Test driving Vivaldi, the alternative web browser

Software companies like Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft have been trying to restrict the functionality of their web browsers for many years. Their reasoning is that they want their product to be easily operated, even by beginners. Although this goal may be admirable, power users have become annoyed over the fact that more and more useful functions have been falling through the cracks.

Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner co-founded Opera and then took over its technical leadership. In 2013, he founded the firm Vivaldi Technologies [1] with the goal of developing a web browser for experienced users. This browser's technical foundation is the rock solid and super fast engine Blink, which has been ticking away for years in Chrome/Chromium.

Similar to Mozilla, Vivaldi Technologies finances itself with company-sponsored bookmarks and preset search engines that can easily be removed or modified. Thanks to the search engine it shares with Chromium, the Vivaldi Browser lets users install add-ons from the Chrome Web Store [2].

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