Ask HN: What browser extensions do you use? My friend is building a browser extension for his side-project [1]. We were having a talk recently about browser extensions and if they can be a viable business model. I thought HN would be a great place to kick-start a discussion about what browser extensions you guys find useful and if you would be willing to pay for an extension. [1] https://www.emailthis.me |
Generally, I think a business built on building browser extensions is roughly equivalent to the shareware businesses of the previous millenium. If the extension is really useful and either solves a serious business problem or has massive adoption then a little money will trickle in. But by and large the problem is that the anchor price for the browser and browser extensions is $0. This means that $10 is infinitely more money.
And the occasional $10 is very very rarely enough to really run a software business and provide support and drive development forward. It's also not enough to support significant marketing and even significant marketing is unlikely to be enough to cut through the noise of the 'extension stores'.
Finally, I've been thinking that a lot of the real problem is that while $10 or $20 seems reasonable, the aggregate logic of cheap utilities is that if a person pays for all of them it is real money...e.g. twenty ten dollar utilities is becomes a non-trivial software purchase. I think people act on this intuitively, they're not going to pay for all of them and that means not paying for some of them and not paying for some of them is morally more or less equivalent to not paying for any of them. And so they are disinclined to pay.
Again, it's not impossible to create a revenue stream from this sort of software, but it is unlikely to be enough to replace a full time job.
Good luck.
Great point. This was my thought initially which is why I suggested my friend to try a donation/pay-what-you-want model [1] before even trying to charge money for it outright. This might give an indication of whether the app solves a pain point enough to make people pay for it.
[1] https://www.emailthis.me/pages/support-email-this-donation
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-cache-viewer/p...
Right click on any link or page to have the option to view the link/page with Google Cache or Wayback machine.
I admit it's my own extension, but I do use it quite often and it's come in handy.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/powerswitch/lljbpn...
I'm sure there are businesses out there that make money with extensions, but I'm struggling to think of one that I've ever seen I'd pay for.
Lots of people post (chrome) extensions here, for example, but I don't use chrome so they're easy to ignore.
Plus, I also mentally make notes of what sites have the fewest scripts and stick to them instead of competitors that don't.
Google Dictionary.
Pocket - Been using this for a long time. Wish they had more features but this works.
OneTab - Don't use it frequently but boy has it been there when I needed it.
Sidewise - Been using it for a few weeks. Light use but useful.
AdBlock Plus - It's just there in the backgound. Not sure if it really makes a difference.
Momentum - I like to see gorgeous pictures instead of a blank page with Google's searchbox when I open a blank tab.
I want the code to be auditable and hackable.
FF - uBlock Origin, Decentraleyes, Random Agent Spoofer, Self-Destructing Cookies
Eventhough, Firefox is my main browser. I still use Chrome browser when I need to debug a JavaScript program.
Anyway, why did you come back to Chrome?
For me it's 100% how I browse now, I don't think I could go back. I only open links in new tabs (which places them as branches in the tree) and it's a wonderfully useful spatial/temporal way of showing history, which is also saved between sessions (so bookmarks don't really replace them)