Comment by miki123211 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by miki123211 | Hacker News Reader

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I think a new browser could genuinely gain massive popularity if it was really good at this, and advertised the feature heavily, particularly in the EU.

Google will never touch it with a hundred-foot pole due to antitrust concerns, they're effectively banned from making any significant, user-experience-affecting changes to Chrome at this point.

Many people would immediately switch to a browser with 1) reliable Youtube ad blocking, 2) no cookie modals, and possibly 3) no other "distractors", like subscription pop-ups or "related articles" widgets.

Yes, ad blockers and reader mode can sort-of do all three, mostly, ish, but they're not easy to set up for non-techies, particularly on smartphones, even more particularly on iPhones, so a simple marketing pitch of "get this app, have these features" would probably work.

One would have to default to accepting cookies, though. Most users don't care either way, while website owners do. If you defaulted to refusing, they'd try to fight you and make their popups harder to auto dismiss, while auto-accepting would do the opposite.

I somewhat agree... but browsers aren't a profitable business. In 30 years of browsers being mainstream, nobody has built one that's sustainable –– only works if it's subsidized by a larger company.

There's been a few attempts (Brave wants to monetize via crypto, Arc is pivoting away), but it's really hard. People don't want to pray for a browser – 99% of people are apathetic, and the 1% that cares aren't known for paying for things.

No one has built a sustainable one because it it subsidized.

After 30 years, isn’t it weird that the conversation is still about whether building a browser is profitable or if users are willing to pay for one? One would think that the technology would be so mature and ubiquitous that this is not a major issue 30 years later. If the core technology is still changing so fast that browsers need to be in constant development for the entire duration of their useful lifespan, maybe that is the problem, and the web is just doomed to be a shit show until corporations are distracted by enshittification of alternative platforms like VR.

It’s just weird that a few hobbyists can generally throw together a database in a weekend, fork kubernetes and probably run with it forever if they really wanted to, create a free operating system that takes over the world, etc. And yet for browsers, we’re shaking our heads and saying the situation is impossible, we kind of always have done this, and it looks like we always will.

Well, it kinda is. Anyone can create a browser over the weekend by using Chromium or Gecko. Brave and Arc and DDG did.

The DDG one feels like they took an afternoon at most to make it.

I believe what you describe is something very close to Firefox. Enabling uBlock is down to a few clicks, but that does not seem to have helped Firefox gain massive popularity.

I use Safari with 1Blocker and I get 100% of what OP describes.

> Many people would immediately switch to a browser with 1) reliable Youtube ad blocking, 2) no cookie modals, and possibly 3) no other "distractors", like subscription pop-ups or "related articles" widgets.

Based on Chromium

I think librewolf gets you most of the way there. Just add a sponsorblock extension and check a few extra lists on its built in ubo.

Does the reliance on Firefox ESL or based on Gecko rule this one out?

DDG privacy browser and Brave browser are both trying to make this work.

Personally I use FF with lots of blockers and settings on my laptop/desktop, and DDG browser on my mobile.

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