A new Internet browser? Why? The venerable Google Chrome is used by roughly half the Internet users on the planet, and it gets the job done.

But two influential veterans of browsing technology say they can do better.

On Wednesday, Jon von Tetzchner, the former chief executive of Norway’s Opera Software who lives in Gloucester, launched Vivaldi, a feature-saturated browser for desktop computers that solves problems you didn’t even know you had.

Meanwhile in San Francisco, Brandon Eich developed a browser with the lofty goal of transforming the Internet publishing business: Brave, which is designed to block many, but not all, Internet ads.

The browser, designed for desktop machines and smartphones, rewards advertisers that don’t waste our bandwidth or violate our privacy, and rewards consumers for viewing their ads. If Brave succeeds, then Eich, a cofounder of the project that produced the browser Firefox, might keep online publishers from going broke and advertising-battered consumers from going crazy.

Though not as well known in the United States, Opera is very popular elsewhere in the world, particularly for mobile devices. But von Tetzchner quit the company in 2013, angered that its high-powered browser was being dumbed down. He also decided that most other browsers weren’t much better.

“For those people who actually want to do more with their browsers,’’ he told me, “the current browsers aren’t giving them what they need.’’

Vivaldi is a power user’s delight, stuffed with advanced options. Say there’s an Internet site you check every 15 minutes — CNN, perhaps. You can lock that site into a panel on one side of the browser screen, and pop it open with a single mouse click whenever you want. The same panel lets you take notes relating to a Web page, or capture a screenshot.

I often have 20 Web page tabs open at the same time inside Chrome, and it’s tough to ride herd on them. Vivaldi offers not one but two solutions: By hovering the mouse pointer over a tab, you get a mini preview window of the underlying page. In addition, you can “stack’’ tabs one on top of another, to create a sort of “supertab.’’ If you’re reading five stories about the Red Sox’s opening-day win, it’s a painless way to keep track of them.

Vivaldi also has a cool “session save’’ feature that works like the traditional “history’’ function, but much better. It saves all the tabs you visited during a given browsing session and reopens them with a few clicks.

And does your computer slow to a crawl because you’ve opened too many browser tabs? Vivaldi can order all but the active tab to go into “hibernation,’’ freeing up memory for other uses. Sleeping tabs wake up when you click them.

The Vivaldi team has more features planned, including a built-in e-mail program, coming in a future upgrade. Vivaldi also runs the same extension programs that add fresh capabilities to the Chrome browser.

The preview version of Eich’s Brave browser, by comparison, is lean as bone and fast as a bullet, largely because it blocks ads and tracking cookies that can compromise privacy. Yet Eich told me the widespread use of ad blockers is bad for everybody.

“If it hits a tipping point,’’ Eich warned, “it’s going to be hard for publishers to make a living.’’

And that means fewer worthwhile websites. But today’s ads slow our computers, waste our mobile data, and invade our privacy. Which is why we block them.

Eich has a plan.

The Brave browser tracks and remembers users’ tastes and interests, but doesn’t share that data. Next, Brave works with advertising companies to design low-bandwidth, privacy-friendly ads that it won’t block.

The service is already being tested by one major ad network, Eich said, and he’s talking to others.

Brave will collect 15 percent of revenues generated by compatible ads. Another 15 percent will go to users, in the form of the digital currency bitcoin — a small but significant reason to give the browser a try.

But if advertisers can’t track us, how will they know which ads to ­deliver? By asking your browser. The ad server transmits a string of keywords, such as “cars,’’ “vacations’’ or “movies.’’ The browser flags relevant ones and rejects the others — yes to Toyota Camry ads, perhaps, and no to Seth Rogen movie trailers.

For today’s Internet advertisers, privacy is a bug, because it keeps them from knowing which products to pitch. Brave turns privacy into a feature, by letting advertisers accurately target us without knowing anything about us.

That’s why Eich’s new browser is the one to watch.

Vivaldi is excellent software, but at most it will change the way some of us travel through the Web.

If Brave works out, it could change the Web itself.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at hiawatha.bray@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeTechLab.