Opera & Vivaldi Founder — Reverse Big Tech: Stories from Privacy OG's #TOA23

Yeah, 1992. So I was working at Telenor Research and we were looking at interesting technologies. We came across this thing called the web, and this is very, very early. By the end of '93, by the way, there were a hundred web servers in the world, so we were before that. We started playing with the technology and I actually made some tools for converting FrameMaker documents to HTML. Then we decided to make a browser. That was inside Telenor; we made a prototype. We negotiated to take the code out with us because they didn't want to use it, and that's how Opera was founded.

Yeah. After doing browsers for 17 years, you would think, hey, you might want to do something else. So I was thinking, hey, I'm going to do something else. But after a couple of years, I saw that Opera was going in the wrong direction. I felt, okay, there's a need for another browser, so we'll do it again. We'll make Vivaldi as a new browser.

We're headquartered in Oslo, about 55 people. The biggest team is in Oslo, a significant team in Iceland, and then we have a distributed team. We're also in the US at times; we have meetups. I'm actually coming from the company meetup, which is for the month of June, where we bring employees and family together. We started providing the browser on Windows, Mac, Linux, and the like, and we've been gradually expanding. We now have an Android version, an iOS version in the works, and we started doing cars.

In reality, there aren't that many browsers out there. On mobile, there are a lot of browsers in a way, but most of them are using the same core unchanged, so it's basically a layer on top of what's underneath. In our case, yes, we are using Chromium, but we've actually modified it a fair bit. We're competing with the likes of Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Mozilla. There's not really all that much more to choose from. With such an important tool - all of you will use browsers, all of you will be online a big part of your day - the browser is the most important piece of software you can find. I haven't made anything else in my life, why stop? It's really hard; what else would I make that would be more exciting than making a browser?

We have a different way of thinking. A typical way with other browsers is that they'll look at how you're utilizing the browser, monitor it, and optimize for some group of people which doesn't really exist. In our case, we think it should be adapted to the individual, and it shouldn't be done automatically because then we would have to monitor what you're doing. We think that you should decide how the browser should work. We put in a lot of functionality. In most browsers, you have the tab bar at the top and that's it. In our case, our thinking is: if you have thousands of tabs, how are you going to organize them? We put them into stacks, then we have workspaces. Maybe you'd like to have the tabs on the left side or the right side or the bottom. We have a note-taking function, a screenshot function. We were the first to implement that in a browser. We actually built in a mail client and calendar as well if you like to use that, a feed reader because we think feed readers make sense. Easy ability to customize, build it really to make it yours, because we all have different requirements. Once you get the browser the way you want it, then it's fantastic. We have a very enthusiastic user base that really loves what we are doing, and that's a fantastic feeling.

The most personalized, but also the most powerful. And then we like to deal with privacy as well. We just think you shouldn't be monitoring your users. For us, that's a basic: you shouldn't be collecting data on your customers, you shouldn't be making profiles on them. That's our philosophy. We do believe that should be regulated as well. So it's personalization, powerful, and privacy. Every piece of your browser. I think it's really important that people are assuming their browsers will collect information on them, that everyone wants to be in that industry, and we don't.

We started with the browser and we were adding all this functionality. There are a lot of requirements from our users, and we work really closely with our user base. We have a very tight-knit community where people are giving us feedback on how to make the best possible browser. We listen to what people want, so we are adding a lot of features. When it comes to the cars, we got a request from Polestar. They said, 'We have this Android Automotive solution. Google is not providing a browser at this time. Can you help us?' We said sure, we can provide a browser for you. We know how to do this. A number of the people at Vivaldi were at Opera before, where we did a lot of custom deliveries. We don't really want to do custom deliveries, but we know how to work with customers. We created the browser for Polestar; it was released for Christmas. It's integrated in the car; you have to download it, but there are about 40 apps in the App Store, and we are the only browser. This was a Christmas gift from the CEO to the Polestar community; they wanted it out for Christmas, we delivered it out for Christmas. That was a couple of years ago. Very quickly, everyone else was contacting us. The next car manufacturer that followed was Renault. We had a couple of cars out with Renault so far and more coming. Then followed Mercedes. The E-Class has been announced, and there was another announcement with the CLE yesterday, so there's more Mercedes coming. Then we did a deal with the Volkswagen Group. So they're also going to Android Automotive, and we will also be available in those cars. I'm kind of surprised we're still alone in Android Automotive cars. I don't think we'll always have no other browser in all the other car manufacturers. The only car that I know has a browser that people know of is Tesla. Elon Musk was saying how crap it was, and we actually did a test and we kind of agree. It's really, really rudimentary. In our case, you're actually getting a full browser in there.

Of course. Use our software. The point is, we're not a big bet on the car industry. We are just wanting to be with users wherever they are, and we saw this as a way to provide a great experience. We feel we have a strength to be able to do this; this is something we know how to do. But we're not betting particularly on the car industry; we're seeing it as part of what we're doing. We want to provide a fantastic desktop browser, a fantastic mobile browser, now we're providing a fantastic car browser, and we'll look at what else we can do. We just want to support our users wherever they are and provide them with a great experience.

