> I really, really, really dislike the language they have used lately.
That is exactly the problem I have with it - weasel words and euphemisms; FF is scoring an own-goal here and eroding trust.
Why not just tell it like it is. "We need funding and are lining up deals with third parties to display their ads/messaging in the address bar search. We vet these third parties by holding them contractually to these standards [list standards to establish bar required for "trust"]."
It's only my opinion, but spelling it out clearly - the need for funding and how/why "trusted partners" get to display their stuff - would make me far more likely to allow these suggestions. (Oh, and as for "relevance", FF should explain how that's intended to work, ie what data are being used etc.)
Exactly. No excuses - when you use such a language, you do it on purpose - you know you're going to fuck people over, and the language is there to keep them unaware that they're being exploited.
I second your opinion - I'd be willing to entertain, or even support, this way of them making money iff they spelled out honestly what they're doing and why. In details. Talk with me like two adults that respect each other.
At first I had an immediate negative reaction to this.
But then I thought, okay, they need money, ads in address bar isn't the worst thing in the world.
But then then I thought: But only if they are clearly disclosed as ads! Instead we seem to have a combination of " traditional suggestions like browsing history and open tabs, as well as new suggestions from our partners" -- are the "paid placements" clearly designated as such? Unclear? Probably not?
In "traditional" media, the first rule of advertisements is that they be clearly identified as advertisements, as content put there by someone paying for it, instead of by editorial judgement. Because how can you trust the editorial judgement of the publisher if you can't tell which is which?
That even Mozilla no longer thinks this is necessary shows how much the culture has changed, where "paid placement" is pretty much assumed everywhere (or if not, you're a naive fool) and nobody trusts anybody.
Because they don't want to say: "we want a lot of money to all kinds of projects irrelevant to the browser".
They should focus on their core product and cut everything else away.
Instead they are an organization that tries to save the whole world. It seems like they think the jobs created for themselves by "saving the world" is the core business and Firefox is just a cash-cow for this.
I'm no expert, but from what I've heard the reasoning is that ad companies don't like it when you do that and won't want to work with you. They'd rather FF says "we love these guys and they just happen to be handing us bags of money" rather than "look, we dont like this anymore than you do but we need the cash".
Not excusing it, and I could well be wrong (there could also be a way of saying it that satisfies both parties), but thats my understanding of the rationale
This is exactly the point why I left Google Chrome back then and considered FF as a good alternative. I didn't trust Google anymore. But now I face the same problem again, because I don't want these "features and trusted partners". I also don't want to have to justify over and over again why I don't want them. I just want a well-functioning and secure browser that people can trust.
Given the massive salaries and bonuses paid out to upper management[0], I think their problem would be not sounding like that dril tweet about budgeting[1].
After the massive layoffs and cuts to vital web platform projects this move just feels consistent in their move from their old "quirky nerd charity" image to a new, more corporate one. I'm not saying that this is a good thing.
> FF is scoring an own-goal here and eroding trust
Excactly them trying to find more sources of income is fine by me. The hiding it and the deceptive messaging is awful. "enhance and speed up your searching experience" - I'm sure it will.
Even the opt-in screen is an anti-pattern.
"Allow suggestions" or "customize". No "do not allow suggestions". On the first level.
This is the stuff I want (and in the past expected) Mozilla to fight, not to become.
Because the sad truth is every other company is doing exactly the same. We live in a world where the people who track you most will greet you with "we value your privacy".
Having watched The Boys just an hour ago, I couldn't agree more. So much of that show is made up of language that conceals intent and how it is used to preserve one's public image and save face, and you can immediately tell when someone is actually willing to tell the truth instead of skirt around the actual issues.
The incentives aren't made clear and you're left with the gaps to fill leading up to how decisions like these got made at an executive level. Does Mozilla stand to lose favor with Google or someone else by trying to be more honest about what it's trying to accomplish, or avoid?
Mozilla does stand to lose a lot of favor with its core audience by trying to act corporate now of all times, with Firefox marketshare at an all-time low. And I have to wonder if these kind of statements were universally accepted by the people who are a part of the company, on the foundation or corporate side. Are there any Mozillians that believe that this is not Mozilla as people remember it? Would they be willing to express their thoughts, if so?
Well, if Mozilla trusts someone - I feel curious. I would believe they have a chance to be better than others and my trust to them in fact goes from 0% to 25%.
Yeah, it really sucks. I've been using Firefox for 15 years or so but this shit is just so discouraging. Can't we have one piece of good software that doesn't try to shove "relevant" "suggestions" from "trusted" "partners" down our throats?
I just want a browser that isn't controlled by the ad mafia.
A browser is expensive. Currently Firefox is funded (though not controlled) by Google's Ad business. I am all for them reducing their reliance on Google's Ad business. In this sense this is a step _towards_ what you want. I really really dislike them double speaking about this though.
There is the shinny hardware mafia. It might not be your cup of tea but their source of revenue is clearly on their mostly overpriced hardware.
I remember seeing lots of devs complaining about Safari not implementing the latest new shinny google technology for chrome but looking at some of these features those aren't things I'd have in my browser like PWA. Web developers are totally out of touch if they expect that everybody wants a website to have access to things like USB ports.
Indeed. They should just state "It's an Ad". I doubt they actually going to try every product that they are advertising, to make wording "suggestion" be even close to the truth.
That said, I don't understand, why would somebody use Firefox instead of Chrome, Edge, or Safari if they ad in-browser ads.
