Internet Browser Gives Power to the People

A local entrepreneur wants to put the power of the browser in the hands of its user. You’re watching “The Local News Network,” brought to you by The Payroll Department and Sky Ute Casino. I’m Connor Shreve. Matt Martensen aims to launch a web browser that operates as a cooperative owned by its consumers. It’s called User Cooperative.

Basically with REI, with your local grocery co-op, with a handful of other co-ops out there, that they are just an alternative structure for a corporate entity, which is by definition, user-owned, customer-owned. And so kind of a shorthand way of looking at what we’re doing is that we are mashing up REI’s customer ownership with a web browser business like Google Chrome to create User Cooperative.

The notion of a cooperative web browser might be a novel concept, but Martensen thinks it’s been a long time coming.

The core of this business is the idea that we people are the ones that are capitalizing technology companies with our attention, with our data, with the content that we create on these services, and in this market system that we’ve subscribed to for a couple of hundred years now. If you capitalize a business, you get to own it in exchange for doing so.

The concept allows users to profit from their use rather than massive tech companies. When it’s up and running, Martensen says the switch to a new browser should be an easy ask.

Today, if you want to switch a browser, you can just do it in a couple of clicks to just basically transport everything that you’ve stored in your current browser into a new browser. So I think it’s important to consider what it’s going to take to transition. We’re not changing the browser itself, we’re just changing what it means to use a browser and the economics of the browser, the governance dynamics that fall out of that as well.

The company is in its early stages, getting members to sign up, and raising funds. Martensen is substitute teaching at Durango High School to make ends meet, all the while envisioning his company going viral.

Driving that traffic to the website, and have that website where that landing page is just like we have communicated our value proposition so clearly, and we’re doing something cool, exciting, and fun, and we hope to get folks to join the cooperative to contribute a little bit of money, to chip in a few bucks if they can, and then to promote.

User Cooperative has more than 100 members and has raised about $6,000. Martensen hopes that slow burn eventually explodes.

You have that technology adoption curve, or what I just call an adoption curve. You have the folks who are the most inclined to try something when it has the least proof. And then you have folks that kind of creep in as that proof starts to build. And then, you know, once you get to a certain size, you start tipping into the mainstream.

You can learn more about the technology and become a member of User Cooperative online. Learn more about this story and others online at Durango Local News. Thanks for watching this edition of “The Local News Network.” I’m Connor Shreve.