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And the article doesn’t even mention the Cliqz controversy [1]. How can you try to promote your browser as the privacy-oriented, user-first alternative and at t

by ar0 9y ago

And the article doesn’t even mention the Cliqz controversy [1]. How can you try to promote your browser as the privacy-oriented, user-first alternative and at the same time run into shitstorms like this all the time? Shouldn’t there be someone who can properly judge the effect of decisions like this? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421708

naner 9y ago
They're ruining their brand image. It's hard to be considered trustworthy when it appears like you compromise your values due to financial hardship. It reminds me of the Ubuntu Amazon integration thing as well. One of the Cardinal rules of free software seems to be don't sell your users by forcing 3rd party integration nobody asked for.
- rdtsc 9y ago
  It's always interesting how this happens. Is it new executives how come to power and they never realize what the brand meant to users but see a short term stunt to get some extra profit and go for it. It happened to Lenovo and other laptops when they started installing spyware (Superfish) on their machines. They basically ruined the brand image that took years to build up.
  - mulmen 9y ago
    In the case of Lenovo the brand was sold by IBM to a third party who immediately drove it into the ground.
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      funny thing is that none if the issues have ever been found on the thinkpad libe, only the ideapad line.
      - rdtsc 9y ago
        True and I'd still look at Thinkpads if I had to buy a new machine, but knowing what they did with the E, Y, G and Edge series would make me always look a bit harder at other brands first from now on.
- rdiddly 9y ago
  Yeah I get impatient with the "they need to make money" apologist argument. Oh, I get it, you're saying I should trust them because they're in it for the money like everybody else. Makes sense thanx.
  - FireBeyond 9y ago
    Especially as a company with over $440M in assets, $330M of which is invested, with less than $60M/year in accounts payable and liabilities, that received $500M in royalties last year.
  - throwaway2048 9y ago
    I think the real issue is mozilla essentially gets an infinite supply of money from parties like Google, no matter how shockingly incompetent they are.
  - marten-de-vries 9y ago
    No, they're not in it for money. In the end (the foundation owns the corporation), Mozilla is a non-profit. They need money to achieve their mission though: maintaining a browser (in a landscape of evolving security challenges, performance & web standards) and research (e.g. projects like Rust, Servo & pdf.js originated that way) is not cheap. And currently it mostly comes from search engine deals. If they cannot get a similar one, it all collapses. I can see why they try to diversify their income. That said, I don't agree with the way they do it here.
    - arkh 9y ago
      If they want to diversify they can work on other projects making money instead of fucking up their current userbase. IMO coding missile software to pay for those projects would be a lot more ethical than what they're doing. Yeah I consider the ad industry and its privacy crushing consequences worse than weapons almost never fired.
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      "Non-profit" just means that shareholders don't profit. Nonprofits offer many opportunities for executives to personally profit.
fabrice_d 9y ago
This is MoCo as usual: top notch engineering ruined by Dilbert-worthy high level management / executives.
- throwaway2048 9y ago
  Im not certain I buy the arguement that the decline of mozilla is purely a bad management situation. In threads about this, or pocket or cliqz or any of the other mozilla diasaters of the last while, you have a huge amount of what appear to be line level engineer employees defending this crap voraciously. Something has gone very wrong with the culture of mozilla in general, I think its a copout to suggest that its merely some evil pointy haired boss.
  - fabrice_d 9y ago
    The accountability is at the top. In this case, I would be very surprised if that was not greenlighted by Mozilla's CMO. Whether others down the chain complained or not doesn't matter much, since not everyone can vote with their feet. But this is happening way to often lately, and the typical "I stay at Moz because we are still doing good stuff and no one else would step in" you hear from employees is exactly the card that the management plays. It's sad, because the mission from Mozilla's manifesto is more important than ever, but MoCo is not the place where this important things will happen.
    - MichaelGG 9y ago
      The CMO was previously at BitTorrent which is fairly user hostile.
espadrine 9y ago
That correlates with the sudden switch from Firefox to Chrome in Germany: http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/germany http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/germa... If there is causality, Cliqz wasn't just a controversy, it was a loss that the benefit of Quantum will have a hard time counteracting. We will have to see what drop, if any, the Robot controversy brings.
- sbuk 9y ago
  Switching from Firefox to Chrome is jumping from pan to flame. Google are at least as bad, and in all probability much worse. The Safari saga. In fact, the amount of protestations one here are deeply suspicious.
Sylos 9y ago
By it not actually being a privacy-concern and the "shitstorms" frankly being tiny. These are completely isolated to HN, Reddit, Slashdot and the like. No serious journalist is going to report on it, because doing even the tiniest bit of research shows you that there's nothing to report on. As such, the shitstorm is never going to reach roundabout 99% of their users.
hysan 9y ago
Their behavior here with regards to handling the bug tracker is exactly the same as with Cliqz. So this isn't a one off thing. It's the start of a pattern and a dark one at that. And speaking of which, I made a post prior to FF57 asking where the Cliqz situation went and got no responses. Any idea as to what happened with it? I haven't seen any updates on the situation since and feel like it's just been swept under the rug.
- Sylos 9y ago
  I doubt they're going to change anything about Cliqz, as there's no actual privacy concern with it. There's the technological feasibility for Cliqz GmbH to steal user data, but Mozilla owns parts of Cliqz GmbH, so knows what's going on inside the company and they have a contract with Cliqz that prohibits the storing of personal data. Mozilla has also made an official statement saying that no user data will be stored, so break that promise would be misleading of customers, and their Privacy Statement does not constitute the storing of such data, so allowing it anyways would count as violation of contract. Additionally, they're testing it in Germany, where this sort of hidden collection of data either has to be obvious (for example, if you order something online, it's clear that they have to process your address), which is clearly not the case with Cliqz, or the user has to be prompted for opt-in, not either the case with Cliqz, or it may not be personal data. So, if it were personal data, they'd be violating German law. And the handful of shitstorms in tech-focused online communities are hardly the end of the world for Mozilla. Making the internet rely less on search engines, which is what they're ultimately trying to achieve with Cliqz, is more important than that.

