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arrrr... what they don't realize when they review their telemetry data is that most people that use this feature have turned off sharing telemetry data. Combine

arrrr... what they don't realize when they review their telemetry data is that most people that use this feature have turned off sharing telemetry data. Combine that with the fact that they haven't advertised the feature in the past decade and it leads to devs thinking nobody uses it.

gknoy 8y ago
This is why I tend to leave telemetry data on. :) .. now if only Google had used that to notice the things I like about Inbox and keep them :-(
orf 8y ago
Then perhaps you can see why telemetry is useful to responsible companies like Firefox, and maybe people who disable it have no right to complain about decisions based off telemetry data?
- dman 8y ago
  This is a fascinatingly coercive take on the privacy / observability tradeoff.
  - kiriakasis 8y ago
    No, this is supporting direct feedback. How can mozzila know which features are useful in your opinion? how should they know that you wanted [feature X]? Maybe they are also in the wrong if the telemetry is excessive, but the alternative is to never deprecate any feature ever.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
      They could ask.
      - CamperBob2 8y ago
        And receive answers like, "A faster horse."
        pseudalopex 8y ago
        Telemetry can tell you which features someone uses. It doesn't tell you why.
        NeedMoreTea 8y ago
        They could ask slightly more focused questions than "what would you like?". Better than keep removing features and reasons to use Firefox from some of their loyalest users, even if they are a minority. User retention seems Mozilla's largest issue at the moment now they're down under 10%.
      - ripdog 8y ago
        Ask who? Power users? Then the only signal they would get is "every feature is used by everyone". That's worthless 'data'. Telemetry is the only way mozilla could possibly collect real data.
- Nullabillity 8y ago
  Then perhaps you can see why using telemetry is irresponsible.
modzu 8y ago
when google recently made chrome automatically sign-in once you login to a google site, i read one of their technical managers basically say, "all our data shows users care more about the convenience than the privacy" -- i thought exactly that.
opencl 8y ago
The usage stats from telemetry showed a 0.01% usage rate. Even if 99% of people that used the Live Bookmarks feature disabled telemetry that implies that 99% of Firefox users did not use the feature.
- jjordan 8y ago
  Well, Firefox killed the RSS button on the URL bar a while ago now (bring it back with https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/), so AFAIK there has been absolutely nothing to indicate the feature even existed for years now. Also, 0.01% of a big number is still a big number, and given the state of the feature, that number is likely to include a lot of long-time users.
  - zaarn 8y ago
    According to Mozilla's statistics, 0.01% amounts to only 80'000 browser installs that use live bookmarks. That's not a big number and it's easy to find features that more people care about (ie multi-tab selection). When resources are constrained you have to make decisions about what features you'll continue to develop and which to cut out. Live bookmarks was cut out. Mozilla devs have also mentioned that this feature is ancient code and would have required a lot of coding effort to bring up to date. I'm sure if you were to invest the time to reimplement live bookmarks with modern code and with the internal restructuring in the browser in mind and you'd volunteer to maintain it and fix all filed bugs, they'd accept it.
- Felz 8y ago
  It's really weird to apparently be personally part of a 0.01% group. I feel that usage rate must be suspect- in some Firefox version they gave out live bookmarks by default, and surely more than 1 in 10,000 people still have those. Do we know what the telemetry actually measured?
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Given how long ago it is since live bookmarks were a feature they made obvious, or called attention to in any way, in the default install, that's not so surprising. They removed the visibility years ago, then progressive updates made them ever less visible, including hiding then removing RSS notification. Once the first step was taken, the route to removal was set, including the telemetry figures. If they were as visible as pocket, perhaps as visible as pocket stories on new tabs, usage would be hugely higher.

gknoy 8y ago

This is why I tend to leave telemetry data on. :) .. now if only Google had used that to notice the things I like about Inbox and keep them :-(

orf 8y ago

Then perhaps you can see why telemetry is useful to responsible companies like Firefox, and maybe people who disable it have no right to complain about decisions based off telemetry data?

dman 8y ago
This is a fascinatingly coercive take on the privacy / observability tradeoff.
- kiriakasis 8y ago
  No, this is supporting direct feedback. How can mozzila know which features are useful in your opinion? how should they know that you wanted [feature X]? Maybe they are also in the wrong if the telemetry is excessive, but the alternative is to never deprecate any feature ever.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    They could ask.
    - CamperBob2 8y ago
      And receive answers like, "A faster horse."
      - pseudalopex 8y ago
        Telemetry can tell you which features someone uses. It doesn't tell you why.
      - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
        They could ask slightly more focused questions than "what would you like?". Better than keep removing features and reasons to use Firefox from some of their loyalest users, even if they are a minority. User retention seems Mozilla's largest issue at the moment now they're down under 10%.
    - ripdog 8y ago
      Ask who? Power users? Then the only signal they would get is "every feature is used by everyone". That's worthless 'data'. Telemetry is the only way mozilla could possibly collect real data.
Nullabillity 8y ago
Then perhaps you can see why using telemetry is irresponsible.

modzu 8y ago

when google recently made chrome automatically sign-in once you login to a google site, i read one of their technical managers basically say, "all our data shows users care more about the convenience than the privacy" -- i thought exactly that.

opencl 8y ago

The usage stats from telemetry showed a 0.01% usage rate. Even if 99% of people that used the Live Bookmarks feature disabled telemetry that implies that 99% of Firefox users did not use the feature.

jjordan 8y ago
Well, Firefox killed the RSS button on the URL bar a while ago now (bring it back with https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/), so AFAIK there has been absolutely nothing to indicate the feature even existed for years now. Also, 0.01% of a big number is still a big number, and given the state of the feature, that number is likely to include a lot of long-time users.
- zaarn 8y ago
  According to Mozilla's statistics, 0.01% amounts to only 80'000 browser installs that use live bookmarks. That's not a big number and it's easy to find features that more people care about (ie multi-tab selection). When resources are constrained you have to make decisions about what features you'll continue to develop and which to cut out. Live bookmarks was cut out. Mozilla devs have also mentioned that this feature is ancient code and would have required a lot of coding effort to bring up to date. I'm sure if you were to invest the time to reimplement live bookmarks with modern code and with the internal restructuring in the browser in mind and you'd volunteer to maintain it and fix all filed bugs, they'd accept it.
Felz 8y ago
It's really weird to apparently be personally part of a 0.01% group. I feel that usage rate must be suspect- in some Firefox version they gave out live bookmarks by default, and surely more than 1 in 10,000 people still have those. Do we know what the telemetry actually measured?
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Given how long ago it is since live bookmarks were a feature they made obvious, or called attention to in any way, in the default install, that's not so surprising. They removed the visibility years ago, then progressive updates made them ever less visible, including hiding then removing RSS notification. Once the first step was taken, the route to removal was set, including the telemetry figures. If they were as visible as pocket, perhaps as visible as pocket stories on new tabs, usage would be hugely higher.