Because all the browsers you mention are controlled by megacorps who want to own the web for their own gain. As mismanaged as Mozilla is, they are in it to make the web a decent place for users.
This said, of course, I hate this "feature" and I'll make sure I disable it.
I had an exchange with Darren Herman at Mozilla about these issues back in 2014 when they had just started the nonsense of calling ads “content discovery”. If memory serves these were for the first time on the new tab page.
It was my position that ads violate the ethos of free software by making the user serve the software. You can debate that, but in any case that was the beginning of this culture at Mozilla to use bs language to placate users.
> When contextual suggestions are enabled, Mozilla receives your search queries. When you see or click on a Firefox Suggest result, Mozilla collects and sends your search queries and the result you click on to our partners through a Mozilla-owned proxy service. The data we share with partners does not include personally identifying information and is only shared when you see or click on a suggestion.
I wish they'd give the about:config key to disable it as well as UI instructions in posts like this. The former can be set in a preferences file; so easily synchronised between machines and not forgotten when setting up a new one.
Brave's take is having the user download a country-specific ad catalog so the browser can make decisions locally. Similar principle to why browsers download full blocklists of malicious sites instead of querying each address separately.
The trick is, you can't, unfortunately. You can have relevant ads that encroach on your privacy, or you can have possibly irrelevant ads that don't. If we are considering all possibilities, they could have precomputed some magic to do it all locally, but I have doubts about that because it seems more difficult to do that than just slap an identifier on your keystrokes and consult their ad-partner API.
Agreed. I am completely fine with them trying to run their own ads. It's much better than indirectly funding them through Googles Ads. But just be upfront about what you're doing.
This extends to the splash screen as well. No "disable ads" button just "not now" or "settings".
I am not sure whether their fall to around a 5% market share in the browser market had anything to do with any of the things in the above article, but to me it feels like the logical next progression at some point is to remove Mozilla from the actual Firefox software.
So my question is this: how long will it be before any fork of Firefox will gain a large following, much like what happened to CentOS/Rocky Linux?
Seems like there are quite a few independent forks, but nothing that i think would be a no-brainer for replacing Firefox as the default browser of any Linux distro or on a Windows desktop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#Gecko-bas...
Worst thing is that every single time they do this kind of bullshit, they do it without asking for opt-in and enable it sneakily by default. Absolutely the worst.
Ads would be cheeky, but I would welcome any efforts to get into the search space through search suggestions, akin to what Apple is doing in Safari with Siri Suggested Websites. Whether those are provided by Apple or Google I don't know, but they do open a window for Apple (and Mozilla) to slowly develop search capabilities. I've no idea whether that's either Apple or Mozilla's end game, but it would be a promising development if it were so.
I'm pretty sure that Mozilla isn't getting into the search/ad business. I assume that's what you mean when you say "search capabilities".
While it would be good news if they were, insofar as creating more competition for the incumbents (let's be honest, the incumbent, google), at this point only regulators can do anything about the state of search/ad industry.
If this is actually the case Mozilla is yet again being used as one of Google's pawns.
"See, there are other browsers and search/ad companies flourishing despite our market position!"
They also, on the last update, prompted some color scheme adjustments "for a limited time" - what? That isn't something you tend to see in open source software. I wonder if they think it will increase engagement with the browser?
Gods do I miss the days when I could be a Firefox fanboy. I even miss version 1.5 when the Close Tab button was in the same place for any active tab so you could muscle-memory click it without even looking at the tab bar.
He wrote that he dislikes the language – and so do I.
I feel like this kind of marketing language is only there to obfuscate the real reason why things are done. They want to include ads to help finance Mozilla – the main goal isn't "to enhance and speed up your searching experience". Calling the introduction of ads an enhancement for the user is just dishonest.
It's an unambiguous signal that Mozilla is no longer making software to benefit the user but rather to benefit "trusted partners". That's what's to dislike.
"Relevant" is a code word for "we spy on your every move and also share your personal browsing behaviour with our many external partners to serve you relevant ads".
Meh, the feature is easily deactivable, the settings are clear and extensive. As far as ads go, it's one of the best implementations.
Firefox still has no alternative in the privacy / user-centric space (don't mention Brave, I'm gonna get mad). Mozilla has done a lot for the web, I can give them some slack for exploring different revenue models.
Still, I'm going to keep on eye for this kind of practices in the future. I don't want them to get too comfortable with it.
Each time I install Firefox, I end up wasting a non-trivial amount of time carefully working my way through the settings in order to disable the pile of defaults that are as 'easy' to deactivate as they are infuriating. When updating the browser, some of these changes get rolled back, and some of them become more difficult to adjust, either by being removed from the options menu, or by being obscured in about:config - maybe the name has changed for no reason, or maybe the behaviour now depends on an entirely different configuration value.
A particularly obscene case is the auto-updater, which has gotten so bad that I have literally given up on figuring out how to disable it. (At least on Windows; firefox-esr on debian is, so far, free of this insanity) (Ever noticed how forced automatic updates in software get pushed by security fanaticism, but mostly exist to steal your data and ruin your day while they're at it?)
You, apparently, see an easily-deactivable feature in a clear and extensive settings menu. I see an ever-growing eldritch labyrinth, built solely to prevent me from having a straightforward internet browsing experience, all the while the browser's performance is slowly but surely - and noticeably - worsening in the new versions.
Anyway, screw you, Mozilla. At this point I'm only using firefox because I don't see much of a choice either.
