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I wish Mozilla would include a default content blocker to block Google's attempts to steal Firefox users. But then I also wish Windows blocked automated Google

I wish Mozilla would include a default content blocker to block Google's attempts to steal Firefox users. But then I also wish Windows blocked automated Google Chrome installs that steal default browser included as bundleware with free antivirus apps, Java, etc. I'm tired of walking a parent through uninstalling Google Chrome (that they have no idea how it was installed) and getting Firefox set as their default browser again.

anyzen 8y ago
Just to show how absurd such practice is - if Mozilla wanted to do the same, they should intercept requests for Google.com and Bing.com, advising users to use Mozilla's search engine instead. I doubt Google would keep paying them if they did that though.
- wongarsu 8y ago
  Which is the real problem with Mozilla being dependent on money from Google. Google can do whatever they want against Firefox, but Mozilla is very limited in its response because they can't risk upsetting Google too much.
  - rrdharan 8y ago
    I don't Mozilla is limited: https://www.alexkras.com/firefox-launches-marketing-offensive-against-chrome/ https://www.alexkras.com/firefox-launches-marketing-offensiv...
wongarsu 8y ago
Hasn't Windows 10 essentially solved that problem by not letting any application change the default browser setting, instead only letting them open the correct settings panel? Or is there now a way around that?
- rayiner 8y ago
  That doesn’t solve the problem of Google properties constantly prompting you to install Chrome (and vice versa for Edge).
- kijin 8y ago
  It helps to some extent. But then again, Windows itself keeps changing my default media player and image viewer back to the Microsoft defaults, so I don't trust those settings to be as immutable as I would like them to be.
  - anonymfus 8y ago
    That usually happens if that media player or image viewer edits registry to associate file types
    - wongarsu 8y ago
      The design is slightly evil in that any unauthorized change of the registry keys doesn't just fail but instead invalidates a hash and makes windows revert to the default.
      - anonymfus 8y ago
        There is no API difference between registry changes made by nonsanboxed user installed and built-in windows executables.
        Dylan16807 8y ago
        I don't know exactly how it's implemented, and feel free to tell us, but wongarsu is absolutely correct about the behavior. For a while, whenever I hit the button in firefox to change default browser, suddenly my default browser was edge. Not the old setting, not the attempted new setting. It was very clearly not designed with 'protection' in mind.
snaky 8y ago
The table of "Combined income of Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation" with "Proportion derived from Google" is good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Google
- woodrowbarlow 8y ago
  that's interesting, but it's several year outdated. is more up-to-date information available?
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    Mozilla probably have that info so readily available that it's not worth publishing it on Wikipedia as well, like on a postage stamp under a filing cabinet in a basement in their gran's next-door neighbour's house ... Perhaps Moz Corp haven't heard of Wikipedia and so couldn't keep that page updated. Sorry, I'm having a cynicism overload. Carry on.
    - boomboomsubban 8y ago
      The Mozilla Foundation, being a charity, publishes their financial data on a fixed schedule. If they put the last released data on Wikipedia, something forbidden by Wikipedia for them to do, it would show most of their money coming from Yahoo.
      - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
        Wikipedia forbid companies from adding facts to tabular data?
        boomboomsubban 8y ago
        You can't edit your own Wikipedia.
        8y ago
masklinn 8y ago
> I'm tired of walking a parent through uninstalling Google Chrome (that they have no idea how it was installed) Don't forget the bit where Chrome rams its fucking updater down your throat at every occasion and any way to disable it is only temporary. And Chromium manages to be even worse at least on OSX: it apparently decides that being quit is unacceptable and relaunches itself hidden in the background.
- vetinari 8y ago
  The Google Update can be disabled (per product) via Group Policy. If you want to manage Chrome updates on your own, use the msi installer.
  - opencl 8y ago
    Is there a way to disable it on versions of Windows that lack the Local Group Policy Editor?
    - vetinari 8y ago
      No idea, sorry. There are ways to install gpedit on Windows Home, but the articles I've seen include some shady download.
    - red_admiral 8y ago
      Group policies are just a UI for certain registry keys I think? I imagine you could do this in regedit, but I can't tell you the exact key name.
- cm2187 8y ago
  For something that needs to be as air tight in term of security as a browser, I think it is irresponsible to disable automatic updates.
hutzlibu 8y ago
When we are in the land of wishes, I rather wish, that OpenSource OS and software would be standard where the user controls fully what he wants and gets.
apostacy 8y ago
