Would you subscribe to a browser?

[noellarkin]

The other day I found myself thinking about some of the underlying incentive misalignments in browser development - - for example, Google is adtech, and their incentives drive browser development in a direction that doesn't benefit users.
Wouldn't it be better to just have a SaaS model for browsers? I'd be willing to pay upto $20 a month for a functional power-user browser that respects my privacy and has good web compatibility. This would also help browser developers work on the things that matter, and not have to set up Faustian bargains with adtech companies (Eg: Firefox).

[suzyne]

I am open to paying a subscription to use a browser because I think it is reasonable to reward the creators of software if it is quality and has clearly taken effort to produce.

But on current exchange rates $20USD works out to be $30AU per month, which I would feel is much, way too much, at $360 in my currency per year. Sorry, but no matter how good it might be, or the privacy etc, that is far more than I would spend on a browser. (Unless it was bundled with a set of cloud services that I would actually use to enhance the value?)

Maybe I am cheap, but for a web browser only, it would need to be $5USD (or preferably less) per month for me to even start thinking of committing to it regularly where I had to pay every month.

[Pentium4User]

I depends. For a browser like PM, I would think about that because this is a product that respects me as a user.

[Moonchild]

This is effectively already a thing. If you are using monthly recurring donations to Pale Moon, that is a subscription of sorts. So if you agree with a subscription model, then please consider doing that.

The important difference would be that subscription (in the common meaning) would be fixed at certain amounts, and compulsory, i.e. this would much more restrict who could subscribe. At that point it becomes much more of a question of value and competition with other browsers, strongly shifting the dynamic away from development more into marketing/PR.

[Night Wing]

Lets not forget about older retired people who are on a fixed income.

In the small rural town where I live and volunteer at the local computer repair shop, we base our fees on the lowest we can so we do not lose a lot of retired people who are on fixed incomes at this stage of their lives.

[suzyne]

My income varies, so sometimes I feel "rich" and other times not so much. For that reason, I prefer to give to things I like and want to support in a more random or chaotic way, by throwing money at something when I can. While any fixed monthly subscription that is more than say the cost of a cup of coffee will just scare me off because of experiences on Twitch and Patreon, where even at that price I know how easily subscriptions of support can add up and get slightly out of control.

[null_ID]

Won't work, and this isn't even a very novel idea. The original Opera web browser (years before they went full Chrome) already did this 20 years ago, and gave up on the pay-to-play model, because their competition (at the time MS IE and the classic Firefox) offered theirs for free. You can't compete with that. It's literally impossible to offer a deal that beats and is better than "we're free".

For starters, the proposed commercial browser would be pirated to hell and back. All pay software will be pirated. It's inevitable. You're literally begging for a bloody nose with this one. Piracy is and always will be, so the project might not be as profitable and viable as one might think. Not unless some major corporations and government organizations become your clients. Don't forget: Google's offering has always been free of $$$. People have gotten used to this. They take it for granted now that they don't have to pay for a browser. If one browser vendor starts begging for $$$ for their product, people simply switch to the one that's always been free, once again strengthening the Google monoculture. This would mitigate whatever privacy benefits one though they would make.

This brings me to point 2: A commercial project like this would inevitably have to be closed-source, so there goes your transparency. To combat piracy, you can't make the project source code available. The SC would simply be used to roll up versions of the browser with all anti-piracy measures ripped out, so now nobody would pay again. This means also that there wouldn't be much of a community around the browser, you wouldn't be able to fork it in any way. And since you can't audit the code, you no longer have the foggiest about what kind of shenanigans go on inside the software, and what exactly they have hidden in the program code. You'd be at the mercy of the devs when they tell you that "yes, we're totally safe. No, we don't spy on you or steal your data". Pirated versions of the software would also likely come bundled with malware that's guaranteed to give you a very bad day. Especially now, when so much private banking happens online. Trust me, there WILL be people stupid enough to go for the pirated option, rather than to pay any monthly fees to the legit devs.

