I don"t think any business has made money on building and supplying a browser.
So they have to get the money back from somewhere.
Google from getting you to use other google things and getting more advertising revenue.
MS by making you use Windows (yes IE was available for the Mac but I think that was to keep Apple afloat to stop anti-trust problems).
Apple first to get out of IE and then to get a browser on iOS and then not have to use Chrome and now get paid by Google to use its search engine. Possibly blocking Flash also was a reason.
Netscape - well that is the problem where do they get revenue - Google paying them to be the default search and probably to head off anti-trust.
Comments
Browser in any period is not a good business.
I don"t think any business has made money on building and supplying a browser.
So they have to get the money back from somewhere.
Google from getting you to use other google things and getting more advertising revenue.
MS by making you use Windows (yes IE was available for the Mac but I think that was to keep Apple afloat to stop anti-trust problems).
Apple first to get out of IE and then to get a browser on iOS and then not have to use Chrome and now get paid by Google to use its search engine. Possibly blocking Flash also was a reason.
Netscape - well that is the problem where do they get revenue - Google paying them to be the default search and probably to head off anti-trust.
Opera?
Vivaldi - from payments from search engines to use them and from clients why pay for bookmarks. https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/
I used OmniWeb on NeXT and OSX and did pay for that but they could not compete so not profitable.