Although Grammarly was founded in 2009, it took six years for the writing assistant to really take off. The tipping point came in 2015 after it became available as a browser extension. Not just Grammarly, several other apps and tools started out as browser extensions and evolved into big businesses.

Browser extensions are software modules based on web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript that personalize the web browsing experience. These plugins are used to manage cookies, block annoying ads, encrypt emails, store passwords, spell check, style web pages, organize notes, and more.

Greg Isenberg, CEO of Late Checkout (a product studio, fund, and agency that designs, builds, and acquires web3 and community technology companies) and advisor at Reddit, Explain why some Google Chrome extensions generated huge values.

– People hardly uninstall extensions

– The barrier to installation is low

– Extensions are “always on”

– People pay for a lot of them

He cited statistics to show how launching a Chrome extension gives it 20 times more potential users than an iOS app. In the Chrome Store, 10,000 users use an extension on average, compared to 667 users using 1 iOS app in the App Store and 500 users using 1 Android app in the Play Store.

Here’s a list of Chrome extensions that have morphed into big business.

Grammar

Grammarly is proprietary software used to review spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement, and delivery errors. Founded by Max Lytvyn, Alex Shevchenko and Dmytro LiderMax Lytvyn, the company initially focused on correcting grammatical errors to make writing easier. Their first customers were mainly students and universities. However, the company’s growth was slow.

In 2014, Grammarly launched MS Office plugins, allowing users to access Grammarly’s grammar checking and plagiarism detection technology directly within Word and Outlook. In 2015, it launched its free browser extensions for Google Chrome and moved to a freemium model. Later, Grammarly also released browser extensions for Safari, Firefox, and Edge.

Browser extensions have accelerated Grammarly’s growth; from 1 million daily active users in 2015 to 30 million in 2020. Today, Grammarly has a post-money valuation of around $10 billion and has raised a total of $400 million over 3 rounds.

Grammarly serves 30,000 professional teams in a variety of industries. The proprietary software is available in various forms: online text editor, browser extension, desktop application and mobile application. Marketers, sales professionals, engineers, support specialists, entrepreneurs, and students use Grammarly to communicate more effectively every day. Grammarly keyboard is also very popular among Android and iPhone users.

Loom

With $203 million in funding and a valuation of over $1.53 billion, Loom is the leading video communication platform for asynchronous work. Using Loom, users can record their screen, visually share their thoughts, and provide asynchronous feedback. Loom can help record product demos, give feedback, or just share ideas.

In 2015, Loom (then called Opentest) started life as a network of experts giving their opinion on companies’ products. However, the founders – Joe Thomas, Vinay Hiremath and Shahid Khan – realized the business model wasn’t working. Within seven months, the founders pivoted 4-5 times. In one of the pivots, they released a browser extension called OpenVid that helped people record comment videos, and the rest was history. The team then launched OpenVid on Product Hunt. Following this, the user base grew to over 10,000 in three months and attracted a lot of interest from investors, including venture capitalists like Point Nine.

Today, Loom has 14 million users across 200,000 companies, including HubSpot, Atlassian, and Netflix.

Honey

Honey is a popular online coupon aggregator based in the United States. The company was created as a browser extension by entrepreneurs Ryan Hudson and George Ruan in 2012. The browser extension notifies users of price drops and price history for certain items sold by stores in participant line.

In 2020, Paypal acquired Honey for around $4 billion. Currently, Honey has a user base of 17 million. Users have access to discount codes on over 30,000 sites, saving an average of $126 per year.

Metamask

MetaMask is a crypto wallet that allows users to manage their digital assets such as private keys, local client wallet and hardware wallets and provides an easy and secure way to log into blockchain-based applications. In 2016, ConsenSys Software Inc developed MetaMask as a browser extension for Chrome that allowed users to access Ethereum-enabled distributed applications.

Today, with over 21 million users, MetaMask has evolved into a global community of developers and designers dedicated to democratizing decentralized web access through blockchain technology.