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I bet they get solicited all the time but there aren't many ways to make money on a web browser without ruining the user experience.


You could just sell a copy, but hey I guess I'm old fashioned thinking selling a product in exchange for money is better than selling eyeballs to advertisers.


You are old fashioned, even commercial browsers abandoned that strategy years ago.


Out of curiosity, has anyone tried that strategy with any success post-Opera? They're the last I remember to sell significant numbers of copies of a browser. Depending on how you count, that ended in either 2000 (when they introduced a free ad-supported version, though you could still pay for a registered, ad-free version), or 2005 (when the paid version was phased out entirely).


I guess iCab is the last one still trying (as shareware): http://icab.de/


It's pretty hard to that and keep the project open-source. If you don't keep it open-source, the amount of bugs to fix will overwhelm you and it will be just a failure.


You mean like Microsoft?




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