>Ever noticed how forced automatic updates in software get pushed by security fanaticism, but mostly exist to steal your data and ruin your day while they're at it?)
Would you mind expanding on this one so I can better understand what you mean?
I'm guessing the "ruin your day" part is that you have to interrupt your workflow for some minutes? But it's not entirely clear to me how automatic updates "mostly exist to steal your data" -- excepting software which is already stealing your data anyways (so I don't understand how automatic updates factor in). Does manually updating somehow protect your data from being stolen in a way that automatic updates don't? Or you just don't update?
Except they have used the language of "not now" and hidden the link away instead of making it a button with equal prominence to the yes button.
That's not the behaviour of an organisation which thinks its users will be happy with what it's doing, it's the behaviour of an organisation which is trying to trick them.
Not OP but I've avoided Brave from the beginning because of its reliance on an ad-fueled crypto scam to generate revenue. If you're trying to avoid Mozilla's new ad-based revenue scheme, moving to a browser that is wholly funded by tracking your browsing and showing you ads while pretending to "pay" you with cryptocurrency that they never actually pay out, seems like a step backwards.
Running on chromium is one thing, since I believe having a monopoly on what's essentially the new global operating system would not be healthy.
But Brave have just proven to be an unethical, borderline scammy project. And I'm saying this as someone who owns crypto and can see the value of advertisement in some cases.
Brave is based on Chromium, it lacks some of the privacy centric features that are found in Gecko browsers. 1st party isolation,tracker blocking, containers, anti fingerprinting measures and SNI encryption are some things I can think of right now (maybe chrome as caught up now?)
Plus, Google controls Chromium and Firefox is literally the only alternative now. They push changes that are against or in in ignorance of of web standards because they can. Downstream browsers like brave,edge and opera basically have to accept whatever Google says. This isn't good for the web at all. Frankly there should be an anti-trust suit against Google for this because it is very anti-competitive.
Brave's business model is that they bribe you with company scrip ("crypto" "currency") to undergo brainwashing (watch ads), what's not wrong with that?
Just imagine the meltdown if Google or Microsoft built that in. Somehow, Mozilla always get the slack and a couple of months down the road they are the saviour of the privacy world yet again.
Google and Microsoft did built that a long time ago. Google Chrome will happily open a Google Search results page for anything you type into the address bar or pick from the suggestions displayed within. And that Google Search results page is full of "sponsored" content. When it comes to Microsoft, it's just the same thing except they call it Bing.
Google and Microsoft do build that in. Google Chrome's default search engine is Google, so the search suggestions come from Google. I am not sure that Google includes sponsored results in those suggestions, but at the very least they do harvest your data to advertise to you better in the future. Microsoft does the same thing by making Bing their default search engine.
Like with Firefox, you have to change your preferences if you want privacy.
Well, both of them already include something a bit similar.
Search suggestions are displayed and the items are conditioned to your location, cookies... Pages which know how to trick themselves to the top of this suggestions get visitors straight from the user's navbar.
The main difference between Google/Microsoft's approach and Mozilla's is that the pages themselves don't pay to be displayed directly onto your browser's navbar dropdown.
This just makes me worry a little bit that Firefox will take a similar route to Brave and introduce multiple streams of revenue into the browser, disguised as features that the user would want. E.g. Brave Rewards, Brave VPN, Sponsored Wallpapers.
These just clog up the interface and make it feel sketchy. I just want a normal FOSS browser, but I also understand the whole financing issue.
I’ve used Brave as my daily driver for years, and not once have I ever been even mildly inconvenienced by the optional BAT token feature. If it helps fund the browser, I’m glad- that’s better for me. I understand why people dislike it, but the outrage seems superfluous.
And they do need to do that. Browser makers having alternative revenue streams and reasons outside the browser-as-a-window to exist is necessary. One reason Firefox was losing market share is that it was just a window. Google, Apple, MS all provide a competitively good window but have other footprint on the web and can provide integrated services as a result.
One of the best parts about Brave is that they are trying to build independent revenue streams from things like integrated Jitsi features, an independent search engine and the like. Vivaldi builds in things like mail clients, RSS readers and a rudimentary notetaking tool.
In that vein, Pocket is a really good thing, and also helps combat link rot. The vocal Firefox userbase is moronically hostile to add-on services though, even if they are the ultimate key to Firefox's health.
Vivaldi is not open source so that's an immediate "no" from me. I'm fine with using closed source tools from time to time, but a web browser is just too important and intertwined in my life to trust a closed source offering.
In a perfect world we'd have nothing but fully open source software funded by support contracts and commercial interest in offering superior software, but the world isn't perfect and so we have to compromise sometimes. But the browser is one place I draw the line.
From the article ai understand you must opt in to make this available: These suggestions — which aim to enhance and speed up your searching experience — are only enabled when you provide access to new data types.
People complain when the default is opted-in. Now someone makes something that by default is opted-out and... people still complain.
They ask that when someone uses telemetry, that would be shown upfront. When someone does that, they ask it to be disabled by default. And when we get disabled by default, where do we go? Remove the feature, ofcourse :)
Ads, privacy and telemetry is a hot cake topic on HN.
That button is actually a cheap way to support mozilla, if anyone cares.
Safari’s privacy is a joke considering you can’t install browser extensions like UBlock Origin to thoroughly block trackers and other spyware. Not to mention it’s the most buggy and poorly developed rendering engine, breaking more websites than any other major browser. And it’s not even cross platform. Hardly a competitor as far as I’m concerned.