Sorry, but this whole concept is very much a stillborn.

By-the-by, which web engine would be used for this project? What is out there that could seriously catch up to Google's specs and keep up with their changes? Compete with them as a peer? Exactly, a project like this would in all likelihood be just another Chromium fork.

[Moonchild]

Stepping a bit outside of the box sketched above, there is another option: Make it subscription only for use in a commercial environment. You don't have to build in anti-piracy measures because there's nothing to pirate when it's free for potentially pirating users, and a subscription can legally be enforced on commercial end-users without affecting the software itself. i.e.: if a commercial client doesn't pay the fee they are risking their company's reputation and finances. The incentives and forces at play in a commercial entity are considerably different. This kind of model has worked quite successfully for software, as far as I'm aware. "Free for non-commercial use only" is (and has been) a thing.

[suzyne]

A commercial project like this would inevitably have to be closed-source, so there goes your transparency

I am not convinced that a browser can only be trusted if it is open source because of transparency. Sure, I would be wary of using a small time browser that is proprietary, like say SlimJet with its quaint website. But it's not like I can read and understand the code of any open project, so I am forced to rely on what someone else tells me. Safe or not, I have to take on trust.

So now thinking about Edge, I don't mind that it is proprietary because I imagine there is a legion of hackers wanting to boost their security credentials and earn a bit of fame, by analysing the network traffic to and from Edge. Again, it's not like if all the Edge computer code was available, that I would be reading the code for myself, but I am pretty sure that if it starts doing something nefarious, we will all soon hear about it.

[BenFenner]

If you are using monthly recurring donations to Pale Moon, that is a subscription of sorts. So if you agree with a subscription model, then please consider doing that.

I've planned on this for a while, and was going to implement it this past December. But finances didn't work out as planned, and then in April I was laid off completely. I am taking a long break to catch up on 14 years of piled up To-Do list stuff. Lots of car work, some house and yard work. But once I pick up employment again I expect to finally begin contributing more to the Pale Moon project, and on a predictably regular basis instead of my ad hoc donations of the past.

[Moonchild]

If you are using monthly recurring donations to Pale Moon, that is a subscription of sorts. So if you agree with a subscription model, then please consider doing that.

I've planned on this for a while, and was going to implement it this past December. But finances didn't work out as planned, and then in April I was laid off completely. I am taking a long break to catch up on 14 years of piled up To-Do list stuff. Lots of car work, some house and yard work. But once I pick up employment again I expect to finally begin contributing more to the Pale Moon project, and on a predictably regular basis instead of my ad hoc donations of the past.

This perfectly highlights where a subscription model would fail because it would be compulsory, and users would likely use something they can actually use instead. However, a "free to give if and when you can" model categorically underperforms for a business model because the vast majority of users simply will not give back even when they can (and whole classes of users will go out of their way to never give back even if incentivised but not forced to do so). You can blame the way our economy currently works for that (it may come as a shock but this current bartering economy is very new in the grand scheme of things).

[ePono50]

I'm sorry that I am unable to donate to AMAZING projects such as this more often. A subscription after literally fleeing several disaster situations (including 2005 Katrina which wiped us out & have us fighting id theft nightmares to this day) would be darn near impossible.

I wanted to wholeheartedly thank the precious developers for keeping us 'die hard' W7 users alive on the internet. I will continue to donate what we can until that stops (we know what happened to xp, imho, one of the best os's that was created*), so inevitably it's only a matter of time.

* For us, it ran everything - both HW & SW and contrary to what is generally said about it, in over 35 years I never had malware problems. Until this day, after over 40 years of computing, I haven't been hit (I know, now that I've wrote this I'll get hit tomorrow).

Again, we thank everyone for providing such an amazing browser. We do find some sites that seem to have a much 'different'** opinion of it, sometimes forcing us to use another browser. But we shall continue on supporting it.
** trying to be more 'polite' here

[leothetechguy]

I'm not generally a fan of subscription models, but it sounds reasonable when you are using a product that needs to chase and ever-changing and evolving web pseudo-standard. Still, If I was going to pay a monthly subscription, It would be great If I could keep the browser version I'm currently on after cancelling to at least own something. It's going to go out of date anyway at some point.

