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I agree with this blog post. But I don't think Mozilla lost. I worked for Mozilla for a few years, after seeing John Lily (CEO at the time) speak. It was right

I agree with this blog post. But I don't think Mozilla lost. I worked for Mozilla for a few years, after seeing John Lily (CEO at the time) speak. It was right after Chrome started getting popular, and a smug person in the crowd asked him about how he felt about Chrome. John's response was awesome. "This is the web that we wanted. We exist not because we want everyone to use Firefox, but because we wanted people to have a choice" Firefox was a response to a world of "best viewed in IE" badges, and it changed the browser landscape. Now, we have options. Chrome is great, but so are Safari, Edge, Brave, Opera and Firefox. There's a lot of options out there, and they're all standards compliment. And that's thanks to Mozilla. So, in my mind, Mozilla won. It's a non-profit, and it forced us into an open web. We got the world they wanted. Maybe the world is a bit Chrome-heavy currently, but at least it's a standards compliment world. I hope Mozilla sees that. I hope they take credit, and move on to what's next: privacy and net neutrality. Our privacy is under attack, and Mozilla is one of the few companies that can (and would want to) help. I know, I know. Nobody cares about privacy. Nobody cared about web standards, either, but Mozilla bundled it into an attractive package and it worked. It's time for Mozilla to declare victory, high five the Chrome team, and move on to the next big challenge. We really need someone to fight for our privacy and neutrality. And I really believe that this could be Mozilla's swan song. ----- EDIT: Hey cbeard - My email is in my profile; I'd love to talk.

