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> "IIRC they still pay Mozilla for making Google the default homepage" True. > "is there anything else they've done?" Nah, and frankly that's just irrational
by ronjouch 10y ago
> "IIRC they still pay Mozilla for making Google the default homepage"
True.
> "is there anything else they've done?"
Nah, and frankly that's just irrational in-my-head ranting, their behavior is entirely expected rational behavior. Google is a data junkie which critically all-caps NEEDS as much data as possible about us, in order to machine-learn our lives from head to toe so that it can make money helping companies sell us more stuff.
Of course Apple isn't bothering us to use Safari when browsing apple.com, it doesn't care as long as you buy Macs. Of course Microsoft neither, it doesn't care as long as you use their platforms.
But Google is different, it needs your data to operate, and so it will do whatever it takes to get its data fix, including bullying.
</rant>
EDIT+OFFTOPIC: cool article on your blog about AFL, thanks for sharing it :)
- jlongster 10y ago>> "IIRC they still pay Mozilla for making Google the default homepage" > True. Not true. Mozilla switched to Yahoo a few years back; Google doesn't give them any money. And it's not the default homepage, it's the default search engine (the default homepage always starts out `about:home`).
- ronjouch 10y agoEh I guess you're right, as you're mozillian and as I remembered Yahoo too. But can you help me understand this: I was unsure whether today's Mozilla deal was with Yahoo or Google, so I double-checked before asserting True. And running firefox with a fresh new profile, I confirm all search sources (awesome bar, in-chrome search box, about:home in-content search box) default to querying Google, not Yahoo. Is it new to be back to Google? Or maybe it's specific to Nightly builds? (53.0a1 2016-12-01) -- EDIT no, same behavior under 50.0.2 stable. And it's not the OS either, I tried Ubuntu and Windows --. Any idea why, then?
- kbrosnan 10y agoYahoo is only the default for users in North America. Bidau for China and Yandex for Russia. In most other cases Google is the default as their search service produces good results for the user. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-and-innovation-on-the-web/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-an...
- ronjouch 10y agoAaah it's geographical; thanks :) Nit: s/North America/USA/, I guess, as I live in Canada and get Google.