Vivaldi Browser Gets Built-in Tracking Blocker, Goes GA on Android

Vivaldi, the browser launched by former Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner, has long positioned itself as a highly customizable alternative to Chrome and Firefox for power users. Today, the team is launching version 3.0 of its desktop browser, with built-in tracker and ad blockers, and it's bringing its Android browser out of beta. From a report: I've long been a fan of Vivaldi, but the company was relatively late to the tracking protection game. Now it's doubling down by integrating a blocklist powered by DuckDuckGo's Tracker Radar. Like competing browsers, Vivaldi offers three blocking levels that users can easily toggle on and off for individual websites. Those blocking levels are relatively blunt, though, with the options to either block trackers, block trackers and ads, or disable blocking. Competitors like Edge offer slightly more nuanced options for blocking trackers, though I would expect Vivaldi to adopt a similar scheme over time.

Really?

[nospam007]

"Competitors like Edge offer slightly"

Shill detector engaged!

Re:

[Randj Herdle]

I mentioned in another thread about using Vivaldi sometimes to blur my identity to trackers.

TL;DR may apply to the rest of this comment.

I've got to examine Vivaldi's Reader Mode more closely. I like to capture web pages, and subsets of sites, for offline use in my eReader. I usually use FF and ReaderView to accomplish this. There's a more-or-less standardized CSS page, aboutReader.css, that gets d/l'd when you Save File Complete off of the readerview image. A slightly tweaked variant of that can be droppe

Re:

[wilsong]

Edge is Chromium now, isn't it?

Also, Vivaldi is Chromium?

And Opera? Chromium.

We've been Googled. All that browser/anti-trust stuff a couple of decades ago was a waste of energy.

After Firefox installed telemetry for version 75..

[QuietLagoon]

... I may just give Vivaldi a serious try. I was not at all happy that Firefox, even though I had disabled all the telemetry options, installed a Windows task without my knowledge or consent that sent telemetry to Mozilla once a day when I upgraded to Firefox version 75.

Re:

[Luckyo]

Another option is to use one of the firefox forks that strip tracking.

Re:

[Rockoon]

Another option is to use one of the firefox forks that theoretically strip tracking.

Fixed that for you.

Re:

[Luckyo]

No, they practically strip tracking. Most of them either disable or outright remove relevant code before compiling the browser.

What browers do you recommend?

[Futurepower(R)]

What Firefox forks strip tracking?

K-Meleon? [kmeleonbrowser.org] What do you think of that browser?

Waterfox [waterfox.net] uses 5% of the CPU resources, even when you are not looking at a Waterfox window. That is shown by the excellent, free Microsoft Process Explorer. [microsoft.com] Why was Waterfox acquired? [slashdot.org]

The old version of Firefox, version 56, also constantly uses CPU resources when there are many windows and tabs open.

Pale Moon [palemoon.org] allows the old Firefox add-ons, but doesn't allow the Ghostery add-on.

Re:

[Luckyo]

Yes. All of them.

Re:

[bobby]

SeaMonkey! /s

Been running Vivaldi for several years. Lots of anti-tracking and ad-blocking plugins...

Still relying on Google

[xack]

All these “privacy” browsers fail in the fact that they still ultimately use Google code for their rendering engine. Until a true from the ground up engine is incorporated into these browsers they are just fancy Chrome skins.

Re:

[Luckyo]

There are quite a few based on gecko, though gecko also likely has quite a lot of "Google code" in that google employees do some coding for mozilla's engine.

Re:

[Luckyo]

A rare insightful anonymous coward. I tip my hat to you sir.

Re:

[Sigma 7]

Want a new ground-up engine? Go ahead and fund one.

Aside from that, the rendering engine is sufficiently open source that you can find whatever privacy issue is in the renderer, and squash it. Perhaps if they do more work on the Chromium core than Google, they can claim being the primary developer with their own fork.

Also, even the Chromium library behaves differently in Vivaldi. Example: Visit a page containing an iframe [kongregate.com], right click on said Iframe, and choose inspect. The Developer Tools is completely una

Vivaldi is a great choice, but...

[imperious_rex]

I'm still a die-hard Firefox user and probably will be for the foreseeable future, but if I had to switch my main browser, it would be to Vivaldi. Developed by the original Opera creators, it's an excellent browser. But it does bother me that it's based on Chromium and that's probably the one thing that has kept me from fully embracing Vivaldi. Firefox, while imperfect, is the last holdout against the dominance of Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, etc.). Remember the bad days of Microsoft's Internet Explorer's dominance? Nobody wants a return to a similar state with Chromium having such massive dominance that innovation withers for lack of competition.

Re:

[jimbo]

I too am a Firefox user. Like you are saying; It's our last feeble chance to keep WWW from becoming the Google Wide Web. Google is already strong arming the standard for their own purposes, it's an even more dangerous situation than the IE days.

Re:

[lexman098]

Firefox, while imperfect, is the last holdout against the dominance of Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, etc.).

I see this a lot of Slashdot. Have never got an answer as to why Chromium dominance is a problem. If anything it's a benefit. That's why you're seeing web developers targeting it exclusively (mostly).

Remember the bad days of Microsoft's Internet Explorer's dominance?

Yes. I also remember the lack of available forks. Chromium is open source, so it's a different situation entirely.

Re:

[imperious_rex]

There are basically two things about Chromium's dominance that has many concerned:
1. Fear of Google. It may be open-source, but Google is behind its continued development. Considering Google's dominance in other areas (search, online office suite, etc.), few want to see Google dominate web browsers (and by extension, the web) as well.
2. Fear of monoculture. Chrome currently has 66% of the total browser market-share. Add Opera's 2.2%, Edge's 1.1%, and Yandex's 0.43% then that puts Chromium-derived browser

Re:

[lexman098]

1. Fear of Google. It may be open-source, but Google is behind its continued development. Considering Google's dominance in other areas (search, online office suite, etc.), few want to see Google dominate web browsers (and by extension, the web) as well.

This strikes me as gut reaction fear instead of carefully reasoned fear. Google develops it currently, but it's still open source. Look how quickly MATE popped up and became popular after the Gnome team took a direction many people disagreed with.

Fear of monoculture. Chrome currently has 66% of the total browser market-share. Add Opera's 2.2%, Edge's 1.1%, and Yandex's 0.43% then that puts Chromium-derived browser marketshare at just a hair under 70%. So what happens when that 70% rises to over 90%? Then competition between browser engines will diminish and the users will be the worse for it. Also there's the potential for security vulnerabilities, as the dominant browser engine will be a big fat target for malevolent parties.

Would you make the same argument about Linux vs BSD [w3techs.com]? Is Linux especially vulnerable to security issues being the most popular open source kernel by far? I doubt it, so I'm not sure your argument here really holds up. If anything, an open source browser with 99% mar

Re:

[Randj Herdle]

Fear of Google? No, just well earned caution.

And yes, I would make the same argument about Linux vs BSD. But I also echo the Windows vs Linux refuseniks, based on my existing knowledge base and the availability of familiar apps.

Just installed it

[pacija]

Color me unimpressed.
Although they offer direct apk download link, it is not so easy to find it - they are promoting Google Play heavily.
Starting screen is full of ads - links to websites I never want to visit. They are also pre-bookmarked as well.
Had to turn off at least 20 settings which default to violating privacy (location, motion sensors etc.).
Had to change search engine from default Bing to DDG.
Ads cannot be completely disabled, 'some sites' are always permitted to show ads, I don't know which ones.
I'm gonna delete it as soon as I hit 'Submit' button.

Translation please

[ebcdic]

What is GA and how do you go it?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

General availability