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Comment by wdrw | Hacker News Reader

We don't store anything you type into forms, and don't store any cookies any longer than the browsing session is alive (currently expires after 5min of inactivity). But you're right of course, as a user you have no way of verifying this. The main scenario I was envisioning here is things like news sites, which often go overboard with complex scripts, CSS, images/videos/flash, ads, etc, to the point where a simple news article is difficult or impossible to read - especially on an older device or on a slow 3G connection.

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I see the actual speed benefits immediately, I tested it with a public G+ post URL, and it loaded much faster than my laptop can load a G+ page normally, and without causing my browser to freeze up.

Out of curiosity, what's the monetization or business plan with this?

Thanks! Monetization is not fully thought out yet but I'm envisioning a freemium model down the line. Basically, either start charging after a certain usage threshold (e.g. an hour of free browsing per day), or charge for extra features like server-side ad-block, ability to pick the country in which the server's IP is located, HTTPS access (even though HTTPS is currently free), etc.

The biggest concern, particularly down the road, is assuring people you're above board on security. When I mentioned it on G+, the first suggestion was that you guys could inject ads and such, which obviously would be a huge problem.

But generally if there's a solid paid model, a company can be pretty free and clear of those problems.

The other thing you would want to consider is Firefox and Chrome plugins where you could set specific sites to open via your protocol. Maybe Engadget doesn't work well on my computer for whatever reason, so I tell the extension to open all Engadget URLs through your service, or something like that.

Agree on the security aspect, and injecting ads would be horrible, I definitely think there are better monetization models here. Plugins are an interesting idea, will give it some thought. Though for now, I'm thinking in a different direction... I think FasterBadger is mainly applicable to mobile (since complex pages would be much more overwhelming to phones than desktop machines), and plugins are less of a thing there. However, a native app that speaks the FasterBadger protocol (essentially an alternative browser app) could be interesting.

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