BitTorrent Launches Beta of New Web Browser - The UpStream

BitTorrent Launches Beta of New Web Browser

posted Saturday Apr 11, 2015 by Scott Ertz

BitTorrent Launches Beta of New Web Browser

I am always surprised when a new web browser is launched, not because it is a crowded market in which competition is fierce, though that is true. It is not because trying to take on the likes of Microsoft, Google, Mozilla and Apple is a game that is unlikely to be won, though it is true. The reason I am always surprised when a new web browser is launched is because I don't know why anyone makes a web browser at all.

Microsoft, Google and Apple all have a wide array of products which are revenue generating. They include operating systems, productivity suites, cloud offerings. All of these things help keep these companies in business. Web browsers, on the other hand, are not directly revenue generating. In fact, they require a tremendous amount of resources and, in general, only lead to people feeling contempt for the publisher when the browser doesn't work exactly as expected.

So, why does someone build a browser at all? Outside of the big three, it tends to be for recognition or out of legitimate interest in making the web a better place. Unfortunately there is no real way to do that without a better governing organization than the World Wide Web Consortium, but companies like BitTorrent attempt it anyway. With the beta release of their Project Maelstrom, BitTorrent has an idea to get around some of the mistakes of the W3C.

While the browser can access standard HTTP/HTTPS sites, it can do more than that. It is capable of browsing websites packaged and distributed as torrents. The browser is Chromium-based, but will not directly support Chrome extensions or Web Store apps, though they will likely run without issue.

The rendering engine is not the important thing here, however. If you want the Chrome engine you can always install Chrome. The aspect that makes this interesting is the concept of circumventing the traditional web protocol. By running the web via torrents, this browser has the ability to create a new version of the web - one in which sites never go down. The thing that BitTorrent is trying to fix here is DDoS attacks.

If a server were to fail due to DDoS, for example, the browser can still have access to the data from before the failure through the use of torrents. The problem with this is that developers have to get behind the idea to make this work. The browser cannot take an existing website and pack it into a torrent - a developer has to release their site as a torrent. BitTorrent says they have had a healthy interest from some 10,000 developers and 3,500 publishers. Interest does not always translate into actions, however.

BitTorrent has released a Windows beta of the browser, available now, as well as a collection of developer tools for publishers. They will release a Mac beta soon and have no plans for a Linux release. There has been no discussion of a Windows Phone, iOS or Android version at this point.

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