by ar0 9y ago

naner 9y ago

They're ruining their brand image. It's hard to be considered trustworthy when it appears like you compromise your values due to financial hardship. It reminds me of the Ubuntu Amazon integration thing as well. One of the Cardinal rules of free software seems to be don't sell your users by forcing 3rd party integration nobody asked for.

rdtsc 9y ago
It's always interesting how this happens. Is it new executives how come to power and they never realize what the brand meant to users but see a short term stunt to get some extra profit and go for it. It happened to Lenovo and other laptops when they started installing spyware (Superfish) on their machines. They basically ruined the brand image that took years to build up.
- mulmen 9y ago
  In the case of Lenovo the brand was sold by IBM to a third party who immediately drove it into the ground.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    funny thing is that none if the issues have ever been found on the thinkpad libe, only the ideapad line.
    - rdtsc 9y ago
      True and I'd still look at Thinkpads if I had to buy a new machine, but knowing what they did with the E, Y, G and Edge series would make me always look a bit harder at other brands first from now on.
rdiddly 9y ago
Yeah I get impatient with the "they need to make money" apologist argument. Oh, I get it, you're saying I should trust them because they're in it for the money like everybody else. Makes sense thanx.
- FireBeyond 9y ago
  Especially as a company with over $440M in assets, $330M of which is invested, with less than $60M/year in accounts payable and liabilities, that received $500M in royalties last year.
- throwaway2048 9y ago
  I think the real issue is mozilla essentially gets an infinite supply of money from parties like Google, no matter how shockingly incompetent they are.
- marten-de-vries 9y ago
  No, they're not in it for money. In the end (the foundation owns the corporation), Mozilla is a non-profit. They need money to achieve their mission though: maintaining a browser (in a landscape of evolving security challenges, performance & web standards) and research (e.g. projects like Rust, Servo & pdf.js originated that way) is not cheap. And currently it mostly comes from search engine deals. If they cannot get a similar one, it all collapses. I can see why they try to diversify their income. That said, I don't agree with the way they do it here.
  - arkh 9y ago
    If they want to diversify they can work on other projects making money instead of fucking up their current userbase. IMO coding missile software to pay for those projects would be a lot more ethical than what they're doing. Yeah I consider the ad industry and its privacy crushing consequences worse than weapons almost never fired.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    "Non-profit" just means that shareholders don't profit. Nonprofits offer many opportunities for executives to personally profit.