I hate to be negative, but that will never happen with the current leadership at Mozilla. They are simply no longer willing to disrupt the status quo, even to help their users. They are far more motivated to be "popular", and have a big "audience", and a respected "brand", than about sticking up for their users. The fact that they even think about software development in terms of "building an audience(?)" shows that they are way off course. The most important software we use that is actively developed is made by people who are primarily concerned with making good software, not with this pseudo public relations cargo cult corporate speak. Hint: Go back and look at what Firefox used to be like 10 years ago, and notice the difference in culture. The fact is, if Mozilla took a proactive stand against Google Apple and Microsoft, that would greatly increase their popularity. The old Firefox was "irresponsible" by including a popup blocker by default, and upset a lot of people. Firefox also refused to support any of Microsoft's early web DRM. People said that not supporting DRM would lock users out of content, but it actually probably contributed to the death of those systems. Google has been slowly clamping down on user freedoms. Just one example, Google removed the option to save html5 video[1] (I'm sure users were begging for that "feature"). I would honestly not be surprised if the UX clowns at Mozilla remove that function from Firefox as well. How long until they remove the "view source" option because being able to view source is confusing to people who have never used a browser and it is used less than 1% of the time or some other flimsy justification? There have been people within Mozilla who just want to abandon their own code and simply release a re-branded Chromium. Because they only care about their precious brand and keeping the donations coming, and they are truly terrible stewards of the software they have inherited. Besides, once they stop actually developing their own software, they will have lots of money leftover to give themselves bonuses and throw expensive galas. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14124294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14124294
- mconley 8y ago
  > They are simply no longer willing to disrupt the status quo, even to help their users. This is just false. I guess you're not aware of the content blocking work we've been focusing on lately?: https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/30/17800714/mozilla-firefox-block-web-trackers-targeted-ads-cookies https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/30/17800714/mozilla-firefox-... Disclosure: I work for Mozilla on Firefox. I can say, without hesitation, that we definitely give a damn about protecting the user and protecting the health of the web.
rebolek 8y ago
> I'm tired of walking a parent through uninstalling Google Chrome That's why I installed Linux Mint on my parent's computer, it runs Firefox, Skype and Google Earth just fine, can download photos from camera, copy DVDs and that's basically all. No shitty antiviruses they can download and I can SSH to the machine to check what's going on. Nothing, if you're interested.
- inetknght 8y ago
  If you value privacy and usability, I highly suggest you to replace Skype with something else.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    And probably Google Earth. If it's not already logging data, it will eventually.
  - tomc1985 8y ago
    Isn't the Linux build set to be sunset soon anyway?
    - Kliment 8y ago
      They have a new (and awful) linux build, so if you depend on it for anything I can recommend ghetto-skype, which is like the official linux build but actually works (it's a chromium wrapper around the web skype, with themes, which is exactly what the official one is these days, except the official one is terribly buggy).
      - mathw 8y ago
        Really I do not understand why Skype hasn't imploded yet with the number of awful builds they keep putting out for various operating systems. Surely the opportunity is there for someone with a good implementation of video and audio calling, cross-platform, to step in and take over. I was looking at Google, but I no longer have any idea what the heck their strategy on Hangouts, Meet, Allo, Duo and whatever else they're producing these days is.
dchichkov 8y ago
It would be so lovely, if Microsoft would include a default malware and advertisement filter into the browser. They are not relying on injecting malware into the web pages, so they actually can do it! User's experience without malware and advertisements will be better, this will create healthy competition in user experience, other browsers will have to follow.
- dan0- 8y ago
  Microsoft doesn't have to make tthe best browser, the inertia of having a "good" browser that is the default and hard to change away from gets many of their customers to use Edge until someone or something prompts them to switch.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  It is my considered opinion that Microsoft does not care one iota about the user experience. I cite as proof pretty much everything about Windows 10.
noncoml 8y ago
“I wish Mozilla would include a default content blocker to block Google” FTFY
culot 8y ago
"I'm tired of walking a parent through uninstalling Google Chrome" Unchecky works well to prevent that crapware from ever getting installed. It unticks those default 'install my paid crap' offers. https://unchecky.com/ https://unchecky.com/

anyzen 8y ago

Just to show how absurd such practice is - if Mozilla wanted to do the same, they should intercept requests for Google.com and Bing.com, advising users to use Mozilla's search engine instead. I doubt Google would keep paying them if they did that though.

