Are paid extra services the next big thing for browser makers?
How do you monetize a web browser? That question used to have a simple answer: through search partnership deals. While some companies did not need any revenue coming from their browsers, e.g. Microsoft never really made money directly from Internet Explorer, others relied on search deals to finance development.
Nowadays, search deals are still valuable for browser makers but since the list of search provider that pay millions of Dollars for the right to be the default search engine in a browser is really small, it puts many browser makers in a precarious situation. The two main players when it comes to search are Google Search and Microsoft Bing; a few companies dominate regional markets, e.g. Baidu in China or Yandex in Russia, but their reach is limited to their markets and people that speak the language of the search engine.
Companies like Mozilla have to broker deals with companies that run competing products, and that is a problem. Microsoft developers the Microsoft Edge browser and Google the Google Chrome web browser.
Lately, browser makers who don't operate search engines of their own have started to test other forms of financing development. Some placed sponsored links on start pages, others have started to create new extra services and products.
Mozilla launched a VPN service recently for example that is available for $4.99 at the time of writing in select regions of the world. It is a standalone product, and while there is also a browser extension that acts as a proxy for the browser to protect its traffic, the main emphasize lies on the standalone version.
Brave Software, the maker of the Brave browser, announced the launch of a system-wide firewall and VPN for Apple iOS devices today. Powered by Guardian, an established application for iOS, it is also available as a add-on feature. Interested Brave users can purchase the app for $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year via in-app purchases and Brave Software plans to bring the technology to other platforms later this year.
The two examples have several things in common: first, that both companies leverage existing services to create these extra products, and second, that they both are useful to a subsection of users in better protecting their privacy and security while online.
Partnerships with established companies come in the form of revenue share agreements usually. Selecting a partner is beneficial as it allows the browser maker to leverage existing technologies and infrastructure. Downside to this is that some users may wonder why they should buy the browser maker's product and not the original product. One answer to that could be better integration or additional features, or even more comfort.
It is unlikely that the revenue that comes from these products will surpass the revenue gained from search deals, at least not in the near future. The main idea behind diversifying income streams is to reduce the dependency on a single company, and especially if it is a direct competitor.
Other browser makers will probably look very closely at how well these extra services perform, some may even have similar products in the pipeline.
Now You: What is your take on this development? What could happen if companies like Mozilla get independent of search money?
Firefox Containers are awesome.
I recommend using “Multi-Account Containers” in combination with “Temporary Containers” and “First Party Isolation”.
They are a hassle to setup at first but after that they are great.
To make it easier you should first enable “Multi-Account Containers” and save all your relevant Accounts in them. After that you can enable the other two.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-containers/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/first-party-isolation/
What exactly is the difference between temporary containers and multi-account containers? I don’t see how they can be combined since they seem to achieve the same goal in the same way.
First party isolation is a preference that you can disable manually from about:config so you can save one addon installation. Considering that would already make your browser fingerprint more unique and easier to track, which is the whole point of going through this trouble, is a good idea to look to reduce the number of addons like this one.
Just my observation, not criticizing, thank you for sharing this!
@thebrowser, disabling first party isolation is stupid.
First party isolation protects your privacy.
Read about it here: https://www.ghacks.net/2017/11/22/how-to-enable-first-party-isolation-in-firefox/
BTW, privacy.firstparty.isolate = “true” is the default of the ghack user.js, so you don’t have to worry about leaving a unique “fingerprint”, you’ll have plenty of company (other user.js also borrow heavily from the ghack user.js).
Oops, I didn’t mean disable by toggle it, my bad. But still, what’s the difference between the first two addons? I’m really curious if there’s a benefit in using them separately.
“But still, what’s the difference between the first two addons?”
From what I understand, multi-account containers can provide permanent containers while temporary provides only temporary containers.
Tried and tested it. It just does not work as intended, it’s such a pain to use and configure. Plus it is of course not integrated so if, say, I want less fingerprints with, for instance, User Agent Switcher then I need to configure it for each container which, in the case of Temporary Containers, means every and each domain…
So, at the end, you will definitely be tracked as if you haven’t those extensions.
This concepts should be:
– builtin Firefox
– usable out-of-the-box with decent default values
– invisible to non tech users.
If not, then it just like recommanding Tor and NetBSD to grandma.
Good idea, but many years overdue for me, as I already use 3 different computers for different uses and each of those has at least 2 operating systems and a VM, and I use VPNs and clear/avoid all cookies and block trackers and ads, and I don’t share accounts between systems, and more… Also, I no longer use Firefox, but good info to know, thanks.
I’m giving you an A+ for this report.