MBCook 9y ago
The problem is we're moving extremely fast to a chrome only world. If it wasn't for corporate sites and the success of the iPhone chrome would probably be dominating the way IE used to. I definitely run into sites that only work on chrome and not in any other browser. In my opinion chrome isn't doing a good job either. It's a massive energy hog and waste more CPU than it needs to. Unlike IE and FireFox and Safari it comes from a company that is notorious for wanting to know everything about you. The time to celebrate victory was a few years ago. Now it's starting to look like the new boss is the same as the old, maybe worse.
- zacmps 9y ago
  Chrome is improving on the resource usage front. It's far from perfect but it's getting better. As for privacy you could use the open source chromium, there's a fork somewhere which has all the Google removed.
  - wolco 9y ago
    On windows firefox does everything in one thread while chrome opens many. Depending on the usage both can be fast or slow. Firefox handles multiple tabs better. Chrome handles multiple tabs of videos better
    - krzyk 9y ago
      Chrome handles few tabs better, Firefox handles hundreds of tabs better.
      - imron 9y ago
        And that's one of the reasons why, with my hundreds of tabs open, I don't use Chrome.
      - dEnigma 9y ago
        This ultimately was what made me switch back to Firefox after I had used Chrome for a couple of years. I regularly have several hundred tabs opened in my browser, and Chrome was completely unusable in that situation, at least back then.
        PatentTroll 9y ago
        Honest question: why do you use hundreds of tabs at the same time? Why not bookmarks and leave a couple of the most important ones open? I have never understood the use case for "hundreds" of browser tabs
        659087 9y ago
andrepd 9y ago
We cannot possibly be talking about the same Google. This is the Google of AMP et al. You think they won't do the exact same thing Microsoft did with IE when they find themselves in a similar dominant/monopolistic position in the market? You're sorely mistaken. We already find many examples of websites and Web apps that work only on chrome or the chrome "web store". This not to mention the surveillance and privacy nullifiying "features" they impose, which is even more important to me personally than standards compliance. A world with Google owning a monopoly on web browsing isn't any less bad than if it were Microsoft.
- ehsankia 9y ago
  The only sites I've seen that only work on Chrome are generally due to the developers being lazy and only targeting the top platform. It's similar to many games only being available on iOS a few years ago, or many programs only being available on Windows. Now with the web, it's much easier to make something work across all platforms, except at the bleeding edge, which is generally where you'll find those sites. Almost all the ones I've seen were tech demos of new browser tech that wasn't available everywhere yet.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    WhatsApp Web was Chrome-only for a while. That was quite a big one for many people I know.
    - 0xcoffee 9y ago
      Google Inbox didn't work on Edge for the longest time. Claim was because edge didn't support some feature they needed, but when the agent was spoofed it worked fine.
  - codazoda 9y ago
    Like Google Hangouts?
    - eeZah7Ux 9y ago
lewisl9029 9y ago
Agreed that Mozilla's original mission has been accomplished in spades, but I wouldn't count Mozilla out of the browser race just yet. Servo and Webrender[0] will completely shake up the browser landscape, and will allow web apps to match (maybe even surpass?) native mobile apps in terms of rendering performance. Unless Chrome, IE, and Safari can develop an answer to Servo and Webrender by the time those technologies are ready for prime time, I wouldn't be surprised to see "Best viewed in Firefox" badges start popping up everywhere. [0] https://github.com/servo/webrender/wiki https://github.com/servo/webrender/wiki https://air.mozilla.org/bay-area-rust-meetup-february-2016/ https://air.mozilla.org/bay-area-rust-meetup-february-2016/
- bobajeff 9y ago
  Servo won't be ready for quite some time. (I'm thinking maybe 5 years) Project Quantum might be out sooner but it won't be that big of a leap ahead of other browsers.
  - lewisl9029 9y ago
    Fair point, and I'm not suggesting that other browser vendors can't possibly have an answer to Servo and Webrender by the time they're ready, but just that I haven't heard about any such efforts from them yet. So it's not entirely unreasonable to suggest that Mozilla's next-gen engine efforts could be first-to-market, and that everyone else might have to play catch up.
- gkoberger 9y ago
  Mozilla has had "we'll be #1 again once X is launched!" things since I was there 5 years ago (and servo was one of those things back then). It won't happen. Mozilla won the browser war. Firefox lost the browser fight. But there's many wars left to fight, and I hope Mozilla dives into a new one.
  - pcwalton 9y ago
    Servo barely existed 5 years ago.
thr0waway1239 9y ago
>> We really need someone to fight for our privacy and neutrality. Well said. I certainly hope it is not a PR stunt, but WordPress is probably the other big player in the fight for the open web. It might actually benefit all of us if Automattic starts making a lot of noise about privacy. And ultimately, its not as if anyone wants any of these tech giants to completely fail (well, maybe Facebook). What we want is to not have the nature of the web changed to suit the whims of a handful of companies.
- gkoberger 9y ago
  And the EFF (and potentially the ACLU)
- majewsky 9y ago
  > What we want is to not have the nature of the web changed to suit the whims of a handful of companies. I feel like we're ten years late for this concern.
  - thr0waway1239 9y ago
    Not really. At the moment, there are only two kinds of employees at Facebook. Those who care and are getting irritated each time these issues are raised on HN (see here [1]), and the dregs who bury their heads in the sand. I bet there is someone who works there who is reading this and realizing that either they will have to change their attitude, or soon the company will turn into another Enron. We don't still have Enron in our midst anymore, do we? Once one company goes down, it is only a matter of time before the rest fall in a domino sequence because people will start wondering about the practices of its peers. I would like to think that these companies are a little more sensible than to imagine they are somehow infallible, its better for them to change now before it gets to the point where they are made to. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13869759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13869759
EddieSpeaks 9y ago
Edge is fairly decent on windows as well, I know I'll get downvoted but it works very well - try it
- SteveCr48 9y ago
  Second your comment about Edge. As a long time Chromie, I'm transitioning to Edge on Win 10. Edge renders pages elegantly. Very nice. Try it!
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Heh after switching to Edge for about a year, I'm actually pushing back to Firefox. Microsoft keeps introducing new bugs to Edge and Firefox massively fixed their performance issues.
