Are you ready to start moving away from Big Tech?

Jon S. von Tetzchner

First natural step is to download Vivaldi.

#Vivaldi #Facebook #Meta #Microsoft #Google #Twitter #Mastodon #fediverse #Windows #macos #Linux #Android #iOS #Computer #Technology #software #browser #BigTech

Dietmar Hauser

@jon When is Vivaldi ditching Chromium?

Ted C. Howard

@jon #vivaldi looks great. What is the business model? How do you make money?

Leeloo

@rattenhirn @jon
When there is a real alternative?

Gecko is not built to be easily integrated into other browsers, and likely going down with Mozilla anyway.

Webkit would just make them dependent on Apple instead of Google, and less compatible with major websites.

Preston is dead and they don't own it.

And building a new browser engine from the ground up is too big a task for a small company like Vivaldi.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@tedchoward

https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/

Dietmar Hauser

@leeloo @jon I think new browser engines are something the world needs and exactly something a small company could innovate with. Especially in the embedded space.
All existing engines are incredibly bloated.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@rattenhirn @leeloo

A new browser engine would be great, but it is unlikely to happen. I think you are underestimating the task.

We have built one. We did at Opera. It was called Presto. It was great. We had a team of 100 working on it. Since then the scope of an engine has increased and you still face the problem of being compatible with other engines and being blocked by sites.

Just to be clear. 100 may not sound like a lot, but those were 100 people that had been working on this for years and knew the code in and out. Setting up a team to do that now would require a lot more.

Dietmar Hauser

@jon @leeloo
Loved Opera with Presto!
It's a daunting task for sure, especially with all the functionality that has been crammed into browsers. A new engine would have to focus on a specific use case that is not well covered by existing general purpose (well, desktop use) engines. It also wouldn't have to implement the whole stack and instead focus on a particularly crufty part, i.e. the layout/rendering pipe which isn't GPU friendly at all.

Jon S. von Tetzchner

@rattenhirn @leeloo

I think any engine would have to match what is out there. There might be some small exceptions, but not much.

When it comes down to it, if an engine does not work with the content out there, it does not have much real value and clearly would not be something any normal browser could use.

Presto was a much more compact codebase and because it was all written by us, with almost no use of libraries, it could do what the other engines did, but just better. Thus it is possible to build an engine that does it all, but it just takes a lot of effort. After that you still have the compatibility and blocking issues, though.