Five years after we launched our first technical preview, we share how we forged our way in an industry dominated by giants.

Five years ago we went public with the first technical preview of Vivaldi browser.

The 2000s have been good to small companies. Despite Microsoft’s intimidating reign, there have been plenty of opportunities for newcomers.

But in the five years since we launched, that’s changed. Right now, the internet space is dominated by a handful of big companies. In addition to Microsoft, there’s Google and Apple (who own the platforms we compete on), as well as Amazon, and Facebook.

Fortunately, there are plenty of ways for small companies to compete and stand up to big corporations.

Here’s a glimpse of how we do it.

We innovate

When an industry is dominated by giants, many small companies scale fast and wait to be acquired. They do that in place of planning for growth and working on new ideas. This environment downright stifles innovation.

At Vivaldi, we’ve dug deep and focused on innovation. To stand out in an industry so heavily dominated by Google, we’ve come up with solutions and tools that redefine how people browse.

In addition, we’ve provided more functionality to reduce the dependency on the big companies that own the platforms we compete on.

Luckily, we got some head start as our co-founder and CEO, Jon von Tetzchner, was creating a browser before most people had even heard of the internet.

Over the years, we’ve created a wealth of built-in features that you won’t find in many, or any, other browsers. In Vivaldi, you can take notes in the browser, view web pages side by side, keep your favorite sites accessible in a sidebar, take full page screenshots, read text vertically, and much more.

We have the best people

There are plenty of jobs in software development up for grabs. Devs truly have so many options when it comes to choosing a company. But there aren’t many companies where you get to make a personal impact right away, and seeing the impact of your work is one of the most rewarding things professionally. That’s only possible when you work in a small company such as Vivaldi.

Another reason people join Vivaldi – so they tell us – is to work for a company that does what’s best for the user, doesn’t gather unnecessary user data, does the right thing.

Vivaldi is owned by its employees. We find that having no external investors gives us the freedom to listen to our users and, together with them, build the browser they deserve.

We don’t track

At a time when tracking and profiling of users is the norm, we choose to do the opposite.

Many browsers are built on the data-collection model and, indeed, they will not survive if they didn’t sell your personal data to advertisers and publishers.

Anyone who’s followed Vivaldi over the years knows that although we’re built using Chromium, this is where the similarities with Chrome end.

Vivaldi does not track or profile you, and we have no knowledge of how you use the browser. We only try to have a general overview of how many users we have, what OS they run and where in the world they are, taken as a whole.

We are completely transparent about where our revenue comes from.

We believe that businesses should not be allowed to sell personal information to third parties. Companies should also be prohibited from using personal information for targeted advertising. Personal information should only be used to provide the service you signed up for.

We partner with the right people

There’s a real sea change happening in the tech industry where consumers are putting more value on a company’s ethics and trustworthiness. More people than ever review privacy policies. Companies that don’t track are making waves.

We partner with like-minded companies that build their businesses in an ethical way.

We build a community

In a small company, we’re not far removed from our users and we don’t need any form of tracking to move our product forward. At Vivaldi, we simply listen to our users and community.

Long-term, our goal is to build real alternatives to the most important software our users need, with the browser at the center. Apart from vivaldi.com, home to the browser, we run a popular community site – vivaldi.net. There, you can sign up for our free services, including the free and ad-free blogging platform, free Webmail, and the Vivaldi forum. And that is just the beginning.

We clearly see that people easily volunteer and become ambassadors for a company when it’s aligned with their own views.

Speaking of volunteers, the browser wouldn’t be where it is today without the enormous efforts of our Soprano and Snapshot testers. It’s also being translated into 70+ languages by volunteer translators.

The forum itself is run by volunteer moderators who do an amazing job of keeping things under check.

Download Vivaldi

As we celebrate, we are thinking of everything we’ve achieved in this short time:

Vivaldi is the most customizable browser out there.

It’s the browser with the most amazing community.

It reflects what our users want and not the agenda of investors pushing for profit.

It’s a browser that does not track you.

In a world of giants and tracking, we are the little guy who focuses on the needs of the user. 🎉