@Mr. Hand: You go on great lengths to play Minecraft, I give you that.
@Anon
Well, whatever you gave me, it’s retarded blather.
I use ESET EIS Security Suite with a Banking & Payment Protection feature (Protection against KeyStroke Loggers) and the two don’t seem to mix. The Ext installs for regular FF use BUT (ie) Financial sites setup to open in a Green-bordered BPP Window don’t recognize the Containers Ext and an attempt to Install it netted Install failed-Ext appears to be corrupt.
I’m valuing Keystroke Logging over Privacy, so I uninstalled the Ext.
IF anyone knows how to marry the two, much appreciated by a Not-An-IT-Pro.
What about the tracking via Localstorage?
Not good.
Firefox is not supporting removing site localStorage per container – it means that you could remove all localStorage or nothing (for example removing youtube.com localStorage in “Default” container will also remove YouTube settings in “Google YouTube” container).
https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie-AutoDelete/wiki/Documentation#enable-localstorage-support
Except the type of problems Danniello wrote about, the local storage is supposed to be separated by containers, like cookies, indexedDB, HTTP data cache, image cache, and any other areas supported by originAttributes, according to this source:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Project/Containers#What_is_.28and_isn.27t.29_separated_between_Containers
History, bookmarks and Security Exceptions for Invalid TLS Certificates are not separated (yet).
Saved passwords, saved search and form data, HSTS flags and OCSP responses are not separated, on purpose.
I’ve tried it. It’s useless for me because the history is not isolated to each containers.
Why do you need history isolation? Web sites don’t have access to your history.
“Web sites don’t have access to your history.”
Actually, there used to be a hack whereby websites could sometimes infer your history regarding other sites you had previously visited. It was an evil derivation of innocent code that some web developers (including me) had implemented: custom CSS code to change the color or style of a visited link, in a different way from the default style that websites back then used for visited links.
Unfortunately for me, after I put a lot of work into my snazzy visited-links styling, the browsers all blocked such custom styling because of the evil tracking hacks (which didn’t even exist at the time I wrote my code). I (and other developers) were furious that the browser companies didn’t implement the fix in a more fine-grained way: they should have just blocked that kind of styling on links to _other websites_, but not to links on the same site, since the site owner can log what pages you visited on his own site anyway.
I’m not aware of any history-sniffing hacks since then, but I wouldn’t bet that it’s not possible in some other way.
@skierpage
read gerdneuman’s comment here
https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/47
That’s what profiles are for. Containers is about site isolation and for using multiple accounts / cookies of a site in the same profile.
@Ashwin, my reccommendation for your next article is DNS-over-HTTPS (Martin covered it, but he hasn’t used it & reported back about a longer-term user experience).
IMO, everyone on Firefox should be using it (Chrome promised a general roll-out of DNS-over-HTTPS, but it hasn’t happened due to “technical issues” according to Google).
You can add ESNI for even better results.
And use a VPN, although, a good VPN cost money every month (whereas, DNS-over-HTTPS is free on Firefox).
Thank you for the suggestion. I’ll add it to my list.
Can I have some containers with all/most addons disabled (i.e. as if they were in safe mode) and other containers with addons enabled?
I get the basics of conatiners but I don’t understand the difference between the containers that now come with Firefox, and the add-ons – why do I need the extension? Is it because I can “reopen in container” but need the add-on/extension to make sure that whenever I open a particular webpage it opens within the container?
Ah – yes – the add-on just does the job automatically each time.
A mix of uBlock and Firefox’s own tracking settings can block the vast majority of the tracking content that is fed to a page, which makes the use of containers a bit redundant unless you are looking to have multiple tabs open with different accounts logged into the same website (or service) – which I have no need for.
That said, I having nothing against the concept of containers, just feel they are something that might have been beneficial years ago rather than now.
What’s more, if you genuinely want to stop the tracking, you could just use a private browsers session.
I’m surprised that container tabs isn’t part of the default installation yet even in the latest FF version which is 81.0 at the time of writing.
I’m using Waterfox Classic which supports XUL/XCOM extensions and is probably regarded as old fashioned by some; yet container tabs are available in prefs without the need to install an addon. Here’s a pix.
https://i.postimg.cc/43zKXb8K/container-tabs.png
I love Firefox Containers. Started using them about a year ago. Then the screen on the laptop I set them all up on died. Setting up a new laptop now and found that they’re not carried over to a new computer, even with Sync enabled. Ugh. Revived the old laptop specifically for the purpose of figuring out how to move them over to a new computer. Haven’t figured it out yet. Beware of this limitation if you use them.