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The Internet

Alternative Browser 'Waterfox' Acquired By System1 (waterfox.net) 68

Posted by EditorDavid from the buying-a-browser dept.
Waterfox is an open-source web browser for x64, ARM64, and PPC64LE systems, "intended to be speedy and ethical, and maintain support for legacy extensions dropped by Firefox, from which it is forked," according to Wikipedia. (Its tabs also still have angled sides with rounded corners.)

Friday Waterfox's original creator, 24-year-old Alexandros Kontos, announced that the browser "now has funding and a development team, so Waterfox can finally start to grow!" after its acquisition by a company called System1. I started Waterfox when I was 16. It was a way for me to understand how large software projects worked and the Mozilla documentation was a great introduction... I've touted Waterfox as an ethical and privacy friendly browser... I never wanted Waterfox to be a part of the hyper-privacy community. It would just feel like standards that would be impossible to uphold, especially for something such as a web browser on the internet. Throughout the years people have always asked about Waterfox and privacy, and if they've ever wanted more than it can afford, I've always pushed them to use Tor. Waterfox was here for customisations and speed, with a good level of privacy...

I wasn't doing anything with Waterfox except developing it and making some money via search. Why I kept going throughout the years, I'll never know... System1 has been to Waterfox a search syndication partner. Essentially a way to have a search engine partnership (such as Bing) is through them, because companies such as Microsoft are too big and too busy to talk to small players such as Waterfox... It's probably the one easy way a browser can make money without doing anything dodgy, and it's a way I've been happy to do it without having to compromise Waterfox (and will be the same way System1 makes money from Waterfox -- nothing else). People also don't seem to understand what System1 does...
"Now I can finally focus on making Waterfox into a viable alternative to the big browsers," Kontos concludes.

Long-time Slashdot reader Freshly Exhumed contextualized the news with this brief history of the alternate browser ecosystem: As the usage share of web browsers continues to show a lopsideded dominance by Google Chrome, many previously-independent browsers have fallen by the wayside or have been reinvented as Chrome variants (i.e. Opera, Edge, Brave). Apple forges on with its Safari browser while other, smaller projects tend to be quite limited for multi-platform users, such as Dolphin and Bromite.

Mozilla continues independently with Firefox for almost every platform, while variants such as Pale Moon and Sea Monkey have attempted to provide products that avoid drastic and/or controversial changes made by Mozilla but sometimes do not match the multi-platform support of Firefox. Let us not forget Tor, the Firefox-based anonymity-focused browser.

Alex Kontos is a developer who attempted to provide continuity with dropped Firefox capabilities in his multi-platform Waterfox browser, proudly declaring that Firefox's user data sharing and telemetry collection was not included. For that privacy focus a certain popularity of Waterfox occurred. Now Kontos has revealed that his Waterfox project has been sold to System1, a company describing itself as "a consumer internet and applications company with the most powerful audience expansion platform in the industry."
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Alternative Browser 'Waterfox' Acquired By System1 More

Alternative Browser 'Waterfox' Acquired By System1

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  • Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @06:02PM (#59733966)
    "most powerful audience expansion platform"

    Just my 2 cents ;)

  • Also notice startpage.com (Score:5, Interesting)

    by higuita ( 129722 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @06:03PM (#59733968) Homepage

    the privacy search engine starpage.com was also acquired by the same company back in November (but hidden behind other shell companies). so also be careful with that one

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's very suspicious because Waterfox is basically going nowhere. The old extensions are mostly abandoned and the browser will never complete with Firefox on performance.

      So what value do they see in owning it?

      • Re:Also notice startpage.com (Score:5, Insightful)

        by higuita ( 129722 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @07:05PM (#59734094) Homepage

        Probably the same objective as startpage, monitor and quantify people that are outside the other tracking platforms. Both waterfox and startpage are used by people that want to avoid tracking, so they want to track those people to quantify the market. They can sell what other companies can't, tracked and untracked people profiles

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Whats the value of not using an ad company browser?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Mozilla is an ad company?

