Read this article in español.
Many businesses today, including browsers, are built on the data-collection model, and it’s hard to imagine that companies can survive without selling personal data to advertisers and publishers.
Yet, at Vivaldi, we don’t track or profile you. Nor do we collect usage data. In fact, we believe that the unnecessary collection of data is dangerous and has no place in your 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 make the browser but how you use it and who you are – your interests, income, personality – is none of our business. Really, it’s our job and responsibility to protect your data.
We build Vivaldi with passion and pride – for you. And while we are not in this to “make money”, like all businesses we need to make a living and pay the bills to keep doing what we do – in an ethical way.
So let’s find out where our revenue comes from.
Partner deals with search engines
Vivaldi generates revenue from partner deals with search engines.
Every time you search using one of the pre-installed search engines, you’re helping us grow, one search at a time. Currently, we work with DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Startpage, Yahoo! and Yandex.
The only exception is Google – we don’t make money when you search with Google. However, we know that some of you use this search engine daily, so we include it in Vivaldi.
If you need reasons to switch to a new search engine, take a look at why your choice of a search engine matters.
Partner deals with bookmark partners
Vivaldi also generates revenue from partner deals with bookmark partners.
When you first install Vivaldi, you get several carefully chosen Speed Dial bookmarks on your Start Page, such as Booking.com and eBay. Others can be Kayak, Start.me, Amazon, AliExpress, Tripadvisor, Airbnb.
We receive shared revenue from these bookmark partners. Every time you use one of them, we get a small amount that helps us build an even stronger Vivaldi.
That said, you are free to replace any of these preinstalled bookmarks with your own. Or you could keep both, as long as what we offer is useful to you.
Note that we may add bookmarks even if we don’t receive revenue – if we think they’d be valuable to you, we’ll include them anyway.
If after reading this, you have a sudden desire to re-install the bookmarks you deleted, feel free to use the links above to add them back to your Speed Dial.
Partner deals through Direct Match
We introduced a new feature, called Direct Match, in the desktop version of Vivaldi 6.4.
Direct Match is a feature that helps to save time when you try to reach the website of a familiar brand from any of the browser’s search fields. It does so by providing a direct link to that brand’s webpage among other search suggestions. Clicking such a link will earn us a small amount of revenue.
As with everything in Vivaldi, the use of Direct Match is optional. The implementation has been carefully thought through to keep your browsing as private as possible. You can read about the feature and its privacy aspects on our blog here.
Donations
Lastly, we also receive donations from our users. Some people give us a fixed monthly amount, and some contribute with one-time donations. Because we have millions of users worldwide, a small amount from each of you could eventually add up. Although this is yet to be a significant portion of our income, we hope it will grow over time.
If you like Vivaldi Browser and can afford to contribute, please consider donating so we can continue improving Vivaldi.
Vivaldi Community Services
The foundation of Vivaldi is all about giving back to our community of users.
The partner search and bookmark deals not only make it possible for us to build and provide the Vivaldi browser for free, but they also let us support more services free of charge, like our ad-free blog platform and Webmail, or our own Mastodon instance, Vivaldi Social
Our ad-free blogging platform is a great tool to publish and share your ideas, and our ad-free webmail service with Vivaldi.net email accounts is hosted in Iceland. By hosting our own Mastodon instance we want to contribute to the Fediverse and offer a welcoming alternative for people who are missing the sense of community in other social media platforms
We don’t have a business model attached to these services, and this will remain the same in the future. These services are made possible by the partnerships, affiliations, and revenue we make from the browser.
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Want to help us grow Vivaldi? It’s simple. Browse with Vivaldi and support our partners. And tell your friends! The more people that use the browser, the better. If you enjoy spreading the word, send an email to [email protected] and we’ll explain more about how to become a Vivaldi Ambassador.
Thanks for using Vivaldi!