I think a lot of us are seeing what's been happening with the social networks as a serious problem. I think in some ways that's where it went wrong. The web is supposed to be decentralized; that's how it worked. That's how we beat big tech in the beginning because when the web started, it was just some universities and some other sites around the world. You had big servers like CompuServe, AOL, and Microsoft Network, which had a lot of content. But we beat them because everyone could set up a server, and that was a change. I think we've seen the damage the social networks have done to society with their algorithms, deciding what people should see and trying to keep you on the platform by showing you hateful speech. There's an opportunity now with the fediverse. With the new standards from the W3C, you actually have a specification on how to do distributed social networks. We've supported Mastodon as one of those implementations. We think that's a really good alternative for those that want to get away from Twitter. There is a learning curve; if you don't fill your home feed, it's going to be empty. But once you start to fill things up, it will be a lot more rewarding because it will be the people that you like and follow, and not random content someone wants to push to you. I think it's a much healthier way of doing social networks. I really think everyone should join. When Elon says to NPR, 'Go away,' they should listen and then set up their own server on the fediverse where they actually promote their own content. That's really how the web was built, and that's how a healthy social network system should work.

Yeah, I think it's actually very important. I have a lot of excitement for this because it's reminding me of the early days of the web. This actually has the possibility to be game-changing. I think people should jump on, and the sooner they do, they can be part of a world that's changing in a positive way.

The nice thing is, if you just want to join, you can join a lot of servers. Those servers can be personalized in some ways; some are for a certain group of people, but you can still see what everyone else is posting online. You can follow anyone on any server. Maybe you find a server you would like to call home where people are interested in the same things and speaking the same language, but you can still follow anything. I think the next thing that needs to happen is more institutions, organizations, and companies need to join. Governments should be there; the EU is already there. I know local governments in Germany are already there. I think we should be seeing more governments join. Universities should join because they can have their own local hub but still follow the rest of the world. That's a really good way of organizing your social networking: local but still global.

Hopefully, gradually people will see the difference of having a system where you are controlling what you're seeing instead of some algorithm choosing what you should be seeing based on their business. The interesting thing with Threads is that they've said they will federate with the rest of the fediverse, so they will become a unit in the system. We have to see how that works. I know some people are terrified of the thought of them joining. On the other hand, if they provide a way for you to move from their service to another server, then that's brilliant. If you're in Mastodon and you could follow people that are on the other service without seeing all the crap, wouldn't that be nice?

That's the problem. If I'm on Mastodon, I'm getting the content that I follow. I'm not seeing ads; I'm not seeing content pushed my way. The only content that I see is the content that I follow, so that may include some of my friends reposting things, but unless someone I follow reposts something, I will not see it unless I'm particularly looking for it. It's a different way of working with social media, and I think it's the way it should be. This idea that you're seeing a lot of content randomly time-wise... I mean, if I'm interested in breaking stories, I want the latest posts by good sources, not some random thing someone said 10 hours ago when the actual breaking news happened in the last five minutes.

To me, it's really a question of do companies have the right to make profiles on us? I think there's been the wrong focus on privacy; it's been individual privacy. For me, this is a society problem. When our total information is being gathered and used to provide us with content that is either paid for or using these algorithms, that's where it goes wrong. We've seen the issues with society being divided in this way. I really think that this should be regulated. You can go to banstopspionage.org, which is a site we made with the Icelandic Consumer Council. The point we're getting through is that no company should have the right to do things that we wouldn't like our government to do. Why should private companies be allowed to do that and then even sell access to us to third-party governments and political parties? I just think there's something seriously wrong with this, and it needs to be regulated. It isn't a question of just asking, 'Can I profile you? Can I collect all your information?' I think it's just a question you shouldn't be allowed to ask. There are certain things we should be allowed to do as technical companies, and certain things we shouldn't be allowed to do. Misusing user data is not one of them.

I really think this is a very important topic because we've seen the consequences of the lack of privacy in society. The fact that we've been profiled needs to stop. I like to be an optimist; I think there's hope. With the help of federated social networks, I think we can see a very different world in the next few years. But it doesn't happen by itself, just like the web didn't happen by itself. People need to make a choice. There is always this, 'I'm used to using Microsoft, Google, whatever.' You have to get out of your comfort zone and say, 'I'm willing to make that change. I'm willing to go and try something else.' And most importantly, maybe, to influence government to tell them, 'We have your back.' The EU is taking on big tech, but they need to understand we want them to go further and put in regulation that will stop what's happening.

So, what happened at Opera for me was we had a disagreement between me and the investors about the direction of the company. I wanted to grow the company and they wanted to sell it. So that led to me leaving and later on founding Vivaldi. Opera ended up being sold to a Chinese consortium, so they went in a very different direction than what I would have liked. I'm obviously very saddened to see that, but otherwise Vivaldi wouldn't exist. I learned my lesson. There are no investors in Vivaldi. The employees all have shares; we own it together. We like to keep it that way. We're not going public; we're not going to get investors. We just want to make sure we stay on the straight and narrow, and that's how it works.