          And have you examined these guy's business model?

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by AHuxley ( 892839 )
            Only so many brands are working on their own "browsers" ... .. ie not using
            Good to have some options. Rather than using what an OS ships with ...

          • Doesn't Mozilla work for Google? Aren't they aping Google's browser? Mozilla's vision for the future is whatever Google is doing.

            • MS is aping Google's browser more than Mozilla.

              • If you are referring to Edge it's 'Chromium powered'. So it basically is Chrome. Not just a bad copy. It is total capitulation. Unconditional surrender. Microsoft decided to bow out of the browser wars entirely and just reskin and relabel Chrome.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Mozilla does not work for Google.

      • I started using Waterfox in 2011 because I wanted a 64 bit browser and Mozilla still wasn't offering a 64 bit binary. I could compile from source but I'm still waiting for my Gentoo box to finish! It was fast and stable. I found no need to switch once Mozilla did get around to offering FF in 64 bits but I kept them both loaded. But when Mozilla announced they were killing NPAPI support it just made it that much harder to switch back. And while most add-ons have moved there are certain add-ons that will neve
        • Have you tried a user agent spoofer? As far as the webservers know, my phone browser is a Win10 machine running desktop Firefox.
          • I'm guessing you didn't read my entire comment. I'd rather run the default agent so WF gets counted in the great browser consensus but if I have to, I add a User Agent for sites I'm forced to.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by 0111 1110 ( 518466 )

        Does your browser have multirow tabs or do you have to scroll back and forth when you have too many? Does it have themes that can completely change the look of the UI?

        Maybe they just wanted to develop and maintain a superior and more customizable browser capable of many things that FirreChrome and Chrome itself cannot. Maybe they want to develop a browser for people who dont trust Google or Google funded admirers of Google who one day dream of having a product just as good as Google's.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Depends on your definition of superior. The problem with being able to drastically alter the UI like that is that now extensions are security critical. Worse still they break the barrier between the UI and the network and HTML/JS handling side. It's basically impossible to make those APIs secure and they prevent the browser from being properly multithreaded.

          If you are happy with that then sure, use Waterfox. Or Pale Moon. But be under no illusions, not only does it have the issues above but it isn't going t

          • Have you tried GNU Icecat? Might resolve your trust issues while maintaining feature and performance parity with Firefox.

            Note that building binary packages for Windows and macOS currently requires nonfree software, so we no longer distribute binary releases for those platforms.

            I am not going to go install something that I can find an alternative and install that faster.

      • Again with the performance thing? I see no indicator that Waterfox is slower than Firefox. At all. In fact, in Octane, Waterfox Classic is faster than a default Mozilla Firefox install.

        • Re:Also notice startpage.com (Score:4, Informative)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Monday February 17, 2020 @05:15AM (#59734922) Homepage Journal

          Octane was retired in 2017 and only tests single tab performance. Waterfox is not properly multithreaded, it can't be because that would break compatibility with all the old extensions.

          There are two primary reasons why Firefox abandoned the old extension API. Firstly it was insecure and couldn't be fixed, and secondly it prevented them making performance improvements with multithreading for tabs and for rendering.

          When you open a heavy background tab the foreground tab in Waterfox lags. Maybe your artificial benchmark score benefits from that but your user experience certainly doesn't.

      • There's two versions of Waterfox. One, Waterfox Classic, is basically a fork of pre-Quantum Firefox 56. Then there's Waterfox Current, which is more of an alternative build of the Quantum Firefox. The first one I really didn't see going anywhere - it's not like Waterfox has the resources to keep developing all the new features and technologies that web browsers are expected to support in the old Firefox codebase. I still use it, though I expect at some point I'll have to switch to something else when th

  • Tabs (Score:3)

    by evanh ( 627108 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @06:06PM (#59733982)

    I went through a lot of themes for modern Firefox to find one that gave any contrast to the selected tab. The default is terrible compared to older style.

    • You can just use CSS on Firefox's tabs (just like Vivaldi) and customize it as you wish.

    • If the default theme in Firefox isn't showing enough contrast to the visible tab maybe the problem is your monitor. The default theme has the active tab close to middle grey while the background tabs are near black. Though a quick CSS change can turn the active tab to hot pink if you need something more obvious.

  • I like using Waterfox Classic (Score:3)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @06:20PM (#59734008)
    It allows me to use the superior XUL version of treestyletabs while using modern extensions. It just seems that the XUL using community didn’t care enough about XUL to make sure that development was kept free. The other XUL browsers have their own problems too.

    Waterfox is forkable because it is open source but I fear any forks will also be sold out down the line creating an endless loop of forking until the next buy out.

    The web community has not been free since 1994 when Mosaic sold out to both Netscape and Spyglass which became the base for Internet Explorer.

    • Yeah for me it is mostly a tab thing too. I like multirow horizontal tabs so I use tab mix plus. Waterfox or Palemoon is the only way to get horizontal multirow, tabs and Waterfox has better compatibility with modern websites than Palemoon.

  • “Apple forges on...” (Score:3)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @06:33PM (#59734036)

    On the face of it, this seems like good news. Regardless of how one feels about Google and Apple as companies - it is not good for the health of the web if these two sibling rendering engines end up being the only players in the market. Even smaller players like Waterfox contribute to a healthy web ecosystem.

    That’s also why I think it’s important Mozilla continues, even though I am not a fan of Mozilla’s overtly political decision making... although with them, I’m more concerned the project may eventually implode due to managerial incompetence.

  • Other browsers that use original Firefox add-ons? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @06:35PM (#59734042) Homepage
    What other browsers use the original Firefox add-ons?

    I like to use several browsers at the same time. I use Pale Moon for Slashdot.

    The old Firefox, Pale Moon, and Waterfox ALL begin using a huge amount of memory and CPU power when windows and tabs have been open a long time. Why? (Check a Windows OS with Windows Sysinternals. [microsoft.com])

    Whoever supplies Pale Moon updates seems very knowledgeable.

    Google Chrome installs 3 system services. Because of that I don't use Chrome.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dusanyu ( 675778 )

      What other browsers use the original Firefox add-ons? I like to use several browsers at the same time. I use Pale Moon for Slashdot. The old Firefox, Pale Moon, and Waterfox ALL begin using a huge amount of memory and CPU power when windows and tabs have been open a long time. Why? (Check a Windows OS with Windows Sysinternals. [microsoft.com]) Whoever supplies Pale Moon updates seems very knowledgeable. Google Chrome installs 3 system services. Because of that I don't use Chrome.

      Mozilla Sea-monkey and pale moon still use the original Firefox add ons.

  • Acquired by other thing I don't care about.

    But I'm commenting anyway because this is Slashdot.

    • My first laugh of the weekend, thanks

      I normally reserve the phrase 'word chutney' for Reddit but hey, there's no reason why Slashdot should not also gain a chutney award. Cheers

  • Please explain me how you can "acquire" an open source application. My understanding is that they can only own the rights to the name, logo, etc. Anybody can take the Waterfox code and fork it into "Icefox" or whatever.

  • You are the product (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Meneth ( 872868 ) on Monday February 17, 2020 @04:53AM (#59734894)

    System1, like most other companies, values only one thing: profit.

    Their privacy policy makes it clear that they will gather all the personal data they can and sell it to anyone who will pay.

    You will not pay them anything for the use of the Waterfox browser, so you are not the customer. You are the product.

  • just to know;

    are these old plugins still developed? most of them migrated along with firefox, and don't maintain their old plugins (i would assume).
    if not you are missing out on new features and maybe even security issues with those old, out-dated plugins.

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