Amigo (browser)

The Amigo logo is the green letter “A”. Until 2013, the logo was a four-color circle with yellow, green, orange and blue stripes. In October 2012, developers launched a competition in which anyone could vote for a new logo, choosing it from the six proposed ^[3] . Most votes were cast for the letter “A”, and the logo, which took second place (smiling cactus), became an unofficial mascot of the program.

The Amigo browser was created from the open source browser Chromium , released by Google much earlier. The difference between this product and the original is close integration with social networks, mainly from Mail.Ru Group. Starting July 31, 2018, Amigo is not supported. Release and development of new versions is discontinued. ^[four]

Amigo inherited the basic characteristics of the Chromium browser, on the basis of which it was created, but also has some features that distinguish it from other browsers.

News Feed and Chat

On the right side of the Amigo browser, there is a panel of social networks that allows you - without going directly to the page of a social network - to keep abreast of news on social networks, to exchange messages. At the moment, the ribbon can display the activity of friends from the following social networks: VKontakte , Odnoklassniki , My World , Twitter ^[5] . For convenience, events from each social network do not appear in a continuous stream, but are shown in a separate tab of the feed. ^[6]

Music

Amigo provides a built-in application for listening to music from social networks. Amigo app. Music is equipped with music search on the basis of audio recordings of all social networks at the same time, the ability to listen to collections and tracks that have been added to the corresponding social networks ^[6] , to create new collections ^[7] .

Remote

The Amigo control panel is a page for quick access to selected sites that appears when a new tab is opened ^[8] .

Quick Actions Bar

Using the quick action panel, you can:

• copy the link;
• add a site to the Remote;
• Bookmark the site
• send the link by mail;
• share a link on a social network ^[6] ;
• send a link to a friend from the social network.

Unauthorized installation

Many Internet users have criticized the Amigo browser for installing it on a computer without the permission of the user ^[9] , and because of the complicated procedure for removing the browser from the system ^{[10] [11]} .

The main reason why users do not like the Amigo browser so much is that the main way to distribute the browser is through affiliate programs for distributors of unlicensed software. As a rule, unlicensed software is difficult to monetize, which gives rise to the mutual interest of pirates and Mail.Ru Group. When installing pirated software, users should carefully read all the installer items and note that they do not need the Amigo browser. Otherwise, with inattentive installation of pirated programs, Amigo is installed with the program. The installer of the browser and additional software is not equipped with a standard uninstaller ^[12] . It is also impossible to interrupt the installation ^[13] - when you try to close the window, it goes into hidden mode. When some inexperienced users learned to uncheck during installation, they came up with a new distribution method for the browser. Currently, these checkmarks need to be removed directly on the download page, since the installation package is formed according to these conditions, and you cannot change the settings after downloading it.

Small customization options

The Amigo browser has Mail.ru as the default search ^[6] , and there are no ways to replace it in any way ^[14] . In addition, the ability to disable the built-in Mail.ru services is intentionally difficult. Until recently, the version of the browser for Android did not even have the ability to change the quick access panel (by default, VK , Odnoklassniki , and Mail.ru services shortcuts were installed there), but at the present time this option is available.

Outdated version of the engine

The Amigo browser is characterized by the use of versions of the Blink engine, which are somewhat outdated at the time of release ^[12] . Subsequently, the developers accelerated the pace of development and reduced the lag to the minimum, however, the very first version of the product was released on an engine that was a couple of years behind the latest variations. Many people believe that the organization saves finances on this, although this fact is not confirmed.

High system resource consumption

The browser is inefficiently consuming the processing power and memory of the system, which is inherent in most browsers, but to a lesser extent. At work, it takes up memory for each tab, and one open account for 90 MB of RAM, and three processes in the tray, as a result, the user is forced to give about five hundred megabytes of RAM. 32-bit processors (except for the Android version) are not supported at all. Using Amigo on low-performance computers is not possible ^{[15] [12] [16]} .

July 31, 2018 it was announced that the development of the Amigo browser was discontinued ^[17] .

Quote from the blog Mail.Ru:

While promoting the Amigo browser, a number of wrong steps were taken. So, partners and ad networks were attracted for promotion, some of which turned out to be dishonest - they used gray schemes to distribute the browser, which contradicted the rules specified in the contract. Such actions caused a negative attitude to the product. In this regard, Mail.Ru Group decided to abandon the further development of the Amigo brand.

At the same time, the Mail.Ru Group considers the market niche of browsers to be promising and does not exclude the possibility that work in this direction will continue. With the development of new products, the promotion format will be fundamentally changed taking into account the experience gained by the company.

The termination of support will not affect the work of users of existing versions of Amigo: they will be able to use the browser in the future.

- ^[18]

Currently, Mail.ru has developed a new Atom browser.

• The official website of the Amigo browser
• Amigo Browser Software License Agreement
• User's manual
• Amigo browser for games on Unity: video review