The stranglehold of tech giants makes the market position of Internet browsers an inhospitable position for newcomers, regardless of the quality of their product.
The most recent data shows that Google Chrome is the vehicle for about 65% of all internet activity, followed by Apple’s Safari (19%), leaving the rest to account for the rest.
Until steps are taken to prevent Apple and Google from exploiting their core operating systems to advertise their own software, it will be virtually impossible to mount an effective challenge.
However, what would possibly be feasible is to compete in a redefined category. That’s the strategy of a startup called Island, which recently achieved the prestige of a unicorn with a $115 million Series B circular just weeks after coming out of “stealth. “idea: a new type of browser designed in particular for professional use.
Speaking to TechRadar Pro, Island CEO Mike Fey detailed his strategy for bringing the browser to market and why he believes his business can succeed where others have failed.
“Previously, attempts by commercial browsers focused on more computers and small add-ons, things that can have a smaller effect on productivity,” he told us. “But that’s not enough to motivate an organization to rethink its infrastructure. “
“While playing, we temporarily learned the strength of having the browser complete and what it can do to revolutionize the way we think about security, IT, and business productivity. “
Although rarely in those terms, Internet browsers are a basic component of each and every company’s software arsenal, at the center of the professional lives of almost every workplace worker.
Island’s argument is undeniable and compelling: Classic browsers are designed for the customer and are therefore completely wrong for enterprise use cases that rely on security.
“Consumer browsers describe security, privacy and settings based on consumer wishes, but a company has absolutely different requirements,” Fey said.
“The advent of a client browser in the business has created a cavalcade of complexities. Once you realize what it offers you to complete in the last mile, it adds a lot of value.
Although Island’s software is based on the same Chromium engine as many popular browsers and has a familiar interface, it imposes a number of restrictions on how workers can interact with the web.
For example, the browser limits undeniable features such as copy and paste, screenshot, and downloads, and limits the types of extensions that can be installed and the domain names visited.
Separately, the service allows business logic and robotic procedure automation (RPA) to be incorporated directly into the browser itself, and provides IT groups with monitoring of all deployments to temporarily identify the source of problems.
However, the key differentiator is Island’s ability to simplify the security stack by replacing legacy technologies, Fey explained.
In addition to the same old Internet browsing functionality, the service eliminates the need for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and data loss prevention (DLP), enabling secure remote and on-device work (BYOD) situations.
“The main explanation for why [using VDI] in a cloud-centric global is that you’re concerned about knowledge leaking from the browser to an external desktop. But in our case, the browser itself controls the knowledge,” he said. .
“We can let a contractor work with a SaaS application, but making sure that knowledge never leaves the application itself. Data can be moved between tabs in the browser, but it never lands on the desktop and never creates a threat of unconsciousness.
The ultimate purpose of Island is to provide the optimally functioning canvas, free of all bells and whistles and, most importantly, the risk of protection.
As always, the good luck or failure of a new product depends largely on the timing and context of its launch. On this front, it turns out that Island has little to worry about.
The startup was founded about two years ago, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, at a time when businesses were struggling to reconfigure their infrastructure to remote operations on a scale never seen before.
The effects of the pandemic on the pandemic made the need for a corporate browser even more acute, Fey told us, as workers no longer ran within the classic security perimeter.
Another thing that contributed to the release time was the maturation of the open-source Chromium project, which Microsoft had recently approved with the redesign of its new flagship browser, Edge.
“At this point, we had an open source mapping that we could take advantage of that would offer the same look, ease of use, and functionality as all major browsers,” Fey explained.
Essentially, the market is well prepared for a product like Island’s, and the company has little festival right now.
Asked if he was concerned about existing browser leaders jumping into the commercial niche in an effort to protect their market share, Fey ignored the question: “Google and Microsoft could do anything, if they wanted to. “
The suggestion that U. S. giants U. S. companies are more or less likely to create a corporate browser than any other product, and that Island’s service is by no means a risk to their business models. But given the strategic importance of the Internet browser as a gateway to the Internet, especially for a company like Google, we’re not so sure.
The other question that will arise on Island is whether corporations will be willing to pay for a category of free software for more than two decades. At this point, Fey had a more convincing answer.
“It’s not about ‘my browser is better than your browser,’ because what we’re charging is a better way to protect workers. And corporations are already paying in the form of VPNs, internet filtering, proxies, password managers, and more. – it’s an incredible complexity,” he said.
“The truth is that we are saving corporations and allowing them to have a greater security posture and greater efficiency. “
The evidence will be in the pudding, of course, but the first symptoms are promising for Island, which has attracted the attention of organizations large and small.
Fey declined to tell us how many paying consumers his startup has signed on so far, but said they come with “brand names” in a diversity of industries, from finance and retail to pharmacy and healthcare.
He also said he intends to rely heavily on his non-public tactile book, built over a 25-year career in security and software, as well as Sequoia Capital and other venture capital companies that participated in the latest funding circular.
“We thought it would be much harder to get corporations to reconsider the browser they’re using, but they had such limited visibility and verbal sharing was very easy. We have learned that the company is in a position to change,” Fey explained.
“We think Island could be one of the most significant software companies in a long time, and we don’t see anything right now that doesn’t affirm that belief. “
Like all practical executives, Fey refused to link to express goals, but proposed a flexible timeline to bring the enterprise browser to light: “It will take us a few years, it will take us five or ten to get there.
Joel Khalili is the news and feature editor of techRadar Pro, covering cybersecurity, knowledge privacy, cloud, AI, blockchain, infrastructure, 5G, knowledge storage, and computing. It is guilty of curating our news content, as well as commissioning and generating articles about technologies. that are transforming the way the world does business.
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