Fair enough, but I wouldn't call a software locked to an ecosystem "user-centric". Firefox on Android is a lifesaver in a sea of opportunistic alternatives
By the love of all thats holy, I still don't understand how the development of an entire operating system can be reasonably coordinated by a (admittably singlularly competent) sole finnish guy in a bathrobe from home, while a comparably simple webbrowser needs a foundation, a company, a ceo, a code of conduct, all those outreach and social-action programmes etc...
Or maybe, is all that cesspool of ineffectiveness and virtue-signaling the product and the webbrowser just the cashcow and the name at this point?
Modern webbrowsers are hugely more complicated to implement than a kernel with no user space and very limited driver support (as Linux was back when it was a single person operation).
In fact modern webbrowsers are bordering on being an operating system in their own right. They're already a virtual machine, with their own run times, plus one of the most complicated document markup standards known to man (and to make matters worse, it's not just as simple as supporting correct standards, they have to support incorrect usages of those standards too because webdevelopers often use deprecated standards, tags or even just use those tags wrongly and people still expect those sites to render).
Lets not forget that JS isn't just a simple interpreter like in the 90s. There's 3D rendering with WebGL, audio rendering with WebMidi, real time communications with WebRTC, location services, WASM, and so on and so forth.
Let's also not forget that HTML, CSS, JS, etc are not the only standards a browser needs to support, there's GIF, JPEG, SVG, video formats and audio formats too. There are network protocols like HTTP, FTP, SSL/TLS. And HTTP is non-trivial these days because there's multiple revisions of it, each different significantly from the previous. There's websockets, binary encodings, MIME types, etc.
And all of that isn't even touching on the UI. Even just supporting a modern multi-platform native desktop UI is more than a single persons job. And that's before any of the complexities mentioned above.
First, Linux is a kernel, not an operating system. Second, nowadays web browsers are fairly big beasts, perhaps even more than the complex machinery that Linux is. If lines of code are any measure Firefox and Chromium are above it[1][2][3]. Finally, Mozilla isn't making only Firefox.
Linux is a kernel, not an entire operating system. Lots of companies contribute, it has a foundation, and I'm sorry to break it to you but it even has a code of conduct.
What makes you think a web browser is comparatively simple compared to a kernel?
I think the main difference between OS kernel and browser is the former can decide what they need to support, but the latter need to be compatible in order to render existing website. IMO, Building a new browser is more similar to building a Windows-compatible operating system.
What a ridiculously disingenuous comment. You realize there's a whole Linux Foundation, right? And multiple enormous companies and a whole open source community that are the actual developers of the entire operating system?
I stuck with Firefox when Chrome stormed the market with a faster browser. Mozilla has had a highly respected name. I'm not so convinced about that anymore...
For me the core values of the browser are:
- free software, open source, as in freedom
- independent (mozilla is weak here)
- developer friendly, good debugging/dev interface (they are slowly losing here)
- keeping up with web standards, letting me play with proposed changes
- good performance
- not tied to a advertising business model (they are weakening themselves here)
- privacy defaults
These things are very important to me and I'm not alone. The browser is one of my primary tools that I rely on to work as well as the wider open source ecosystem.
I'd be very much willing to pay a subscription fee if I end up being the actual customer, as a web developer and not a target for other Mozilla products that I don't care about and advertisements that distract me and get in my way of working. I'm already distracted enough to begin with as I'm literally working within the web...
I haven't been a fan of many of the news surrounding Mozilla as of late:
- laying off hundreds of workers
- continuing to increase C-level salaries while revenue goes down
- products I mostly don't care about
- dropping support for innovative browser tech like Servo
- now spamming their users with ads...
What do I do?
Recently there was an announcement of the replay browser (replay.io). I played around with it a bit and I'm very tempted at the moment to try it as my primary working browser. They tick some of the boxes above (developer focused browser, subscription fee => I'm the customer). Not sure about it yet.
Edit: to the paragraph above about considering the replay browser, I just checked their privacy policy and it's a big no-no...
Is there any browser with good developer experience that respects my privacy and freedom?
Functionally there are only two browsers, and they are both terrible. As such, it has to be no. The options you have are reskins of those two browsers or browsers that miss big features and are therefore a PITA to use (I'm looking at you, Safari).
It's sad to see Mozilla go down this road, one time after another.
I don't mind it if they need the money (they don't, look into their finances and come tell me with a straight face that this non-profit isn't making the ends meet), it's comparable to default search engine placement and search suggestions, can be turned off etc.
What I have a problem with is the dark-pattern-esque language, like "relevant suggestions" and "trusted partners." I'm used to seeing that kind of messaging from the FAANG boogeymen, not Mozilla who's supposed to be the last fortress of the open internet. After years of conditioning it very strongly implies untrustworthiness to me, makes me immediately suspicious of some nefarious scheme.
I would vote with my feet but there are no options left, any other choice would mean betraying my values even further. I am being held hostage.
It’s sucky and I particularly hate ads percolating to every part if my life, BUT how are they meant to support Firefox and other software without a revenue stream?
Mozilla seems to attract criticism for how they run the whole operation, I can’t tell how correct it is, but even if they run it perfectly they still need revenue.
I used to give money to Mozilla Foundation, I stopped when I realised it actually wasn't going to Firefox development, which is done by Mozilla Corporation. I even reached out to their support, and no, there is no way to support FF but with your eyeballs.
With that feature, that I will of course disable for my personal use, I will not be able to recommend Firefox to other people any more.
