Has there ever been a desktop browser you could buy instead of using these ad supported/os bundled ones?
I like that business model. Something that just works, no ads, nothing. The sublime text model is good too. I will happily pay a one time license for a browser for $100 if it meant no ads and they gave me some cool functionality for it, maybe additional customizations? Then add a solid built in password manager that I know is provably secure that they sync between my devices for me while allowing me to have my own backup, I’d pay $5/month for that through Firefox.
>Up to this point, Opera was trialware and had to be purchased after the trial period ended. Version 5.0 (released in 2000) saw the end of this requirement. Instead, Opera became ad-sponsored, displaying advertisements to users who had not paid for it. Later versions of Opera gave the user the choice of seeing banner ads or targeted text advertisements from Google. With version 8.5 (released in 2005) the advertisements were removed entirely and primary financial support for the browser came through revenue from Google (which is by contract Opera's default search engine). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(web_browser)
Theres also a nice iPhone app with tons of functionality