wongarsu 8y ago
Which is the real problem with Mozilla being dependent on money from Google. Google can do whatever they want against Firefox, but Mozilla is very limited in its response because they can't risk upsetting Google too much.
- rrdharan 8y ago
  I don't Mozilla is limited: https://www.alexkras.com/firefox-launches-marketing-offensive-against-chrome/ https://www.alexkras.com/firefox-launches-marketing-offensiv...

wongarsu 8y ago

Hasn't Windows 10 essentially solved that problem by not letting any application change the default browser setting, instead only letting them open the correct settings panel? Or is there now a way around that?

rayiner 8y ago
That doesn’t solve the problem of Google properties constantly prompting you to install Chrome (and vice versa for Edge).
kijin 8y ago
It helps to some extent. But then again, Windows itself keeps changing my default media player and image viewer back to the Microsoft defaults, so I don't trust those settings to be as immutable as I would like them to be.
- anonymfus 8y ago
  That usually happens if that media player or image viewer edits registry to associate file types
  - wongarsu 8y ago
    The design is slightly evil in that any unauthorized change of the registry keys doesn't just fail but instead invalidates a hash and makes windows revert to the default.
    - anonymfus 8y ago
      There is no API difference between registry changes made by nonsanboxed user installed and built-in windows executables.
      - Dylan16807 8y ago
        I don't know exactly how it's implemented, and feel free to tell us, but wongarsu is absolutely correct about the behavior. For a while, whenever I hit the button in firefox to change default browser, suddenly my default browser was edge. Not the old setting, not the attempted new setting. It was very clearly not designed with 'protection' in mind.

snaky 8y ago

The table of "Combined income of Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation" with "Proportion derived from Google" is good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Google

woodrowbarlow 8y ago
that's interesting, but it's several year outdated. is more up-to-date information available?
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  Mozilla probably have that info so readily available that it's not worth publishing it on Wikipedia as well, like on a postage stamp under a filing cabinet in a basement in their gran's next-door neighbour's house ... Perhaps Moz Corp haven't heard of Wikipedia and so couldn't keep that page updated. Sorry, I'm having a cynicism overload. Carry on.
  - boomboomsubban 8y ago
    The Mozilla Foundation, being a charity, publishes their financial data on a fixed schedule. If they put the last released data on Wikipedia, something forbidden by Wikipedia for them to do, it would show most of their money coming from Yahoo.
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      Wikipedia forbid companies from adding facts to tabular data?
      - boomboomsubban 8y ago
        You can't edit your own Wikipedia.
        8y ago

masklinn 8y ago

> I'm tired of walking a parent through uninstalling Google Chrome (that they have no idea how it was installed) Don't forget the bit where Chrome rams its fucking updater down your throat at every occasion and any way to disable it is only temporary. And Chromium manages to be even worse at least on OSX: it apparently decides that being quit is unacceptable and relaunches itself hidden in the background.

vetinari 8y ago
The Google Update can be disabled (per product) via Group Policy. If you want to manage Chrome updates on your own, use the msi installer.
- opencl 8y ago
  Is there a way to disable it on versions of Windows that lack the Local Group Policy Editor?
  - vetinari 8y ago
    No idea, sorry. There are ways to install gpedit on Windows Home, but the articles I've seen include some shady download.
  - red_admiral 8y ago
    Group policies are just a UI for certain registry keys I think? I imagine you could do this in regedit, but I can't tell you the exact key name.
cm2187 8y ago
For something that needs to be as air tight in term of security as a browser, I think it is irresponsible to disable automatic updates.

hutzlibu 8y ago

When we are in the land of wishes, I rather wish, that OpenSource OS and software would be standard where the user controls fully what he wants and gets.