Seems to work for Wikipedia (possibly another dysfunctional example). I'd happily pay for Firefox too.
If nothing else, there's not that many rendering engines out there. Chrome, Brave and Edge are all Chromium. Safari is separate I guess, but that's tied to Apple platforms. I really don't want yet another Google monoculture.
maybe go the other direction and try to cut expenses rather than trying to make more money? Firefox gets hundreds of millions from Google alone in royalties, that is not enough to build a web browser?
Firefox has lost almost half of its users since 2010, yet it keeps burning more money every year. Run the company in a lean way, cut the fat, do one thing well. It's like Wikipedia, every year they seemingly find new ingenious ways to burn more cash.
> Firefox gets hundreds of millions from Google alone in royalties, that is not enough to build a web browser?
Empirically, it is not. Even Microsoft gave up that chase. Browsers are staggeringly complex and expensive to build. Which may be an indictment of the Web itself, but in the absence of a simpler alternative (Gemini?), the Web we have is the Web we've got, and browsers have to meet it where it is.
There's always Palemoon [0] (for anyone who likes the classic firefox interface). I've been using it for years (and have donated), plus I like the fact it can be installed just by unpacking a tarball/zip file (as well as the more usual methods).
I expect if Mozilla made opt-out a paid feature, then all that would happen is that Firefox would be forked without ads, and the general public use Chrome or Edge anyway.
This was my first thought, then I remembered Google gives Mozilla hundreds of millions every year, Mitchell Baker is paid 3 millions/year (after 250 people were laid off) when Firefox is basically dying.
There should be a paid ad free membership for anyone who doesn’t like ads. Even if not many people take them up on this offer, it would be more fair since there would be a choice.
This! How hard can it be to put a FF subscription payment somewhere inside the browser or on their website?
Of course people can always fork it and remove it blabla. But we're talking about people who otherwise would donate and just want to do it more directly (as opposed to the whole Mozilla foundation)
They could start by slashing the out-of-control executive salaries maybe?
Ahaha, who am I kidding, capitalism be capitalism...
Edit: before you knee-jerk downvote, please read up on the evolution of exec compensation at Mozilla. It's pretty eye-opening, and really exemplifies what's going wrong with the project.
I have very few requirements for personal browser I absolutely insist on. Some of the most important ones are that it must be possible to configure it so it:
> 1) Never-ever in any circumstances sends anything I type into URL bar outside my PC until I press Enter.
All suggestions must come from my local bookmarks and visited sites history, and there must be "old-school" dedicated Search bar (or explicit keyword searches) triggering remote lookup for fuzzy suggestions and stuff like that.
> 2) After I press the Enter, it loads precisely what I've typed. No implicit searches, no www+.., ..+.com|org|net guesswork, nothing.
If I type invalid address, I want to see error message saying that the browser does not understand my intention. The only exceptions are adding default protocol (if what I've typed is not keyword command), and doing URI encoding stuff if necessary. Nothing more. And "keyword searches" done from URL bar must display resulting address.
Thankfully, Firefox is still capable of being configured this way, except that "display Keyword remote URL result verbatim"), but it is increasingly more and more difficult to keep it this way. It makes me sad, and confused, because I see these requirements as a clear manifestation of philosophy Firefox is (used to be) built on.
Readit News
> relevant suggestions from our trusted partners
The suggestions are not relevant to, and the partners not trusted by, me.
That is exactly the problem I have with it - weasel words and euphemisms; FF is scoring an own-goal here and eroding trust.
Why not just tell it like it is. "We need funding and are lining up deals with third parties to display their ads/messaging in the address bar search. We vet these third parties by holding them contractually to these standards [list standards to establish bar required for "trust"]."
It's only my opinion, but spelling it out clearly - the need for funding and how/why "trusted partners" get to display their stuff - would make me far more likely to allow these suggestions. (Oh, and as for "relevance", FF should explain how that's intended to work, ie what data are being used etc.)
I second your opinion - I'd be willing to entertain, or even support, this way of them making money iff they spelled out honestly what they're doing and why. In details. Talk with me like two adults that respect each other.
But then I thought, okay, they need money, ads in address bar isn't the worst thing in the world.
But then then I thought: But only if they are clearly disclosed as ads! Instead we seem to have a combination of " traditional suggestions like browsing history and open tabs, as well as new suggestions from our partners" -- are the "paid placements" clearly designated as such? Unclear? Probably not?
In "traditional" media, the first rule of advertisements is that they be clearly identified as advertisements, as content put there by someone paying for it, instead of by editorial judgement. Because how can you trust the editorial judgement of the publisher if you can't tell which is which?
That even Mozilla no longer thinks this is necessary shows how much the culture has changed, where "paid placement" is pretty much assumed everywhere (or if not, you're a naive fool) and nobody trusts anybody.
Because they don't want to say: "we want a lot of money to all kinds of projects irrelevant to the browser".
They should focus on their core product and cut everything else away.
Instead they are an organization that tries to save the whole world. It seems like they think the jobs created for themselves by "saving the world" is the core business and Firefox is just a cash-cow for this.
Indeed. Mozilla should be honest. That's what builds trust.
We all know they need money, so if this gives them money to improve FF, fine by me. But they need to quit the marketing bullshit-speak.
I'm no expert, but from what I've heard the reasoning is that ad companies don't like it when you do that and won't want to work with you. They'd rather FF says "we love these guys and they just happen to be handing us bags of money" rather than "look, we dont like this anymore than you do but we need the cash".
