Jon von Tetzchner, CEO and founder of Vivaldi Technologies, refuses to integrate AI features in its browser and wants human engineers, not AI, to write its code.
This ai stuff is like the new clippy the paperclip, GTFO of my phone.
I don’t want features just rolled out without my consent.
Long term I will have to install custom roms and get bank cards from my bank again thanks to AI.
adult person right here. true G.
I really hope Vivaldi stays good. It’s basically the only browser I’m considering usable. I’ll make do with something else in a pinch, but surfing the web without Vivaldi is like not having a hand.
I’m using it for stuff that doesn’t work without Chromium (like a translation tool that doesn’t break SPA forms) but yeah not being able to use my custom adblockers concerns me.
Waterfox is better, it’s open source, not based on chromium and has a split DNS resolution path through their own servers and cloudlfare. A few tweaks in about:config and it’s by far the best option out there.
A good ol’ browser war in the comments to get the day started :/
Firefox has locally run AI features you can turn off easily. I don’t see the harm. Occasionally I use the translation feature for foreign websites.
If you ask me, Firefox gets a lot of shit and it’s blown completely out of proportion. Are they without flaw? Of course not, but it’s not nearly as bad as people want you to believe.AI features should be opt in, not opt out. Every time it updates it also often turns those features back on (at least a couple times for me)
I turned it off once and it stayed off.
the problem with Firefox AI implementation was more of a communication issue.
It’s a purity race to oblivion : people who know and care use Firefox. They switched away from the default and by that very action they are in the tiny minority who actually has a grasp at problems and dare try to do something about. They are vocal about it, put efforts into the process so they in general want “more” and “better” according to their own criteria. It doesn’t stop there though, once they have moved away for privacy or open source or sovereignty or whatever else, they want the other criteria and it won’t stop.
It is recursive though, people who care a lot about some criteria move away from Firefox, the now “mainstream” within that community, then use e.g. Waterfox or LibreWolf. You can see this in any community which moves away from the mainstream choice really. There is a vocal minority within the minority and they do have genuine reasons and concern.
Once you use LibreWolf I bet there are other forks, etc, etc.
For those people what Firefox is doing is actually very bad because it goes back to what they wanted to move away from.
I’d use Vivaldi if it wasn’t chrorium and closed source, sadly it’s such a turn off
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It’s hard to convince me to switch away from Firefox, but Vivaldi doesn’t seem like a horrible choice if you need Chromium for WebUSB or something.
If you really need Chromium … just use Chromium?
yeah, ungoogled chromium is boss
“Customers don’t want it” is surprisingly difficult to understand for a lot of companies nowadays. Vivaldi must be run by some sort of language genius.
It’s a private compnay, they don’t have to follow shareholders so it explains it
Methinks shareholders should somehow be concerned what end users want.
Shareholders want the line to go up, currently AI is a thing that makes that happen, long-term effects be damned.
They are only concerned about money
Which is somehow related.
onlythinkaboutnextquarter then thinkaboutnextquarter
step 3) profit?
I’m not switching to Vivaldi, but it is refreshing to see someone say “I didn’t put X in the product because people don’t want X in the product.”
Unsurprisingly simple.
I like this guy…assuming he’s mistress free ofcGreat, now cover over why you rolled over for manifest v2 shitcanning. YOU WERE MY CHOSEN ONE VIVALDI , I NEED A CHROME BACKUP
Basically they don’t have the manpower to maintain a whole Chromium fork that still supports manifest v2. Even if they kept it in for a while, every upstream change might break things on their end.
It sucks and it’s the main reason why I recently switched from Vivaldi to Floorp, at least on some of my machines. Vivaldi’s ad blocker just isn’t comparable to uBlock Origin.
That’s not hard to explain: it would require a ton of resources to maintain a fork with manifest v2, for a small usecase. Vivaldi is a small company compared to say Mozilla.
Plus the main usecase for v2, ad blockers, is already covered by their built in one.
Vivaldi is a proprietary Chromium reskin. Use Librewolf.
Librawolf is simply firefox and I do, but there are things that need chrome. I need both of them for certain things.
For things that specifically need a Chromium-based browser, like WebUSB, I use ungoogled-chromium.
IMO Librewolf ain’t simply Firefox, and I don’t think folks wouldn’t say this if they gave Librewolf a chance. A lot of the corporate cruft/AI-adjacent stuff is removed, it’s not just a reskin with adblock. It’s a holistically better browser experience.
I think you’ll find what you need in either Brave or Helium, or both.
Can’t understand we’ve gotten this far and no one has mentioned Helium.