apostacy 8y ago

I hate to be negative, but that will never happen with the current leadership at Mozilla. They are simply no longer willing to disrupt the status quo, even to help their users. They are far more motivated to be "popular", and have a big "audience", and a respected "brand", than about sticking up for their users. The fact that they even think about software development in terms of "building an audience(?)" shows that they are way off course. The most important software we use that is actively developed is made by people who are primarily concerned with making good software, not with this pseudo public relations cargo cult corporate speak. Hint: Go back and look at what Firefox used to be like 10 years ago, and notice the difference in culture. The fact is, if Mozilla took a proactive stand against Google Apple and Microsoft, that would greatly increase their popularity. The old Firefox was "irresponsible" by including a popup blocker by default, and upset a lot of people. Firefox also refused to support any of Microsoft's early web DRM. People said that not supporting DRM would lock users out of content, but it actually probably contributed to the death of those systems. Google has been slowly clamping down on user freedoms. Just one example, Google removed the option to save html5 video[1] (I'm sure users were begging for that "feature"). I would honestly not be surprised if the UX clowns at Mozilla remove that function from Firefox as well. How long until they remove the "view source" option because being able to view source is confusing to people who have never used a browser and it is used less than 1% of the time or some other flimsy justification? There have been people within Mozilla who just want to abandon their own code and simply release a re-branded Chromium. Because they only care about their precious brand and keeping the donations coming, and they are truly terrible stewards of the software they have inherited. Besides, once they stop actually developing their own software, they will have lots of money leftover to give themselves bonuses and throw expensive galas. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14124294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14124294

mconley 8y ago
> They are simply no longer willing to disrupt the status quo, even to help their users. This is just false. I guess you're not aware of the content blocking work we've been focusing on lately?: https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/30/17800714/mozilla-firefox-block-web-trackers-targeted-ads-cookies https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/30/17800714/mozilla-firefox-... Disclosure: I work for Mozilla on Firefox. I can say, without hesitation, that we definitely give a damn about protecting the user and protecting the health of the web.

rebolek 8y ago

> I'm tired of walking a parent through uninstalling Google Chrome That's why I installed Linux Mint on my parent's computer, it runs Firefox, Skype and Google Earth just fine, can download photos from camera, copy DVDs and that's basically all. No shitty antiviruses they can download and I can SSH to the machine to check what's going on. Nothing, if you're interested.

inetknght 8y ago
If you value privacy and usability, I highly suggest you to replace Skype with something else.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  And probably Google Earth. If it's not already logging data, it will eventually.
- tomc1985 8y ago
  Isn't the Linux build set to be sunset soon anyway?
  - Kliment 8y ago
    They have a new (and awful) linux build, so if you depend on it for anything I can recommend ghetto-skype, which is like the official linux build but actually works (it's a chromium wrapper around the web skype, with themes, which is exactly what the official one is these days, except the official one is terribly buggy).
    - mathw 8y ago
      Really I do not understand why Skype hasn't imploded yet with the number of awful builds they keep putting out for various operating systems. Surely the opportunity is there for someone with a good implementation of video and audio calling, cross-platform, to step in and take over. I was looking at Google, but I no longer have any idea what the heck their strategy on Hangouts, Meet, Allo, Duo and whatever else they're producing these days is.

dchichkov 8y ago

It would be so lovely, if Microsoft would include a default malware and advertisement filter into the browser. They are not relying on injecting malware into the web pages, so they actually can do it! User's experience without malware and advertisements will be better, this will create healthy competition in user experience, other browsers will have to follow.

dan0- 8y ago
Microsoft doesn't have to make tthe best browser, the inertia of having a "good" browser that is the default and hard to change away from gets many of their customers to use Edge until someone or something prompts them to switch.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
It is my considered opinion that Microsoft does not care one iota about the user experience. I cite as proof pretty much everything about Windows 10.

noncoml 8y ago

“I wish Mozilla would include a default content blocker to block Google” FTFY

culot 8y ago

"I'm tired of walking a parent through uninstalling Google Chrome" Unchecky works well to prevent that crapware from ever getting installed. It unticks those default 'install my paid crap' offers. https://unchecky.com/ https://unchecky.com/