Not excusing it, and I could well be wrong (there could also be a way of saying it that satisfies both parties), but thats my understanding of the rationale
This is exactly the point why I left Google Chrome back then and considered FF as a good alternative. I didn't trust Google anymore. But now I face the same problem again, because I don't want these "features and trusted partners". I also don't want to have to justify over and over again why I don't want them. I just want a well-functioning and secure browser that people can trust.
Mozilla has a lot of no value initiatives activities that they want to fund
Given the massive salaries and bonuses paid out to upper management[0], I think their problem would be not sounding like that dril tweet about budgeting[1].
After the massive layoffs and cuts to vital web platform projects this move just feels consistent in their move from their old "quirky nerd charity" image to a new, more corporate one. I'm not saying that this is a good thing.
[0]: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
[1]: https://twitter.com/dril/status/384408932061417472
They've been losing market share, and these actions and language are not going to help.
Yeah, I guess Baker needs a raise.
Excactly them trying to find more sources of income is fine by me. The hiding it and the deceptive messaging is awful. "enhance and speed up your searching experience" - I'm sure it will.
Even the opt-in screen is an anti-pattern.
"Allow suggestions" or "customize". No "do not allow suggestions". On the first level.
This is the stuff I want (and in the past expected) Mozilla to fight, not to become.
Because the sad truth is every other company is doing exactly the same. We live in a world where the people who track you most will greet you with "we value your privacy".
The incentives aren't made clear and you're left with the gaps to fill leading up to how decisions like these got made at an executive level. Does Mozilla stand to lose favor with Google or someone else by trying to be more honest about what it's trying to accomplish, or avoid?
Mozilla does stand to lose a lot of favor with its core audience by trying to act corporate now of all times, with Firefox marketshare at an all-time low. And I have to wonder if these kind of statements were universally accepted by the people who are a part of the company, on the foundation or corporate side. Are there any Mozillians that believe that this is not Mozilla as people remember it? Would they be willing to express their thoughts, if so?
aged like milk i guess.
I just want a browser that isn't controlled by the ad mafia.
A few don't, like VLC: https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/73dafr/vlc_creator_...
I remember seeing lots of devs complaining about Safari not implementing the latest new shinny google technology for chrome but looking at some of these features those aren't things I'd have in my browser like PWA. Web developers are totally out of touch if they expect that everybody wants a website to have access to things like USB ports.
If you pay for it, yeah. But you can't have that and have the software be £free to use
That said, I don't understand, why would somebody use Firefox instead of Chrome, Edge, or Safari if they ad in-browser ads.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18064537
This said, of course, I hate this "feature" and I'll make sure I disable it.
It was my position that ads violate the ethos of free software by making the user serve the software. You can debate that, but in any case that was the beginning of this culture at Mozilla to use bs language to placate users.
The fuck with this?
How can they make _relevant_ suggestions without spying on my (s/browsing history/activity/), profiling it and phoning back to the mothership?
(Edited, "browsing history" -> "activity")
If you search for "hotels", they'll show you suggestions that match "hotels".
Doesn't seem that complicated to me.
I wish they'd give the about:config key to disable it as well as UI instructions in posts like this. The former can be set in a preferences file; so easily synchronised between machines and not forgotten when setting up a new one.
This extends to the splash screen as well. No "disable ads" button just "not now" or "settings".
In contrast the settings dialogue looks fine.
Apart from many questionable choices over the past few years, they fired fired a large number of employees, then their CEO bumped up their own salary to 3 million USD: https://www.zdnet.com/article/endangered-firefox-the-state-o...
I am not sure whether their fall to around a 5% market share in the browser market had anything to do with any of the things in the above article, but to me it feels like the logical next progression at some point is to remove Mozilla from the actual Firefox software.
So my question is this: how long will it be before any fork of Firefox will gain a large following, much like what happened to CentOS/Rocky Linux?
Seems like there are quite a few independent forks, but nothing that i think would be a no-brainer for replacing Firefox as the default browser of any Linux distro or on a Windows desktop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#Gecko-bas...
Tho not in the best way, I feel, but at least this is opt-in?
While it would be good news if they were, insofar as creating more competition for the incumbents (let's be honest, the incumbent, google), at this point only regulators can do anything about the state of search/ad industry.
If this is actually the case Mozilla is yet again being used as one of Google's pawns.
"See, there are other browsers and search/ad companies flourishing despite our market position!"
To me this is clearly not spin or weasel words, this is glaringly blatant dishonesty.
This “Privacy First Data Sharing Platform” for example
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/take-control-over-your-d...
Deleted Comment
I feel like this kind of marketing language is only there to obfuscate the real reason why things are done. They want to include ads to help finance Mozilla – the main goal isn't "to enhance and speed up your searching experience". Calling the introduction of ads an enhancement for the user is just dishonest.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
"Relevant" is a code word for "we spy on your every move and also share your personal browsing behaviour with our many external partners to serve you relevant ads".
Firefox still has no alternative in the privacy / user-centric space (don't mention Brave, I'm gonna get mad). Mozilla has done a lot for the web, I can give them some slack for exploring different revenue models.
Still, I'm going to keep on eye for this kind of practices in the future. I don't want them to get too comfortable with it.
Each time I install Firefox, I end up wasting a non-trivial amount of time carefully working my way through the settings in order to disable the pile of defaults that are as 'easy' to deactivate as they are infuriating. When updating the browser, some of these changes get rolled back, and some of them become more difficult to adjust, either by being removed from the options menu, or by being obscured in about:config - maybe the name has changed for no reason, or maybe the behaviour now depends on an entirely different configuration value.