aanm1988 9y ago
> but at least it's a standards compliment world. sure, but if Chrome de facto controls standards does that really matter?
candiodari 9y ago
Firefox is the only android browser with ad-blocking plugins enabled. That makes it the only usable browser on mobile. Sucks that they don't have an IOS version, but Apple is the problem there, not Mozilla.
- andreasgal 9y ago
  Try Brave. It has built-in ad-blocking and tracking protection on iOS and Android. I use the iOS version.
- petre 9y ago
  Count Opera in. It has integrated ad blocking.
- saratogacx 9y ago
  Samsung's built in browser has ad-blocking plugins now that work quite well too.
- floatboth 9y ago
  Uh, Firefox has an iOS version. Of course it's webkit, but it has Sync :)
- fwn 9y ago
  Firefox mobile is the only browser with actual ad blocking. Adblocking is more than pure resource blocking (which afaik Brave, Samsung, iOS et. al.) currently implement. In fact, the smaller amount of ads I would see would be blocked this way. I have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, reddit and in the past Tumblr ad free due to element hiding capabilities that are non-present in any other browser I know except Firefox mobile with ublock origin. Edit: I replied to the wrong comment. I guess it's early.
coldtea 9y ago
>Now, we have options. Chrome is great, but so are Safari, Edge, Brave, Opera and Firefox. There's a lot of options out there, and they're all standards compliment. And that's thanks to Mozilla. I think the idea of TFA is that soon we wont have as many options, since Chrome seems to be dominating. Opera is also using Chrome's engine, ditto for Brave, so they're basically just sells. And Safari is from the same DNA, and only really relevant on Mobile and OS X. So Windows users basically have just Chrome and Firefox, and Linux users basically have just Chrome, Firefox and Edge. And even in Windows, Chrome dominates, almost to the point that IE dominated back in the day. So where's the choice? If it's just about availability of other rendering engines, people still had choice in the "optimized for IE" days. But it's mostly about rendering engines having competing market shares, and nowadays they increasingly do not. Plus, who will keep paying search placement money to Firefox if it gets to small single digits of use? And without those, how will development be continued?
thewhitetulip 9y ago
"best viewed with IE" got updated to "best viewed in Chrome"
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  Yes, except that "best viewed with IE" was there (at least initially) as part of a campaign where Microsoft was paying web sites to put in stuff that was incompatible with Netscape/Mozilla, and "best viewed in Chrome" is there because web developers are lazy.
  - scholia 9y ago
    > as part of a campaign where Microsoft was paying web sites to put in stuff that was incompatible with Netscape/Mozilla I'd be interested to see the evidence for that....
    - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
      Sorry, a quick search doesn't turn it up. This is from memory. Microsoft's strategy - from their own memos (maybe the Halloween memos?) - was to "try to make using Netscape a jarring experience". They were paying (maybe in equipment or some kind of freebies) websites that included at least three IE-only elements in their pages. This was not just competition. This was a deliberate campaign to break the web in a way where IE would work but Netscape would not. As I said, this is from memory, and I can't find the source. I have read a copy of the Microsoft memo, though (but you only have my word for it...)
      - scholia 9y ago
        My memory is different, obviously. The IE team took great pains to implement Netscape additions even when they were not standards so that the IE rendering was as good. I never heard of any attempt to make Netscape look worse. That doesn't mean it never happened, but I followed the story very closely at the time. Microsoft was much more co-operative than Netscape in the early days. It was one of Microsoft's advantages when Netscape was winning and running on pure arrogance. See How the Web Was Won, High Stakes No Prisoners and a few other books for details. Microsoft did introduce ActiveX, which Mozilla considered supporting, and then decided not to.
Vinnl 9y ago
> I hope Mozilla sees that. I hope they take credit, and move on to what's next: privacy and net neutrality. Our privacy is under attack, and Mozilla is one of the few companies that can (and would want to) help. Mozilla _is_ fighting that fight. See their posts here: https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/ https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/
wmeredith 9y ago
Thanks for posting this. I was going to say that I'm pretty sure Chrome exists at all because Mozilla won.
autokad 9y ago
"Now, we have options. Chrome is great, but so are Safari, Edge, Brave, Opera and Firefox. There's a lot of options out there, and they're all standards compliment. And that's thanks to Mozilla." i disagree. Google built chrome to protect their monopoly in search. and they have protected that monopoly well, and added another one: browser. i dont disparage Google for doing it, in fact both are great products that I use. But to say mozilla did it to 'give people a choice' and that they 'won' doesnt seem right to me.
bitexploder 9y ago
About fighting for our privacy and 'someone' has to do it. >> We really need someone to fight for our privacy and neutrality. And I really believe that this could be Mozilla's swan song. I deeply care about privacy. I fight for privacy. I work in information security. Every day I help my customers write code a little more securely. I educate them about implementing end to end encrypted communication systems. I am slowly migrating away from systems that don't respect privacy or can't function at scale without violating privacy. You have made a great point, and we do need big organizations to fight for privacy too. But the "someone" also has to be you and me. We have to reject operating systems like Windows 10. We have to make Linux and open source tools the ones we want to use. Even merely quitting Macbooks, which trendy firms and developers are so fond of, even if just one more person does that /today/ matters. We have to claw our data back. Byte by byte, we must earn it back and never accept being the product again. We must suffer the almost inconceivable inconvenience of perhaps not using Amazon for every online purchase. Amazon, Facebook, Google... they are slowly eating the world and even if they are "good" that sort of absolute domination enforces a mono-culture onto the world.
- Paul-ish 9y ago
  I'm curious, why is quitting MacBooks good for privacy? I know a lot of people who say Apple may be bad for having a walled garden, but that they are great for privacy. That Apple's business model is selling hardware, not your secrets.
  - bitexploder 9y ago
    MacOS integrating Siri is just another piece of the trend of private data hoovering. Along with routing people much harder into iCloud with Sierra. It felt invasive for the first time and I abandoned ship. The walked garden and SIP also reduce my ability to control my privacy and my own computer (I know SIP can be disabled, but it is a real pain)

