Web Browsers

Web browsers, search engines, and the open source technologies underpinning them have more or less bootstrapped what could be called a pseudo home shopping network (HSN). In many respects, the dominant language, behaviour, and environment on The Internet mirrors that of a tightly controlled, but free-to-view corporate marketplace where almost everything looks, feels, and perhaps is an advertisement (ad).

Laplace’s Demon is an interesting idea that if there is enough information about the position and momentum of the properties in a system, then perhaps you could predict its future state. In my first article for this year — let’s don the hat of that demon and explore This article is not as long as it could be but expanding into the specifics verges onto the territory of a novelette. a simplified prediction Some predictions are based on anecdotal observations of average users browsing the web. of what the Web Browser and more generally the World Wide Web (www) could look like in the next two decades (2042).

To come up with plausible predictions, my technological enthusiasm and bias for free and open source software (FOSS) has to be suspended to build up my best arguments for the combined incentives of the stakeholders who affect the direction of the web. These stakeholders are governments, companies, technologists, and users. This will effectively be an argument against myself, but it should be delightfully fun.

I’m not a market expert nor business analyst but just a random developer that every so often works on websites for web browsers. Let’s take a look at my predictions. It is currently the year 2022.

The URL Bar is Replaced by the Everything Search Bar

The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) will be replaced by search and its visibility left as a browser implementation detail. The blur between URL and search term will lead to users dropping the distinction between a URL bar and a search bar. The primary mode of web navigation and discovery becomes search and the first web browser to get away with it wins big.

The frictionless transition and learned Trends also suggest that users increasingly don’t know the difference between files and folders on a computer. Perhaps search results or tags will become the defacto organizational scheme for users. user behavior will compel other browsers to reluctantly do the same under the pressure for shared legibility. In the article, The End of Web Design, the Nielsen Norman Group discovered that since users spend more time on other sites, they prefer that your site work similarly. The significance of the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme such as http:// or ftp:// will follow suit and disappear completely on the user facing side. Reduced parsing complexity will open up the path towards a full focus on natural language processing (NLP) as more protocol supports are deprecated FTP support removed in Chrome and Firefox due to security concerns and no signal consensus.

Google’s omnibox, or “everything box” becomes the standard and search first “omnibars” become a ubiquitous feature in all mainstream browsers as a user friendly terminal Microsoft’s Copilot is an indicator of the current strength and potential of NLP. prompt using search engine NLP to navigate the web.

# install firefox and chromium now
$ pacman -S firefox chromium

# find and open the 11th edition of ecmascript
$ mupdf "$(locate --all ecmascript 11 | head --lines=1)"

"take me to amazon" -> https://www.amazon.com/

Bookmarks and History Replaced by the Integrated Search Engine

The web browser’s bookmarks and history interface will be revamped into a thin client integrated search engine, and an offline client replica with lightly cached bookmarks, history and search data. Current iterations of the “new tab page” trend will motivate this new design. The history and bookmarks page will look exactly like a search engine results page (SERP).

Startups will offer fully centralized bookmark and history storage replication to their Users of Google’s My Activity already provide detailed history data based on search term patterns, and bookmarks based on recency. servers direct from the browser. This will be a feature that users want as history management and bookmarking become frictionless and obsolete.

Users in aggregate rarely care about the way their personal data is used and bar legal restraints — bookmarks and history will be a new data collection source to improve search results if it isn’t already. Monetizing bookmarks and history data will be normalized, and companies will use this data to further perfect key ranking algorithms for advertisers and develop new products.

Web browser based startups will need to have both a search engine and a browser to compete in the new space of the integrated search engine. The search engine by itself becomes obsolete, since the web browser or rather the operating system (OS) will do the heavy lifting of discovery.

The Web Browser as an Internet Operating System and Specification

The Internet operating system (Internet OS) will make its grand resurgence with rivaling feature parity to entrenched operating systems. Google’s Chromebook and Chrome OS will become the most important predictive heuristic Boot to Gecko also known as FirefoxOS was a another predictor and is long forgotten. for the Internet OS. This is a device that runs Google’s Chrome Browser as the operating system. Competitors in this space will use the open source Chromium OS to bootstrap their own operating system derivatives.

Web Assembly (WASM) will become the wild card that fills the eventual application vacuum as the Internet OS paradigm goes mainstream. WASM will pave the way for complete functionality USB (Universal Serial Bus) applications are already being ported to Google Chrome and Chromium based browser derivatives. by exposing more programming languages to the browser.

Google’s Chrome and Chromium based derivatives will knock all other browsers off the market except Apple’s Safari, leaving Safari as their only contender. Chrome and Chromium application programming interfaces (APIs) will become the additional specification that web applications passively adopt.

Deprioritization of Open Source Software and Ascendancy of Open Source Hardware

Since most open source software (OSS) in the web space is “obsolete” and has bootstrapped many big players to a “good enough” position, the next destination is to model the Apple ecosystem and that requires bootstrapping a hardware stack with the help of open source hardware (OSH).

