites you might want to visit, while generating a little revenue for us.

We have had the same principle for bookmarks since the beginning, but people did not like us editing their bookmarks, so this was an alternative, less intrusive way to suggest sites to visit.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@ilpalazzo , thank you for your kind words and support.

Have you tried looking for a theme? Pretty sure you can find one with the look you want!