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31 years ago, Geir Ivarsøy and I started working on the Opera browser. A year later we founded Opera Software.
At Opera we wrote all our own code from scratch.
In 2011 I left Opera due to disagreement with investors about the direction Opera was heading.
Two years later, I co-founded Vivaldi to build a browser for you.
So I have been building browsers for 31 years. I think I know what it takes to build a browser.
Our Vivaldi team is for the most part in Norway and Iceland with a few people distributed around Europe and a couple of business people in the US.
Vivaldi is available for your computer and your phone, unless you have a very specific setup. Vivaldi might even be available for your car as well.
We go out of our way to provide you with a browser that matches your needs. I hope you like it.
I appreciate your genuine efforts, @jon, but #Vivaldi is still based on #Chromium… you are technically dependent on a browser engine maintained by #Google! What if all of a sudden they decide to close it? As improbable as it might sound, we are in an epoch of absolutely improbable stuff happening.
I thought about giving Vivaldi a try, but to be honest I was never interested in installing any browser that is not a #Firefox fork.
#FreeSoftware is not an extra added value, but something fundamentally relevant!
(I read your [vivaldi.com] articles [vivaldi.com] about the points I raised, but they are just technical and they gliss political and socio-economic aspects)
“According to the Mozilla Foundation's 2021-2022 financial statement, which is the most recent published, $510 million out of its $593 million in revenue came courtesy of Google's search payments.”
Firefox has always been been captive to Google. No less than the Chromium project.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/forget-apple-biggest-loser-google-001421247.html
@rob (replying also to @pgiulan)
You both make very good points!
I didn’t want to pass the message that I believe Mozilla to be absolutely better. I am actually very critical of them and super skeptical about their future, even though their legacy and their values still outweigh (by little) their current messiness—to say the least.
Still, comparing the probability of Firefox and Chromium becoming proprietary, Chromium has a higher chance.
I think Firefox (and Gecko) have embedded values that are different than Chromium, and I would totally prefer forks of the former over forks of the latter. It’s just a different spirit.
Am I basing what I just wrote on data or on vibes? Vibes, definitely. But I think there is some factual truth in this too.
In the end, Google remains a for-profit, monopolistic company, Mozilla is a non-profit backed by a corporation. I would always go for the lesser evil.
My question is this: is it worse to be explicitly funded out in the open or implicitly funded by agreements you cannot see? Is Firefox really more transparent and honest to than Chromium? Is it more virtuous to pretend you’re an independent organization or be upfront about where your money comes from?
I’m unconvinced that Firefox is somehow more trustworthy than Chromium. They certainly not worse. But better? 
@tommi what if all of a sudden Mozilla decided to close their browser, and thus all those forks? Chances of that happening seem even greater than Google shutting down theirs, especially when considering where most of their funding comes from.
