BitTorrent launches its Maelstrom P2P Web Browser in a public beta | #decentralized

Note: we often complain on this blog about the centralization in progress (through the actions of corporations) within the "networked world", which is therefore less and less "horizontal" or distributed (and then more pyramidal, proprietary, etc.)

Here comes an interesting initiative by BitTorrent, following their previous distributed file storage/"cloud" system (Sync): a new browser, Maelstrom. This is interesting indeed, because instead of the "web image" --indexed web content-- being hosted in proprietary servers (i.e. the ones of Google), so as your browsing history and everything else, it seems that it will distribute this "web image" on as many "personal" devices as possible. Keeping it fully decentralized therefore. Well... let's wait and see, as the way it will really work has not been explained very well so far (we can speculate that the copy of the content will be distributed indeed, but we don't know much about their business model --what about the metadata aggregated by all the user's web searches and usages? this could still be centralized... Yet note even so they state that it will not be).

Undoubtedly, the BitTorrent architecture is an interesting one when it comes to speak about networked content and decentralization. Yet it is now also a big company... with several venture capital partners (including the ones of Facebook, Spotify, Dropbox, Jawbone, etc.). "Techno-capitalism" (as Eric Sadin names it) is unfortunately one of the biggest force of centralization and commodification. So this is a bit puzzling, but let's not be pessimistic and trust their words for now, until we don't?

Via TheNextWeb via Compouted·Blg

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Back in December, we reported on the alpha for BitTorrent’s Maelstrom, a browser that uses  BitTorrent’s P2P technology in order to place some control of the Web back in users’ hands by eliminating the need for centralized servers.

Maelstrom is now in beta, bring it one step closer to official release. BitTorrent says more than 10,000 developers and 3,500 publishers signed up for the alpha, and it’s using their insights to launch a more stable public beta.

Along with the beta comes the first set of developer tools for the browser, helping publishers and programmers to build their websites around Maelstrom’s P2P technology. And they need to – Maelstrom can’t decentralize the Internet if there isn’t any native content for the platform.

It’s only available on Windows at the moment but if you’re interested and on Microsoft’s OS, you can download the beta from BitTorrent now.