Blog / Browser
Why I am building my own browser engine
I started the browser on 1 July and its engine the next day. It is the hardest thing I could have chosen, and I would choose it again.
On 1 July 2026 I started building a browser. On 2 July I started writing its engine.
That one day between them is the decision. The quick route is to put a new interface on an engine that already exists. It works, and most new browsers do it. I could have had something to show within weeks.
I chose to write the engine myself: the code that reads a page, lays it out, runs its JavaScript and draws it. That makes Floati Africa's first browser engine built from scratch.
Why I turned down the quick route
I want Floati to stand for safety, privacy and your own data. When I thought that through, I kept hitting the same wall. Almost every promise a browser makes is really kept by its engine. What gets blocked, what a page is allowed to do, what stays in memory after you close a tab. If I built on someone else's engine, the most important part of my product would be decided by someone else, and I would be polishing the outside.
I did not want to be polishing the outside.
I will not pretend I was sure. People told me it was unrealistic, and on the bad days I agreed with them. A browser engine is one of the biggest pieces of software there is. Some mornings I would look at a page rendering wrongly and wonder what I had got myself into. But every time I went back to the quick route in my head, I felt the same thing: it would be easier, and it would not be mine.
That choice led to three business decisions.
Memory comes first
On 7 July I decided what the browser is for. Plenty of browsers already compete on privacy. Floati remembers what you read, keeps that on your device, and lets you search it and ask it questions. I wrote about that decision separately.
No web view
At first, pages ran on the web view built into your computer while my engine learned to draw them. On 14 July the engine became the default, and anything it could not handle fell back to the web view. It was a comfortable safety net. Then I spent a day chasing Windows bugs, and every one of them lived in that fallback.
That was the moment it clicked. Every hour I spent polishing the web view was an hour spent on something I planned to delete. On 21 October I removed it for pages on Mac and Windows. It felt reckless and right at once.
No public launch until it is ready
Removing the web view has a cost. Floati Browser will not go public until my engine is as good as what it replaced. For now the browser page has a waitlist and no download button. Waiting is hard. I want people using this.
It is slower, and I think it is right.
If the engine is the product, it has to be able to stand on its own.