How do web browser produce revenue for their developers?

[Dooling37]

Is it strictly through 'advertisements' in the form of pre-made favorites/bookmarks?
As far as I've ever heard, browsers (at least IE and Netscape) are completely free for personal and corporate use...

Just curious...TIA

 

[Logix]

Microsoft licenses Internet Explorer's browser technology to many, many companies. For example, in Morpheus, the welcome page is a form of the IE browser, and the advertisement in the lower-left corner is IE technology. So, Microsoft offers the technology free to consumers, and then makes their money back by licensing the technology to other companies.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

Actually, you can tie any program with IE for FREE, if you use MFC. No licensing costs. I know because, MyWebSpeaks uses the IE engine to display the page you are working on when you toggle to pageview mode.

Microsoft leverages it's market share with IE to redirect you to their search page when you mistype a domain name, and they try to tie it in with MSN as best they can.

 

[aswedc]

Microsoft does make some money from licensing IE to companies like Morpheous, but I think they probably lose money overall. Netscape definately is losing money on its browser. This is basically a AOL vs Microsoft fight to control your Internet access vehicle which may be as important as the OS in the future

 

[Logix]

I stand corrected.

So basically by offering the technology FREE to EVERYONE, they've gained incredible marketshare with THEIR technology, so they can implement their technology on their websites and tailer it to Internet Explorer users.

Then, they can sell programs like FrontPage which will be guaranteed to create pages that work well with IE.

 

[Bomberboy]

How does any internet company make money these days? The only signifcantly profitable one I know of is eBay.

Advertising revenues bring in 0$ these days.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

Most dot-coms are struggling, and have been for quite a while. Very few web companies have successful business models.