[andyprough]

This perfectly highlights where a subscription model would fail because it would be compulsory, and users would likely use something they can actually use instead. However, a "free to give if and when you can" model categorically underperforms for a business model because the vast majority of users simply will not give back even when they can (and whole classes of users will go out of their way to never give back even if incentivised but not forced to do so). You can blame the way our economy currently works for that (it may come as a shock but this current bartering economy is very new in the grand scheme of things).

I like the "Freemium" model that some successful projects use. For example, you can use Bitwarden for free all you like, but if you want additional features like 2FA then you pay about $12 a year. Protonmail gives free email service up to 1GB, but if you want more storage or more service options then you pay for one of their monthly plans starting at $7.99 a month and going up from there. These kinds of models work pretty well for me, because I get to try the service for free for a few months, and if I like it then I might see the value in paying for the additional features. If I don't like it or don't need the extra features then I don't need to start paying.

[Approunce93]

This is a really interesting thought! I agree that current browser funding models often put the interests of companies above the interests of users. When browsers depend on advertising revenue, this can lead to conflicts of interest, as seen, for example, in the case of Google Chrome and Firefox.

A SaaS model for browsers could change this situation by providing a more direct connection between users and developers. Users willing to pay for services can incentivize the development of features that are truly important, rather than those that promote advertisers. Some users have already expressed a willingness to pay up to $20 per month for a browser that respects their privacy and provides good compatibility with web resources.

A SaaS model could allow developers to focus on improving security, performance, and user experience, rather than making deals with advertising companies. This change could benefit everyone, especially in an era of growing concerns about data privacy and data collection.

It is important that users start actively discussing and supporting such initiatives so that developers feel the pressure and need to change. Ultimately, this could lead to a fairer ecosystem for all participants.

[Moonchild]

Some users have already expressed a willingness to pay up to $20 per month for a browser that respects their privacy and provides good compatibility with web resources.

"Some" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. The problem is that "some" users being willing isn't enough to have browser market share of any significance. And those that do pay not only want to "incentivise" the developers, they usually have very specific and urgent demands of the developers as a result. I don't see this working for a web browser.

[ron_1]

they usually have very specific and urgent demands of the developers as a result.

This right here is what makes this good idea in theory, a bad idea in reality.

[moonbat]

very specific and urgent demands

We already see entitlement levels off the charts with regard to perpetual support for abandoned Firefox extensions, particularly NoScript; imagine if they started behaving as 'paying customers' on top of that

[suzyne]

With the number of free browsers already available, any subscription-based browser needs to be outstanding to get people to pay for it.

One problem I anticipate is the overlap between the "I like good privacy and want to opt out of advertising and data collection ecosystems" and the "I hate paying for software, and subscriptions in particular are evil" ways of thinking.

I don't have proof that there is a correlation between those two attitudes, but I have observed the second here, and so suspect that such a mentality could contribute to the failure of such a project. People often dream of good things, but don't necessarily want to pay for them.

[moonbat]

With the number of free browsers already available, any subscription-based browser needs to be outstanding to get people to pay for it.

Netscape was the first and last successful commercial browser, IE killed the idea of paying for a browser for good. Before IE debuted, Netscape was offered as shareware with a 30 day trial.

One problem I anticipate is the overlap between the "I like good privacy and want to opt out of advertising and data collection ecosystems" and the "I hate paying for software, and subscriptions in particular are evil" ways of thinking.

Used to be that the first part didn't exist at all and for the second, when you purchased software your copy was yours to keep forever even if the publisher went bankrupt or stopped supporting your operating system. Subscriptions make you a perpetual renter, at the whim of the service provider who may change their terms and pricing at any time. Look how Amazon has started showing ads on Prime on top of your subscription, for example. No wonder people are averse to it.