MBCook 9y ago

The problem is we're moving extremely fast to a chrome only world. If it wasn't for corporate sites and the success of the iPhone chrome would probably be dominating the way IE used to. I definitely run into sites that only work on chrome and not in any other browser. In my opinion chrome isn't doing a good job either. It's a massive energy hog and waste more CPU than it needs to. Unlike IE and FireFox and Safari it comes from a company that is notorious for wanting to know everything about you. The time to celebrate victory was a few years ago. Now it's starting to look like the new boss is the same as the old, maybe worse.

zacmps 9y ago
Chrome is improving on the resource usage front. It's far from perfect but it's getting better. As for privacy you could use the open source chromium, there's a fork somewhere which has all the Google removed.
- wolco 9y ago
  On windows firefox does everything in one thread while chrome opens many. Depending on the usage both can be fast or slow. Firefox handles multiple tabs better. Chrome handles multiple tabs of videos better
  - krzyk 9y ago
    Chrome handles few tabs better, Firefox handles hundreds of tabs better.
    - imron 9y ago
      And that's one of the reasons why, with my hundreds of tabs open, I don't use Chrome.
    - dEnigma 9y ago
      This ultimately was what made me switch back to Firefox after I had used Chrome for a couple of years. I regularly have several hundred tabs opened in my browser, and Chrome was completely unusable in that situation, at least back then.
      - PatentTroll 9y ago
        Honest question: why do you use hundreds of tabs at the same time? Why not bookmarks and leave a couple of the most important ones open? I have never understood the use case for "hundreds" of browser tabs
        659087 9y ago

andrepd 9y ago

We cannot possibly be talking about the same Google. This is the Google of AMP et al. You think they won't do the exact same thing Microsoft did with IE when they find themselves in a similar dominant/monopolistic position in the market? You're sorely mistaken. We already find many examples of websites and Web apps that work only on chrome or the chrome "web store". This not to mention the surveillance and privacy nullifiying "features" they impose, which is even more important to me personally than standards compliance. A world with Google owning a monopoly on web browsing isn't any less bad than if it were Microsoft.

ehsankia 9y ago
The only sites I've seen that only work on Chrome are generally due to the developers being lazy and only targeting the top platform. It's similar to many games only being available on iOS a few years ago, or many programs only being available on Windows. Now with the web, it's much easier to make something work across all platforms, except at the bleeding edge, which is generally where you'll find those sites. Almost all the ones I've seen were tech demos of new browser tech that wasn't available everywhere yet.
- jhasse 9y ago
  WhatsApp Web was Chrome-only for a while. That was quite a big one for many people I know.
  - 0xcoffee 9y ago
    Google Inbox didn't work on Edge for the longest time. Claim was because edge didn't support some feature they needed, but when the agent was spoofed it worked fine.
- codazoda 9y ago
  Like Google Hangouts?
  - eeZah7Ux 9y ago

lewisl9029 9y ago

Agreed that Mozilla's original mission has been accomplished in spades, but I wouldn't count Mozilla out of the browser race just yet. Servo and Webrender[0] will completely shake up the browser landscape, and will allow web apps to match (maybe even surpass?) native mobile apps in terms of rendering performance. Unless Chrome, IE, and Safari can develop an answer to Servo and Webrender by the time those technologies are ready for prime time, I wouldn't be surprised to see "Best viewed in Firefox" badges start popping up everywhere. [0] https://github.com/servo/webrender/wiki https://github.com/servo/webrender/wiki https://air.mozilla.org/bay-area-rust-meetup-february-2016/ https://air.mozilla.org/bay-area-rust-meetup-february-2016/

