As far as I understand it, it's paid placement for search engines and bookmarks [0], and potentially attaching aff links to some search results [1]. Isn't that pretty much the same model as Mozilla and Firefox? Kind of a far cry from being a data aggregator and an ad company, right?
[0]: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/20277/vivaldi-income/2 [1]: http://www.itpro.co.uk/desktop-software/29904/jon-von-tetzch...
I understand why they do it (people gotta eat), but to me that looks even less trustworthy than Mozilla, which at least has a certain entrenched culture that typically tries (not always successfully) to blunt the worst corporate decisions, and follows real opensource practices.
We’ve always taken data security extremely seriously. And we’ve long believed that everything you store in your browser belongs to you — which is why we’ll never sell your data, or willingly compromise your privacyFrom the (older) interview you linked: 'The aim is to earn a dollar per year per user. "We're almost there," he says. "I think we can do more than that and still be nice guys and not sell out our users or do anything silly."' That's hardly cast-iron, especially considering that Opera did indeed sell out eventually (yeah I know that "it was complicated", but that's basically what it boiled down to). But hey, in the end, trust is individual, so more power to them. I just think their impact on the web at large will never be as significant as Mozilla's, if they continue on this track.