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> so why was Pocket pushed so hard Was it? All I saw was it being integrated into Firefox, and there being a lot of backlash. Against that backlash, there wer

> so why was Pocket pushed so hard Was it? All I saw was it being integrated into Firefox, and there being a lot of backlash. Against that backlash, there were a couple of people pushing hard to justify it, but they were either independent or Mozilla employees (often from a different team) posting independent opinions. I don't think Mozilla pushed Pocket a lot. Pushing features through the release cycle is pretty common. Bear in mind that Mozilla integrated Pocket because it was the kind of feature it wanted to have in Sync (or Accounts, whatever it's called), but decided to use a third party service instead of making their own. From that POV it's much more reasonable. Not denying that it could have been done better with a pluggable open API and an open source equivalent (or whatever), but it's not that bad from that lens. Sponsored tiles was an experiment, IIRC. Mozilla wanted to see if non-annoying, easy-to-disable ads could be used to fill otherwise blank space. It seems to have failed. But I would guess that a lot of the devs were hopeful about this experiment. I (not a Mozilla employee, but I do contribute a lot) was, at least.

volaski 11y ago
"Pushed hard", since the feature made it all the way to production versions which rolled out to every firefox user. This is a significant business decision which can change people's perception towards Mozilla. It definitely did for me. It IS a big deal that a popular browser supports some obscure 3rd party service as primary bookmarking service when there are many other 3rd party bookmarking services in the market such as Instapaper.
- Manishearth 11y ago
  > since the feature made it all the way to production versions which rolled out to every firefox user ...like most other features. Doesn't require pushing. That's how it works. > obscure 3rd party service Apparently it was a rather popular addon in Firefox?
  - volaski 11y ago
    > since the feature made it all the way to production versions which rolled out to every firefox user ...like most other features. Doesn't require pushing. That's how it works. ==> Do we really need to define what "pushing" means? I'm sure you know what I mean by pushing, you're just doing wordplay. That's not how it works. > obscure 3rd party service Apparently it was a rather popular addon in Firefox? ==> What do you think the ratio of (# of pocket extension users / # of total firefox users) is? It's totally fine if FF had supported it as a pure "extension" (doesn't come preinstalled but required users to search and "pull" themselves if they wanted) but the criticism came from the fact that this 3rd party extension came preinstalled and was "pushed" to users.
    - Manishearth 11y ago
      > I'm sure you know what I mean by pushing, you're just doing wordplay. That's not how it works. No, I don't. They did with Pocket what they do with every nontrivial feature. Implemented it, and sherriffed it through the release trains. I don't think it was immediately plopped on a Firefox release, I recall seeing it on Developer/Aurora much earlier, which means it went through the release trains like everything else. The OP said, quote, "so why was Pocket pushed _so hard_ and couldn't wait a couple of Fx versions". How was it "pushed" "hard" if they did the _same thing_ they do for other features? Yes, they made the decision to implement this feature. That doesn't count as pushing. I already illustrated why that decision made sense at the time. Perhaps there was some backlash as it was on Aurora/Beta, I don't recall the exact timelines. IMO it's still okay to let the feature -- one which you still think makes sense and would benefit the userbase -- continue to ride the trains and hit a release while you try to understand the criticism and come up with a solution. It may be a better solution to disable it until a decision is made, but that depends on the perceived severity of the problem. Again, I don't see any hard pushing here, just a somewhat justifiable choice. I too would have preferred if they removed the feature when there was backlash, but I don't see anything wrong with the other solution. If you immediately backtracked every time there was criticism nothing would get done. > but the criticism came from the fact that this 3rd party extension came preinstalled and was "pushed" to users. Sure. But you gave the example of Instapaper (which you seem to be more okay with Firefox integrating with); I'm suggesting it was probably less popular than Pocket in FF or at least comparable popularity. I'm not disagreeing that integrating with a closed third party service is not good. I'm just pointing out a flaw in your Instapaper comment.
- Ygg2 11y ago
  That's not true at all. Bookmarks are as far as I can tell separate from Pocket. Pocket is a read later extension.
  - volaski 11y ago
    What's not true at all? When you say something is not true at all, you need to specify what exactly you are referring to. I mentioned several points in my comment. "Extension" is something that you extend your browser with and doesn't come pre-installed.
- unethical_ban 11y ago
  I guarantee you most Firefox users either use Pocket, or don't care that it's a default feature in the product now. I am in the boat that wishes it was removable, perhaps as some kind of "default add-on", but it's not. I'm not removing FF because of it. And as for ads: Were they tracking people with them? Were they sending back GUIDs of my browser every time I loaded a new tab? This is a legit question that would affect my opinion on the matter. The ads I see are brief, and cannot take more than a miniscule amount of data to serve. By those metrics, I have no problem with them.
  - volaski 11y ago
    I didn't remove FF because of it either, but these things pile up slowly--makes me think WTF were they thinking?--and if I see several more of these I will probably stop using it. As I mentioned in another thread somewhere, I agree a lot of people don't care or not aware, but if asked directly "would you rather have this Pocket extension come pre-installed or not?" I am sure majority of them would say they don't want it. Just because people don't complain doesn't mean they're fine with it. People live with shitty customer service from comcast but that doesn't mean they have good customer service.
Khaine 11y ago
They took away the status bar because it was superfluous (really they were just copying chrome) and then they integrate a third party extension into the browser. It sure seems to me it was pushed hard.