bobajeff 9y ago
Servo won't be ready for quite some time. (I'm thinking maybe 5 years) Project Quantum might be out sooner but it won't be that big of a leap ahead of other browsers.
- lewisl9029 9y ago
  Fair point, and I'm not suggesting that other browser vendors can't possibly have an answer to Servo and Webrender by the time they're ready, but just that I haven't heard about any such efforts from them yet. So it's not entirely unreasonable to suggest that Mozilla's next-gen engine efforts could be first-to-market, and that everyone else might have to play catch up.
gkoberger 9y ago
Mozilla has had "we'll be #1 again once X is launched!" things since I was there 5 years ago (and servo was one of those things back then). It won't happen. Mozilla won the browser war. Firefox lost the browser fight. But there's many wars left to fight, and I hope Mozilla dives into a new one.
- pcwalton 9y ago
  Servo barely existed 5 years ago.

thr0waway1239 9y ago

>> We really need someone to fight for our privacy and neutrality. Well said. I certainly hope it is not a PR stunt, but WordPress is probably the other big player in the fight for the open web. It might actually benefit all of us if Automattic starts making a lot of noise about privacy. And ultimately, its not as if anyone wants any of these tech giants to completely fail (well, maybe Facebook). What we want is to not have the nature of the web changed to suit the whims of a handful of companies.

gkoberger 9y ago
And the EFF (and potentially the ACLU)
majewsky 9y ago
> What we want is to not have the nature of the web changed to suit the whims of a handful of companies. I feel like we're ten years late for this concern.
- thr0waway1239 9y ago
  Not really. At the moment, there are only two kinds of employees at Facebook. Those who care and are getting irritated each time these issues are raised on HN (see here [1]), and the dregs who bury their heads in the sand. I bet there is someone who works there who is reading this and realizing that either they will have to change their attitude, or soon the company will turn into another Enron. We don't still have Enron in our midst anymore, do we? Once one company goes down, it is only a matter of time before the rest fall in a domino sequence because people will start wondering about the practices of its peers. I would like to think that these companies are a little more sensible than to imagine they are somehow infallible, its better for them to change now before it gets to the point where they are made to. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13869759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13869759

EddieSpeaks 9y ago

Edge is fairly decent on windows as well, I know I'll get downvoted but it works very well - try it

SteveCr48 9y ago
Second your comment about Edge. As a long time Chromie, I'm transitioning to Edge on Win 10. Edge renders pages elegantly. Very nice. Try it!
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Heh after switching to Edge for about a year, I'm actually pushing back to Firefox. Microsoft keeps introducing new bugs to Edge and Firefox massively fixed their performance issues.

aanm1988 9y ago

> but at least it's a standards compliment world. sure, but if Chrome de facto controls standards does that really matter?

candiodari 9y ago

Firefox is the only android browser with ad-blocking plugins enabled. That makes it the only usable browser on mobile. Sucks that they don't have an IOS version, but Apple is the problem there, not Mozilla.

andreasgal 9y ago
Try Brave. It has built-in ad-blocking and tracking protection on iOS and Android. I use the iOS version.
petre 9y ago
Count Opera in. It has integrated ad blocking.
saratogacx 9y ago
Samsung's built in browser has ad-blocking plugins now that work quite well too.
floatboth 9y ago
Uh, Firefox has an iOS version. Of course it's webkit, but it has Sync :)
fwn 9y ago
Firefox mobile is the only browser with actual ad blocking. Adblocking is more than pure resource blocking (which afaik Brave, Samsung, iOS et. al.) currently implement. In fact, the smaller amount of ads I would see would be blocked this way. I have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, reddit and in the past Tumblr ad free due to element hiding capabilities that are non-present in any other browser I know except Firefox mobile with ublock origin. Edit: I replied to the wrong comment. I guess it's early.

coldtea 9y ago

>Now, we have options. Chrome is great, but so are Safari, Edge, Brave, Opera and Firefox. There's a lot of options out there, and they're all standards compliment. And that's thanks to Mozilla. I think the idea of TFA is that soon we wont have as many options, since Chrome seems to be dominating. Opera is also using Chrome's engine, ditto for Brave, so they're basically just sells. And Safari is from the same DNA, and only really relevant on Mobile and OS X. So Windows users basically have just Chrome and Firefox, and Linux users basically have just Chrome, Firefox and Edge. And even in Windows, Chrome dominates, almost to the point that IE dominated back in the day. So where's the choice? If it's just about availability of other rendering engines, people still had choice in the "optimized for IE" days. But it's mostly about rendering engines having competing market shares, and nowadays they increasingly do not. Plus, who will keep paying search placement money to Firefox if it gets to small single digits of use? And without those, how will development be continued?