fabrice_d 9y ago

This is MoCo as usual: top notch engineering ruined by Dilbert-worthy high level management / executives.

throwaway2048 9y ago
Im not certain I buy the arguement that the decline of mozilla is purely a bad management situation. In threads about this, or pocket or cliqz or any of the other mozilla diasaters of the last while, you have a huge amount of what appear to be line level engineer employees defending this crap voraciously. Something has gone very wrong with the culture of mozilla in general, I think its a copout to suggest that its merely some evil pointy haired boss.
- fabrice_d 9y ago
  The accountability is at the top. In this case, I would be very surprised if that was not greenlighted by Mozilla's CMO. Whether others down the chain complained or not doesn't matter much, since not everyone can vote with their feet. But this is happening way to often lately, and the typical "I stay at Moz because we are still doing good stuff and no one else would step in" you hear from employees is exactly the card that the management plays. It's sad, because the mission from Mozilla's manifesto is more important than ever, but MoCo is not the place where this important things will happen.
  - MichaelGG 9y ago
    The CMO was previously at BitTorrent which is fairly user hostile.

espadrine 9y ago

That correlates with the sudden switch from Firefox to Chrome in Germany: http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/germany http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/germa... If there is causality, Cliqz wasn't just a controversy, it was a loss that the benefit of Quantum will have a hard time counteracting. We will have to see what drop, if any, the Robot controversy brings.

sbuk 9y ago
Switching from Firefox to Chrome is jumping from pan to flame. Google are at least as bad, and in all probability much worse. The Safari saga. In fact, the amount of protestations one here are deeply suspicious.

Sylos 9y ago

By it not actually being a privacy-concern and the "shitstorms" frankly being tiny. These are completely isolated to HN, Reddit, Slashdot and the like. No serious journalist is going to report on it, because doing even the tiniest bit of research shows you that there's nothing to report on. As such, the shitstorm is never going to reach roundabout 99% of their users.

hysan 9y ago

Their behavior here with regards to handling the bug tracker is exactly the same as with Cliqz. So this isn't a one off thing. It's the start of a pattern and a dark one at that. And speaking of which, I made a post prior to FF57 asking where the Cliqz situation went and got no responses. Any idea as to what happened with it? I haven't seen any updates on the situation since and feel like it's just been swept under the rug.

Sylos 9y ago
I doubt they're going to change anything about Cliqz, as there's no actual privacy concern with it. There's the technological feasibility for Cliqz GmbH to steal user data, but Mozilla owns parts of Cliqz GmbH, so knows what's going on inside the company and they have a contract with Cliqz that prohibits the storing of personal data. Mozilla has also made an official statement saying that no user data will be stored, so break that promise would be misleading of customers, and their Privacy Statement does not constitute the storing of such data, so allowing it anyways would count as violation of contract. Additionally, they're testing it in Germany, where this sort of hidden collection of data either has to be obvious (for example, if you order something online, it's clear that they have to process your address), which is clearly not the case with Cliqz, or the user has to be prompted for opt-in, not either the case with Cliqz, or it may not be personal data. So, if it were personal data, they'd be violating German law. And the handful of shitstorms in tech-focused online communities are hardly the end of the world for Mozilla. Making the internet rely less on search engines, which is what they're ultimately trying to achieve with Cliqz, is more important than that.