volaski 11y ago

"Pushed hard", since the feature made it all the way to production versions which rolled out to every firefox user. This is a significant business decision which can change people's perception towards Mozilla. It definitely did for me. It IS a big deal that a popular browser supports some obscure 3rd party service as primary bookmarking service when there are many other 3rd party bookmarking services in the market such as Instapaper.

Manishearth 11y ago
> since the feature made it all the way to production versions which rolled out to every firefox user ...like most other features. Doesn't require pushing. That's how it works. > obscure 3rd party service Apparently it was a rather popular addon in Firefox?
- volaski 11y ago
  > since the feature made it all the way to production versions which rolled out to every firefox user ...like most other features. Doesn't require pushing. That's how it works. ==> Do we really need to define what "pushing" means? I'm sure you know what I mean by pushing, you're just doing wordplay. That's not how it works. > obscure 3rd party service Apparently it was a rather popular addon in Firefox? ==> What do you think the ratio of (# of pocket extension users / # of total firefox users) is? It's totally fine if FF had supported it as a pure "extension" (doesn't come preinstalled but required users to search and "pull" themselves if they wanted) but the criticism came from the fact that this 3rd party extension came preinstalled and was "pushed" to users.
  - Manishearth 11y ago
    > I'm sure you know what I mean by pushing, you're just doing wordplay. That's not how it works. No, I don't. They did with Pocket what they do with every nontrivial feature. Implemented it, and sherriffed it through the release trains. I don't think it was immediately plopped on a Firefox release, I recall seeing it on Developer/Aurora much earlier, which means it went through the release trains like everything else. The OP said, quote, "so why was Pocket pushed _so hard_ and couldn't wait a couple of Fx versions". How was it "pushed" "hard" if they did the _same thing_ they do for other features? Yes, they made the decision to implement this feature. That doesn't count as pushing. I already illustrated why that decision made sense at the time. Perhaps there was some backlash as it was on Aurora/Beta, I don't recall the exact timelines. IMO it's still okay to let the feature -- one which you still think makes sense and would benefit the userbase -- continue to ride the trains and hit a release while you try to understand the criticism and come up with a solution. It may be a better solution to disable it until a decision is made, but that depends on the perceived severity of the problem. Again, I don't see any hard pushing here, just a somewhat justifiable choice. I too would have preferred if they removed the feature when there was backlash, but I don't see anything wrong with the other solution. If you immediately backtracked every time there was criticism nothing would get done. > but the criticism came from the fact that this 3rd party extension came preinstalled and was "pushed" to users. Sure. But you gave the example of Instapaper (which you seem to be more okay with Firefox integrating with); I'm suggesting it was probably less popular than Pocket in FF or at least comparable popularity. I'm not disagreeing that integrating with a closed third party service is not good. I'm just pointing out a flaw in your Instapaper comment.
Ygg2 11y ago
That's not true at all. Bookmarks are as far as I can tell separate from Pocket. Pocket is a read later extension.
- volaski 11y ago
  What's not true at all? When you say something is not true at all, you need to specify what exactly you are referring to. I mentioned several points in my comment. "Extension" is something that you extend your browser with and doesn't come pre-installed.
unethical_ban 11y ago
I guarantee you most Firefox users either use Pocket, or don't care that it's a default feature in the product now. I am in the boat that wishes it was removable, perhaps as some kind of "default add-on", but it's not. I'm not removing FF because of it. And as for ads: Were they tracking people with them? Were they sending back GUIDs of my browser every time I loaded a new tab? This is a legit question that would affect my opinion on the matter. The ads I see are brief, and cannot take more than a miniscule amount of data to serve. By those metrics, I have no problem with them.
- volaski 11y ago
  I didn't remove FF because of it either, but these things pile up slowly--makes me think WTF were they thinking?--and if I see several more of these I will probably stop using it. As I mentioned in another thread somewhere, I agree a lot of people don't care or not aware, but if asked directly "would you rather have this Pocket extension come pre-installed or not?" I am sure majority of them would say they don't want it. Just because people don't complain doesn't mean they're fine with it. People live with shitty customer service from comcast but that doesn't mean they have good customer service.

Khaine 11y ago

They took away the status bar because it was superfluous (really they were just copying chrome) and then they integrate a third party extension into the browser. It sure seems to me it was pushed hard.