The elusive technological walled garden requires stack supremacy — which involves tight control of the technological stack down from the hardware and up to the software. The race towards stack supremacy will cause open source hardware to ascend from obscurity into the light and mature OSH startups will be bought with capital.

Specialized Hardware, Eternal Defaults, and Challenging Legacy Carrier Features

Companies that reach stack supremacy will iterate on new devices and software quickly without obstruction to create substantially better user communication experiences. This sets the stage for “eternal defaults” and pseudo carrier like status. Traditional carrier networks will begin to see a significant usage decline in legacy communication schemes like short message service (SMS) as the Internet backbone subsumes its function more reliably.

Big players in the market will be the equivalent of wireless carriers or Internet Service Providers (ISP). In the environment of specialized hardware and eternal defaults, users would have to buy another device to have a completely different Internet experience. Installing, removing, or bolting on software will be nigh impossible and hard to change defaults will be everything in these markets.

Deprecation of the Developer Tools and Transition to Developer Programs

Companies that reach walled Apple’s walled garden ecosystem indicates that consistent user experiences require tight and powerful controls on application delivery. The Apple Developer Program enforces tight developer control. garden status will phase out their specific browser developer tools to further tighten iteration speed with web application developers by introducing developer programs. Security concerns will also place into question the viability of exposing developer tools to all users and will be disabled by default. As more web applications expose Possible legal action for US journalist who used developer tools to report publicly exposed sensitive data. sensitive data in plain sight, pressure will mount from stakeholders to resolve security issues.

Initially developer programs will be free to get many developers on board. Implementation fragmentation will be removed by laying down strict guidelines on web application development within the Internet OS ecosystem. The average user’s knowledge on basic aspects of the legacy web will be effectively non–existent at this point.

Property Stewardship above Ownership and Co-ownership

Software as a service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) are lucrative business models in the software and hardware space and will have even greater significance. The complexity of specialized hardware combined with increasing software complexity Complexity as a barrier to entry. results in users preferring that companies be stewards of their data and property. The process of self installing and setting up software becomes obsolete.

The subscription model of SaaS and IaaS will extend to almost all software and into the hardware space with phones, laptops, and tablets. Schools, governments, and other major institutions will switch over to renting software and hardware indefinitely. The maintenance and repair of rented hardware and software will be relegated to approved and authorized companies. The software industry will begin to formalize and standardize key operations into professional licences.

Defragmentation Markets: Buying Interoperability and Integration

Open standards don’t make for easy business models — pockets of incompatible fragmentation do. The lucrative unbundling effect will give rise to defragmentation markets and product bundling. The open “Open” is a word that holds different meanings to different people. In fact, the definition scope is so wide that its not easy to qualify. In this context open will just mean interoperable. standard’s interoperable by design approach fades away as a complete user experience on the web is achieved by buying interoperability and integration. The majority of content on the web will be generated in silos that do not communicate with each other unless through partnerships or “product bundling”.

If incompatible fragmentation rests in few players, bigger players will buy interoperability directly in partnerships or integration deals with an Internet OS. If fragmentation has numerous players, the biggest Internet OS players will facilitate users being able to buy and bundle services directly in deals with smaller players. Installing multiple applications that have similar functionality and siloed network effects will be tough on users causing product interoperability bundling to become the defining Restream, a cloud multi-streaming service is a predictor of the rising trend of integration and defragmentation markets. competitive feature for the Internet OS.

For example, product interoperability bundling for chat applications would mean that users of one chat application could communicate with users of another application.

• Chat: Facebook Messenger, Discord, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Skype, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Telegram, Signal, Viber, WeChat, Line, FaceTime, Google Chat

Vertical search engines will be reduced to APIs that the omnibar consumes. Search bars on websites and web applications will disappear to avoid user confusion and developer programs will ensure tight integration. Capital will determine interoperability in this market, and Internet operating systems will have integration deals for prominent vertical search engines on major web applications.

Modern protocols are also up for defragmentation. The Internet OS gains competitive advantage by amalgamating disparate protocols by either integrating Brave, a Chromium based web browser has already implemented IPFS and TOR support. them seamlessly or indirectly with web applications. The more alternative protocols the more potential for user capturing power.

• Protocols: IPFS (Inter Planetary File System), Tor (The Onion Router), I2P (Invisible Internet Project), ZeroNet, BitTorrent, Matrix, IRC (Internet Relay Chat)

Unblockable Advertisements, Cryptocurrency and Interaction Fees

Advertisements (ads) will be baked into the experience of the Internet in a way it cannot be easily or freely disabled. Native ad–blocking will become an integral part of this achievement with death by a thousand white–lists. The increasing popularity of ad–blocking will incentivize a full Microsoft has been adding ads to the start menu since Windows version 10. shift to unblockable advertisements. Stakeholders, mainly users, supported by downstream advertisement revenue will welcome There have been attempts to reclassify ad–blocking as copyright infringement. Internet operating systems with unblockable ads.