thewhitetulip 9y ago

"best viewed with IE" got updated to "best viewed in Chrome"

AnimalMuppet 9y ago
Yes, except that "best viewed with IE" was there (at least initially) as part of a campaign where Microsoft was paying web sites to put in stuff that was incompatible with Netscape/Mozilla, and "best viewed in Chrome" is there because web developers are lazy.
- scholia 9y ago
  > as part of a campaign where Microsoft was paying web sites to put in stuff that was incompatible with Netscape/Mozilla I'd be interested to see the evidence for that....
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    Sorry, a quick search doesn't turn it up. This is from memory. Microsoft's strategy - from their own memos (maybe the Halloween memos?) - was to "try to make using Netscape a jarring experience". They were paying (maybe in equipment or some kind of freebies) websites that included at least three IE-only elements in their pages. This was not just competition. This was a deliberate campaign to break the web in a way where IE would work but Netscape would not. As I said, this is from memory, and I can't find the source. I have read a copy of the Microsoft memo, though (but you only have my word for it...)
    - scholia 9y ago
      My memory is different, obviously. The IE team took great pains to implement Netscape additions even when they were not standards so that the IE rendering was as good. I never heard of any attempt to make Netscape look worse. That doesn't mean it never happened, but I followed the story very closely at the time. Microsoft was much more co-operative than Netscape in the early days. It was one of Microsoft's advantages when Netscape was winning and running on pure arrogance. See How the Web Was Won, High Stakes No Prisoners and a few other books for details. Microsoft did introduce ActiveX, which Mozilla considered supporting, and then decided not to.

Vinnl 9y ago

> I hope Mozilla sees that. I hope they take credit, and move on to what's next: privacy and net neutrality. Our privacy is under attack, and Mozilla is one of the few companies that can (and would want to) help. Mozilla _is_ fighting that fight. See their posts here: https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/ https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/

wmeredith 9y ago

Thanks for posting this. I was going to say that I'm pretty sure Chrome exists at all because Mozilla won.

autokad 9y ago

"Now, we have options. Chrome is great, but so are Safari, Edge, Brave, Opera and Firefox. There's a lot of options out there, and they're all standards compliment. And that's thanks to Mozilla." i disagree. Google built chrome to protect their monopoly in search. and they have protected that monopoly well, and added another one: browser. i dont disparage Google for doing it, in fact both are great products that I use. But to say mozilla did it to 'give people a choice' and that they 'won' doesnt seem right to me.

bitexploder 9y ago

About fighting for our privacy and 'someone' has to do it. >> We really need someone to fight for our privacy and neutrality. And I really believe that this could be Mozilla's swan song. I deeply care about privacy. I fight for privacy. I work in information security. Every day I help my customers write code a little more securely. I educate them about implementing end to end encrypted communication systems. I am slowly migrating away from systems that don't respect privacy or can't function at scale without violating privacy. You have made a great point, and we do need big organizations to fight for privacy too. But the "someone" also has to be you and me. We have to reject operating systems like Windows 10. We have to make Linux and open source tools the ones we want to use. Even merely quitting Macbooks, which trendy firms and developers are so fond of, even if just one more person does that /today/ matters. We have to claw our data back. Byte by byte, we must earn it back and never accept being the product again. We must suffer the almost inconceivable inconvenience of perhaps not using Amazon for every online purchase. Amazon, Facebook, Google... they are slowly eating the world and even if they are "good" that sort of absolute domination enforces a mono-culture onto the world.

Paul-ish 9y ago
I'm curious, why is quitting MacBooks good for privacy? I know a lot of people who say Apple may be bad for having a walled garden, but that they are great for privacy. That Apple's business model is selling hardware, not your secrets.
- bitexploder 9y ago
  MacOS integrating Siri is just another piece of the trend of private data hoovering. Along with routing people much harder into iCloud with Sierra. It felt invasive for the first time and I abandoned ship. The walked garden and SIP also reduce my ability to control my privacy and my own computer (I know SIP can be disabled, but it is a real pain)