One startup's quest to take on Chrome and reinvent the web browser | Hacker News Reader

One startup's quest to take on Chrome and reinvent the web browser

protocol.com

10 points______-5 comments

Given that most of everyone's 'stuff' is now accessed in a browser, it's clear that there's a problem to be solved helping us all keep track of everything. Bookmarks clearly don't cut it any more.

It seems crazy to me though to start by reinventing the browser when there's a thriving ecosystem of extensions built using the standard set of APIs supported by all the top browsers. We need better ways to organize and access all our stuff, not a better browser. 'Topic Maps' [1] are an interesting technology in this space.

Search the Chrome Web Store for 'bookmarks manager' or 'session manager' or 'topic manager' - there are hundreds of little companies experimenting and percolating new ways of keeping track of things. Customize Chrome or Edge or FireFox or Vivaldi or Brave etc, don't try to replace them.

[1] https://braintool.org/2021/05/15/Organizing-your-life-with-a...

> Bookmarks clearly don't cut it any more

I've developed a strategy for this. I collect bookmarks in various browsers, and every three months or so I export them as raw HTML files, into a folder, where I then manually review each link and decide whether to put the link into a 'notable' category (where only the best links go in there). I then proceed to sub-categorize these notable links into various topics, as you suggested.

I save a lot of chaff type links that seemed important at the time, but after a careful review, I usually discard chaff/low quality type links. I then manually remove the links that were in those browsers and start filling the browser up again with bookmarks, and rinse and repeat this. I sometimes share the links on hackernews/twitter so don't hoard them all to myself ;)

A few thoughts came to mind while reading this. Most obviously ChromeOS and less so Microsoft RT/UWP.

But the thing that this seems most like to me is HotJava where you can have an entirely new application execution environment that is net-native, programmable, and efficient. This could succeed where Sun (the network is the computer) and Java (write once, run everywhere) did not with WASM instead of Jvm bytecode.

Great to see a company try to truly innovate in this space!

For too long we see too many just copy Chrome, swap in their own telemetry, add some adblocking and then hawk it so aggressively.

The one bright light remains Firefox and it is sadly fading since its core is blocked on its most important platform.

Maybe this is the beginning of a new era of innovation.

One of my favorite browser was the station app (which currently pivoted to become browser extension). It helped me to organize my work by a large percentage. I guess their pivot is due to not good enough traction and becoming a chrome extension can help them increase their market size. I felt sad when everyone treats these amazing product as free product. They deserve a hug.

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