Well, we did a bit of research and found out that there are some transparent ways and some fishy ways to how these web browsers make money and here are our findings.
How Do Web Browsers Make Money?
Advertisements
Whenever you search for something, say you search for web hosting options, you will notice some recommendations straight away on the top of the search results. This is a very transparent way as it clearly has “Ad” highlighted to the results. And you will generally see ads on various web browsers be it on their welcome screen or homepage or search results. Generally, we assume that this is the only was web browsers make money. Yes, this is definitely one of the ways that generate revenue for these but that is just one part of the revenue. There are other ways too.
By Maintained Homepage Contracts or Search Engine Royalties
This is also one of the transparent ways through which web browsers get their revenue. So what they do is that they sign contracts with search engines like Google or Bing. And the search engines pay royalties to the browsers. For example, if you search something on Mozilla Firefox, you will by default be provided search results by Google search. So, Google is Mozilla’s default search engine and Google has paid Mozilla for this. Also, Safari has Google as its default search engine Similarly, Microsoft uses Bing search as its default search engine and that is how it makes money. By this, the web browsers earn enough one-time money. These contracts are renewed over time and are good for one-time big earning.
Data Collection
One of the things that we better admit is that at the end of the day these web browsers are essentially data collectors. Whatever you search here or browse on them, they have a track of everything. This is one of the fishy ways of generating revenue. You must have heard the quote, “If you don’t pay for the product, you are the product”. This is so true. So how does that work? Simple, many web browsers allow third party cookies that stick with you wherever you go on the internet. They have your interests, what you look in free time, where you go, what you are planning. Isn’t that a lot of private data? Why would any company allow other parties to track all this for free? Well, they don’t. This obviously happens at a hidden level but yes, some web browsers allow third party sources to track your data and some browsers also sell some data to marketing companies and make money that way. This is all very fishy and hidden but yes, this is also one of the ways they generate the money to keep going.
Funding
Some of the browsers that are on the good end of the spectrum and do not compromise much on users’ privacy and security, such browsers rely heavily on funding. They do not sell data, so they do not make much money and they depend on the community of people that encourage the work of such browsers and fund them.
Conclusion
In the end, there are some transparent ways like ads and royalties and there are some fishy ways for web browsers to make money. We tried to list them as much as we could. If you know some of the other ways through which web browsers make money, do let us know. We have covered articles on top web browsers to use and internet safety.
Read Them Here
Top 5 Best Web Browsers in 2020Internet Safety: How to Browse Internet Responsibly and Safely
