The next major version of the uTorrent client will work in a user's browser, said Bram Cohen, the creator of the BitTorrent protocol.
Jan 19, 2018 - Cannot find uTorrent available on the list of Windows Programs and Features? Or have no idea to uninstall uTorrent effectively from PC? How can the answer be improved?
Cohen revealed his plans in an episode of the Steal This Show podcast over the weekend.
'The plan is to consolidate the business, focus on revenues. [...] We are also taking up the opportunity to clean up our client experience,' Cohen said.
'So from a product standpoint the new rev of uTurrent will run in the user's default browser,' he added. 'It's a nicer experience, it's a better way to present content. It can do a bunch of that Maelstrom type functionality of displaying the whole thing like [...] a web page, basically, and still being very lightweight. [W]e're [making it] using modern widgets and we're gonna have a greatly improved streaming experience in that we created some great technologies for.'
P2P in the browser. It's been done before!
The technology to stream BitTorrent inside the browser already existed for several years. It was implemented via standalone JavaScript libraries, the WebTorrent project, and even a self-standing browser.
Named Maelstrom, this P2P-based browser was developed by BitTorrent Inc., but was shut down after it failed to take off. Now, some of the work that went into Maelstrom will find its way into the next uTorrent version.
'We are very very sensitive,' Cohen said. 'We know people have been using uTorrent for a long time and love it, so we are very very sensitive to that, and we're going to make sure people feel it's an upgrade happening, not that we destroyed the experience.
We're going to roll it out and get feedback and make sure people are happy with it before we roll it out to everybody.'
A change in revenue model allowed this change
What made possible for BitTorrent Inc. to ditch the separate uTorrent desktop client was the fact that the company's revenue model shifted from browser toolbar installs to in-app advertising.
For many years, uTorrent lived on its ability to bundle various toolbars with the uTorrent installer, one of the most popular apps on the Internet.
As browser makers got tougher on forced toolbar installations, BitTorrent moved to showing ads inside the uTorrent client, as a way to sustain itself. Moving to a uTorrent web version won't affect its revenue stream.
You can listen to the uTorrent discussion in the podcast here, between 00:55 and 00:58.