Firefox plans to offer a premium subscription before end of year; VPN and cloud storage considered
The free version will remain unchanged
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Update:Firefox has commented on the report with a statement, which you can find below in our original story.
Mozilla Firefoxis already one of the best web browsers in the business, but Mozilla CEO Chris Beard has hinted that a premium-level Firefox experience will soon be available for those who want a little extra.
Premium add-ons could include some form of cloud storage as well as integratedVPNfeatures, Beard toldT3N. A launch has been scheduled for October.
Beard did emphasize that everything that exists in Firefox as it stands now – including tighttracking protection controls– will remain free. The premium option is going to be for those who want even more goodies in their browser.
That’s been reiterated with a statement from Dave Camp, Senior Vice President of Firefox. “A high-performing, free and private-by-default Firefox browser will continue to be central to our core service offerings,” he said.
“We also recognize that there are consumers who want access to premium offerings, and we can serve those users too without compromising the development and reach of the existing products and services that Firefox users know and love.”
Right now Mozilla makes money from Firefox through partnerships with the likes ofGoogle(for searching) and Pocket (for bookmarking), but company bosses are obviously keen to add a third stream of income for the future.
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Increasing competition
With Chrome,Safariand Edge all offering improvements on a regular basis, Mozilla knows it’s got its work cut out to keep Firefox as one of thebest browserson the market.
And to be fair to Firefox it’s not standing still – this year we’ve seenimproved privacy controlsandoptimized loading timesroll out. The huge collection of extensions and add-ons is another reason to pick Firefox as your daily browser.
Just last week the standaloneFirefox Lockwisedesktop password manager was rolled out, giving users an even easier way to keep on top of their website logins.
For the time being it’s not clear exactly what a premium Firefox tier would include, or how much it would cost – Mozilla itself probably isn’t sure at this stage – but it’s something to watch out for later in the year.
ViaMSPoweruser
Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you’ll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.
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