BitTorrent's Maelstrom Browser Enters Beta

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

The company wants to change the very fabric of the Web

If it were left to BitTorrent, Inc., it would probably unravel the Web and spin it anew to make it work more like its popular peer-to-peer sharing technology. Don’t you think so? Believe it or not such an effort is already afoot at the company and is called Project Maelstrom.
The company announced Friday that its peer-assisted, Chromium-based Project Maelstrom browser has entered beta. This comes around four months after an invite-only alpha and marks the first time that the new browser has been available to the general public.
“In December we announced the release of the alpha version of Project Maelstrom and shared our vision for a distributed web,” the company said in a blog post announcing the beta. “It’s a vision for the Internet that we’ve long held at BitTorrent; we believe its a necessary innovation to sustain a truly neutral, content-friendly network.”
Our test group will be expanded with the introduction of the Project Maelstrom browser beta. This is an open beta for Windows users and by empowering the browser with a distributed protocol we open a better future for publishers, creators, and users. And we do this while offering a more efficient, scalable and cost-effective alternative to HTTP.”
It's a BitTorrent-inspired stab at transforming the Web into something that's vastly more communal and open than it's current form. It is an attempt at playing on Internet users' growing privacy and security concerns. Viewed in another context, this appears to be part of a larger effort at the company behind the BitTorrent protocol to spread its wings.
The browser, which can be used to surf the Internet normally as well, is Windows-only for now.
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