A particularly obscene case is the auto-updater, which has gotten so bad that I have literally given up on figuring out how to disable it. (At least on Windows; firefox-esr on debian is, so far, free of this insanity) (Ever noticed how forced automatic updates in software get pushed by security fanaticism, but mostly exist to steal your data and ruin your day while they're at it?)
You, apparently, see an easily-deactivable feature in a clear and extensive settings menu. I see an ever-growing eldritch labyrinth, built solely to prevent me from having a straightforward internet browsing experience, all the while the browser's performance is slowly but surely - and noticeably - worsening in the new versions.
Anyway, screw you, Mozilla. At this point I'm only using firefox because I don't see much of a choice either.
Would you mind expanding on this one so I can better understand what you mean?
I'm guessing the "ruin your day" part is that you have to interrupt your workflow for some minutes? But it's not entirely clear to me how automatic updates "mostly exist to steal your data" -- excepting software which is already stealing your data anyways (so I don't understand how automatic updates factor in). Does manually updating somehow protect your data from being stolen in a way that automatic updates don't? Or you just don't update?
Except they have used the language of "not now" and hidden the link away instead of making it a button with equal prominence to the yes button.
That's not the behaviour of an organisation which thinks its users will be happy with what it's doing, it's the behaviour of an organisation which is trying to trick them.
Just wonder the reason? Is it because it support the monopoly of google rendering engine? Or other reasons?
But Brave have just proven to be an unethical, borderline scammy project. And I'm saying this as someone who owns crypto and can see the value of advertisement in some cases.
Here are a few cases documented on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Controvers...
And I'd add that having a business model where you put your own adds on top of ad-blocked ones is the most hypocritical thing to do.
Deleted Comment
Plus, Google controls Chromium and Firefox is literally the only alternative now. They push changes that are against or in in ignorance of of web standards because they can. Downstream browsers like brave,edge and opera basically have to accept whatever Google says. This isn't good for the web at all. Frankly there should be an anti-trust suit against Google for this because it is very anti-competitive.
- "Sponsored" backgrounds (often crypto ads or credit cards!)
- "Cards" with more weird Crypto ads!
- Brave "news"
- Brave "rewards"
Yes I can turn all that of, and I have, but hard to recommend to normal users that dont spend 10min turning all the shit off.
They also did some weird link shit a while back.
2. it's based on Chromium, contributing to the Blink monoculture
3. BATs are based on Ethereum, which has its own downsides (still PoW, speculation, ...)
Think of the type of business involved with that, and there's your answer.
Like with Firefox, you have to change your preferences if you want privacy.
Search suggestions are displayed and the items are conditioned to your location, cookies... Pages which know how to trick themselves to the top of this suggestions get visitors straight from the user's navbar.
The main difference between Google/Microsoft's approach and Mozilla's is that the pages themselves don't pay to be displayed directly onto your browser's navbar dropdown.
These just clog up the interface and make it feel sketchy. I just want a normal FOSS browser, but I also understand the whole financing issue.
Mozilla has tons of money, but they just
1. spend too much of it, 2. on the wrong things, 3. and always want more.
One of the best parts about Brave is that they are trying to build independent revenue streams from things like integrated Jitsi features, an independent search engine and the like. Vivaldi builds in things like mail clients, RSS readers and a rudimentary notetaking tool.
In that vein, Pocket is a really good thing, and also helps combat link rot. The vocal Firefox userbase is moronically hostile to add-on services though, even if they are the ultimate key to Firefox's health.
http://dpldocs.info/this-week-in-d/Blog.Posted_2021_09_06.ht...
Such a thing should not exist in the first place. It is predatory and wrong.
> Firefox still has no alternative in the privacy / user-centric space
It is no longer in that space, because it contains advertising tech now.
Vivaldi perhaps https://vivaldi.com/ ?
It is still a chrome derivative, but it feel less shady and less spyware than Brave. And it's pretty good and configurable.
Firefox remain my first and main browser tho. I never ever used "proper" chrome, not even one day.
In a perfect world we'd have nothing but fully open source software funded by support contracts and commercial interest in offering superior software, but the world isn't perfect and so we have to compromise sometimes. But the browser is one place I draw the line.
Thanks a lot for mismanaging your budget like seemingly every other non-profit, Mozilla.
Pocket is a good thing. It provides a reason for Mozilla/Firefox to exist.
People complain when the default is opted-in. Now someone makes something that by default is opted-out and... people still complain.
They ask that when someone uses telemetry, that would be shown upfront. When someone does that, they ask it to be disabled by default. And when we get disabled by default, where do we go? Remove the feature, ofcourse :)
Ads, privacy and telemetry is a hot cake topic on HN.
That button is actually a cheap way to support mozilla, if anyone cares.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
Safari.
In fact modern webbrowsers are bordering on being an operating system in their own right. They're already a virtual machine, with their own run times, plus one of the most complicated document markup standards known to man (and to make matters worse, it's not just as simple as supporting correct standards, they have to support incorrect usages of those standards too because webdevelopers often use deprecated standards, tags or even just use those tags wrongly and people still expect those sites to render).
Lets not forget that JS isn't just a simple interpreter like in the 90s. There's 3D rendering with WebGL, audio rendering with WebMidi, real time communications with WebRTC, location services, WASM, and so on and so forth.
