I think this is the real reason for the "VPN in a browser" trend. It's about getting exclusive access to browsing data.
Imagine Facebook data collection, but without being able to ignore it. That's where we're headed. Watch for Google to release a "security" product that does something similar.
IMO Apple, Microsoft, and (eventually) Google are going to use their platform dominance to usurp Facebook's ad business. That's why Facebook is making a big bet on VR. It's not that they see VR as a naturally popular platform. It's simply one of the last platforms that could be popular (for the near future), isn't already dominated by a major player, and has network effects that make it a critical mass platform similar to how Facebook works. If they can buy their way in, they own the whole market.
This kind of thing should get these companies obliterated by regulators. It's shameless, blatant, anti-competitive behavior where they're using their dominance in one market to gain an extremely unfair advantage in another.
The goal is to move the entire ad market away from the open web and into closed platforms like OSes and browsers.
VPNs can destroy net neutrality. The internet can be reduced to a dumb pipe that gives everyone equal bandwidth, which is used to operate VPNs, inside of which entirely private rules apply that are inscrutable from the outside.
Imagine Facebook data collection, but without being able to ignore it. That's where we're headed. Watch for Google to release a "security" product that does something similar.
IMO Apple, Microsoft, and (eventually) Google are going to use their platform dominance to usurp Facebook's ad business. That's why Facebook is making a big bet on VR. It's not that they see VR as a naturally popular platform. It's simply one of the last platforms that could be popular (for the near future), isn't already dominated by a major player, and has network effects that make it a critical mass platform similar to how Facebook works. If they can buy their way in, they own the whole market.
This kind of thing should get these companies obliterated by regulators. It's shameless, blatant, anti-competitive behavior where they're using their dominance in one market to gain an extremely unfair advantage in another.
The goal is to move the entire ad market away from the open web and into closed platforms like OSes and browsers.