<a ping> was disabled in Firefox back in 2008 [1]. The rationale was that navigator.sendBeacon() (which wasn't enabled until 2014 [2]) would be a more general s

<a ping> was disabled in Firefox back in 2008 [1]. The rationale was that navigator.sendBeacon() (which wasn't enabled until 2014 [2]) would be a more general solution, not for privacy reasons. Without <a ping> or navigator.sendBeacon(), websites will still use redirects or other JavaScript ping scripts. With <a ping> or navigator.sendBeacon(), the browser can delay or deprioritize those ping requests (to reduce performance impact on page loading) or allow extensions to block them. But if popular websites are using <a ping> for other browsers, then perhaps Firefox should re-enable support to avoid the performance overhead of link redirects. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=415168 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=415168 [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=990220 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=990220