Let's also not forget that HTML, CSS, JS, etc are not the only standards a browser needs to support, there's GIF, JPEG, SVG, video formats and audio formats too. There are network protocols like HTTP, FTP, SSL/TLS. And HTTP is non-trivial these days because there's multiple revisions of it, each different significantly from the previous. There's websockets, binary encodings, MIME types, etc.
And all of that isn't even touching on the UI. Even just supporting a modern multi-platform native desktop UI is more than a single persons job. And that's before any of the complexities mentioned above.
[1]: https://www.openhub.net/p/firefox/analyses/latest/languages_... [2]: https://www.openhub.net/p/chrome/analyses/latest/languages_s... [3]: https://www.openhub.net/p/linux/analyses/latest/languages_su...
What makes you think a web browser is comparatively simple compared to a kernel?
Dead Comment
For me the core values of the browser are:
- free software, open source, as in freedom
- independent (mozilla is weak here)
- developer friendly, good debugging/dev interface (they are slowly losing here)
- keeping up with web standards, letting me play with proposed changes
- good performance
- not tied to a advertising business model (they are weakening themselves here)
- privacy defaults
These things are very important to me and I'm not alone. The browser is one of my primary tools that I rely on to work as well as the wider open source ecosystem.
I'd be very much willing to pay a subscription fee if I end up being the actual customer, as a web developer and not a target for other Mozilla products that I don't care about and advertisements that distract me and get in my way of working. I'm already distracted enough to begin with as I'm literally working within the web...
I haven't been a fan of many of the news surrounding Mozilla as of late:
- laying off hundreds of workers
- continuing to increase C-level salaries while revenue goes down
- products I mostly don't care about
- dropping support for innovative browser tech like Servo
- now spamming their users with ads...
What do I do?
Recently there was an announcement of the replay browser (replay.io). I played around with it a bit and I'm very tempted at the moment to try it as my primary working browser. They tick some of the boxes above (developer focused browser, subscription fee => I'm the customer). Not sure about it yet.
Edit: to the paragraph above about considering the replay browser, I just checked their privacy policy and it's a big no-no...
Is there any browser with good developer experience that respects my privacy and freedom?
Deleted Comment
I don't mind it if they need the money (they don't, look into their finances and come tell me with a straight face that this non-profit isn't making the ends meet), it's comparable to default search engine placement and search suggestions, can be turned off etc.
What I have a problem with is the dark-pattern-esque language, like "relevant suggestions" and "trusted partners." I'm used to seeing that kind of messaging from the FAANG boogeymen, not Mozilla who's supposed to be the last fortress of the open internet. After years of conditioning it very strongly implies untrustworthiness to me, makes me immediately suspicious of some nefarious scheme.
I would vote with my feet but there are no options left, any other choice would mean betraying my values even further. I am being held hostage.
Mozilla seems to attract criticism for how they run the whole operation, I can’t tell how correct it is, but even if they run it perfectly they still need revenue.
With that feature, that I will of course disable for my personal use, I will not be able to recommend Firefox to other people any more.
Please let us pay!
If nothing else, there's not that many rendering engines out there. Chrome, Brave and Edge are all Chromium. Safari is separate I guess, but that's tied to Apple platforms. I really don't want yet another Google monoculture.
Firefox has lost almost half of its users since 2010, yet it keeps burning more money every year. Run the company in a lean way, cut the fat, do one thing well. It's like Wikipedia, every year they seemingly find new ingenious ways to burn more cash.
Empirically, it is not. Even Microsoft gave up that chase. Browsers are staggeringly complex and expensive to build. Which may be an indictment of the Web itself, but in the absence of a simpler alternative (Gemini?), the Web we have is the Web we've got, and browsers have to meet it where it is.
They've been receiving hundreds of millions of dollars each year just for what they set as the default search engine.
https://www.ghacks.net/2021/09/17/firefox-experiment-is-test...
[0] http://www.palemoon.org/
Edit: My assumption was that a proportion of the money donated to the Mozilla Foundation is used to fund Mozilla Firefox.
I stand corrected (but I still consider the foundation worth supporting).
A follow up question for those replying to this comment: does the revenue from Pocket and/or the Mozilla VPN help to fund Firefox?
I'd however gladly pay around 10-20 euros / month for firefox.
Of course people can always fork it and remove it blabla. But we're talking about people who otherwise would donate and just want to do it more directly (as opposed to the whole Mozilla foundation)
Ahaha, who am I kidding, capitalism be capitalism...
Edit: before you knee-jerk downvote, please read up on the evolution of exec compensation at Mozilla. It's pretty eye-opening, and really exemplifies what's going wrong with the project.
> 1) Never-ever in any circumstances sends anything I type into URL bar outside my PC until I press Enter.
All suggestions must come from my local bookmarks and visited sites history, and there must be "old-school" dedicated Search bar (or explicit keyword searches) triggering remote lookup for fuzzy suggestions and stuff like that.
> 2) After I press the Enter, it loads precisely what I've typed. No implicit searches, no www+.., ..+.com|org|net guesswork, nothing.
If I type invalid address, I want to see error message saying that the browser does not understand my intention. The only exceptions are adding default protocol (if what I've typed is not keyword command), and doing URI encoding stuff if necessary. Nothing more. And "keyword searches" done from URL bar must display resulting address.
Thankfully, Firefox is still capable of being configured this way, except that "display Keyword remote URL result verbatim"), but it is increasingly more and more difficult to keep it this way. It makes me sad, and confused, because I see these requirements as a clear manifestation of philosophy Firefox is (used to be) built on.