Vivaldis not bad. Good for work where you need different profiles; not crazy resource intensive
Yeah, it’s a good Chromium browser. I used it for a few years before switching to Firefox browsers. If you have to use Chromium, I’d recommend it. If you can though Firefox has been far more enjoyable (I’m using Zen currently).
And for people like me with a problem closing tabs, the memory management is excellent, killing off anything that hasn’t been used in a while.
You can do that in Firefox too tbf
So what you’re saying is there are two good alternatives out there now?!
No, there is only Firefox.
Firefox gang ✊🏼
I’m on librewolf just now having used vivaldi for about three years as my daily. Great browser, I just fancied swapping the chromium problems for gecko problems for a while :D
It’s my secondary browser. Pretty much just for HDR on YouTube. Firefox still can’t do it.
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Would be a really really expected deciding factor for a secondary browser though.
Lmao
Idk about not resource intensive but it does browser things happily.
I’ve tried Vivaldi before in the past and it’s UI and cluttered interface turned me way off. I’ve got my own concerns about it still that hasn’t made me jump to it. That being, it relies on the Chrome Web Store to install extensions. If Google themselves decided not to have something on that store and you’re using it on Vivaldi, well you’re SOL.
That’s an advantage for Firefox, that has its own extensions. Some of us are stuck with Firefox despite their interestingly bad choices and historical lack of fulfilling promises on their own behalf. There are still key advantages with Firefox than most browsers.
And even if some of us are tired of Firefox anyway, we’ve got its forks to use.
They have improved the UI quite a lot recently imo.
That being, it relies on the Chrome Web Store to install extensions. If Google themselves decided not to have something on that store and you’re using it on Vivaldi, well you’re SOL.
Note you can sideload extensions essentially. Google’s been fine afaik, but if they did suddenly go crazy it wouldn’t be that hard for Vivaldi and other chromium browsers to run their own store.
I’m the inverse. The amount of customization and power user features are what makes it my daily driver, though I agree the reliance on Google isn’t good. Also having their sync data stored e2e encrypted with my own private key is a nice touch. Though if a heavily customizable fork of Firefox with features like that was available I’d likely switch. I don’t have the time to maintain a highly customized userchrome.css that could break with every update, unfortunately
Just like the other person, I used Vivaldi for several years, but then switched to Firefox. Zen is my current browser, and it seems to fit into the place Vivaldi had pretty comfortably. It’s not identical, but it has a similar niche.
It’s been a long time since I used Vivaldi, but I find Zen browser fits what I remember of Vivaldi.
just as “most users” don’t want ai baked into their browser, “most users” probably don’t use any addons, or use only one–an adblocker. ad blocking (with configurable filter lists) is built into vivaldi already, no separate addon needed. works well-enough.
that said, the chromium base and its dependency on google to provide the ‘addon store’ is vivaldi’s main detractor, because google has been putting the screws to anything that threatens their business as a data harvesting advertising company.
vivaldi does have some features not found in other browsers or other chromium browsers (excepting some in common with opera). the one i appreciate the most is the configurable toolbars, both items and their positions… similar to how you can configure firefox’s main toolbar.
i do occasionally need a chromium browser for specific tasks. vivaldi is the one i use. usually as a ‘portable’ installation that is easiest to trash when i’m done. it’s also the one i use for a couple streaming sites because it does use chrome addons (but also is not chrome, either).
Some of us are stuck with Firefox despite their interestingly bad choices and historical lack of fulfilling promises on their own behalf. There are still key advantages with Firefox than most browsers.
That’s why I use Librewolf/Ironfox on my laptop/phone. All the benefits of Firefox and none of the half-baked promises or bad decisions!
I feel like I could have written this comment word for word. But luckily you already did so now I only have to write this short one.
cool. open source your product and i might consider using it
The arrogance in this statement, lol. :)
I mean sure, I get it, but what I dont get is why a company would have paid engineers working on a product and give it away for free if that’s their only income stream? How will they pay their engineers? Pay for office space? Make a profit?
It’s funny that people expect free stuff but complain when their data is being sold to ad agencies. :)
Like, shit, why can’t I sit here on my throne and have companies give me free stuff and maybe I will decide to use it from the kindness of my heart. :)
Firefox is open-source, and shares the same business model as Vivaldi.
If Google ever becomes certain that their monopoly state is in no danger of being broken by legislature, they stop financing Firefox, and Mozilla immediately dies to bankruptcy.
I think your example serves the other guy’s point…
Mozilla has revenue directly from Google search that is keeping the company afloat.
You probably know this. Otherwise you should have asked yourself how they can have offices and employees with no income to the company…
