Direct cryptocurrency payments will become a short term alternative to the advertisement model, but its fragmented and controversial influence will carry it into a merged union with established financial institutions and ad markets as it meets the requirements of too big to fail (TBTF) doctrine.

The centralized union of crypto markets with established financial markets will allow for seamless integration of Internet interaction fees. Micropayments will become the norm for many interactions you can currently still do for free, such as clicking links, copying text, and downloading images.

More businesses will converge around advertising, and there will be few alternative revenue models. Since all users operate within the frame of an ad market, those who wish to avoid advertisements will pay subscription fees to partially or completely remove The ad–free subscription model. One excellent predictor is YouTube Premium. unblockable advertisements. The ad–free subscription model will become extremely popular and lucrative as the complexity and awareness of free ad–blocking increases.

Deprecating Registration Forms: Universal Password and Data Management

Internet operating systems will have feature complete password, data, and role management functionality. Users will have to enter their personal data on their systems only once to enable one click registration to any service. This is one step up from the single sign-on (sign in with) buttons that are ubiquitous across the web — to a new one click registration and permission based API model.

One click registration will obsolete completing registration forms in web applications, and pave the way for product bundling integrations. Personal data will be stored on remote servers while the Internet OS locally stores transitory and key metadata. Security tokens will become ubiquitous and modern devices will be authenticated with physical digital keys.

Market Share Dominance, New Mobile Operating Systems, and Global Carrier Wars

Market dominance will hinge particularly on the tablet and phone mobile markets. Companies in this space will have their own Internet operating system for mobile devices. Chrome and Chromium’s specification will be the base, but dominant companies will eventually diverge and create their own proprietary APIs with their specific devices.

Internet OS companies with dominant market share influence and multi–national cloud infrastructure will become “global carriers” and manage communications services in more jurisdictions on the Internet backbone, eventually competing more directly with legacy carrier networks.

# Hypothetical Market Share

"Google/ChromeOS"           : 55
"Microsoft/EdgeOS"          : 14
"Apple/Safari"              : 12
"* Facebook/MetaOS"         : 9
"Brave Browser/BraveOS"     : 5
"* Amazon Silk/FireOS"      : 1
"* SpaceX/StarlinkOS"       : 1
"DuckDuckGo Browser/DuckOS" : 1
"Firefox Browser/FirefoxOS" : 1
"Opera Browser/OperaOS"     : 1

Microsoft and Brave Software will have high upward swing potential. Facebook (now known as Meta Platforms), Amazon, and SpaceX will enter the mobile phone Internet OS market by onboarding a new user base.

Conclusion and Alternative Disruptions

That was a wild ride, and while my hope is that none of the above happens — anything is possible because money can align the most distant stars. Let’s conclude with a brief look at possible disruptions that can easily nullify the plausibility of everything written before.

Out of a plurality Global government regulation is an obvious disruption, but the increasing power matrix and potential of technology markets to fully bootstrap the much desired mass surveillance state suggests that this will not be the case. of disruptions, one has caught my eye, and it’s the advertisement model itself that supplants most businesses on the Internet. The encroaching influence and ubiquity of ads increasingly suggest that it’s a grand house of cards in the sand.

Let he that is not a shill among you cast the first stone.

Search engines are increasingly looking more like ad brochures and streaming services, like home shopping networks. One might as well finish If big tech’s main products are optimizing towards an interactive online marketing brochure, then that means the bar for disruption may become very low in the future. the job. The already massive and increasing ad volume push could mean that there is an opening for a new type of fully classified advertising product over the current hybrid personalized and search advertising offerings.

Personally, it’s difficult to find convincing information on the efficacy of ads from the advertiser’s point of view in aggregate. Do advertisers have clear beneficial signals from personalized advertisements? It’s not easy to shake the feeling that it only takes a single company to create an online product that implies The bar appears low? All it takes is demonstrating that the current advertisement price points are too high. that advertisers can achieve the same value for less money and this party ends quickly. Here’s a few questions that would be interesting to see an answer to from a company with a product.

Is there a way to guarantee a product was bought because of an ad?

What would cause people to pay to watch ads or read classifieds for product leads?

Can we search for, read, and watch by category every advertisement in one place?

What would a strictly advertisement only global streaming service or proper classifieds search engine look like?

Why do people watch Super Bowl ads?

The technology at our disposal, particularly decentralized Decentralization in its strongest sense. Depending on who you talk to, centralization, decentralization, and federation all mean the exact same thing, as hypothetically each can have the potential to further incentivize centralization. solutions, should hypothetically allow advertisers to reach more people transparently with better metrics, for a vastly lower price point than it is to advertise today — or at least that’s what I’d like to believe. This appears easy, but perhaps there is a combined incentive by stakeholders to avoid lowering the price of advertising.