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Does it matter if they get flak for it if their contract does actually protect privacy? Or is privacy only for marketing and not an actual principle they care a

Does it matter if they get flak for it if their contract does actually protect privacy? Or is privacy only for marketing and not an actual principle they care about? Writing an analytics backend is not a trivial thing, and more stuff like that means less resources for Firefox development. It's far more sensible to do what they did, which was negotiate a contract with those who know what they're doing.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
From the point of view of their principles, the contract with Google is fine as long as it protects privacy. Some people will always be quick to jump to conclusions, but there's a practical problem when such people form a good chunk of your market (and can amplify their outrage via media). It's a practical problem. On the one hand, you have people turned off by the perception of Mozilla betraying its principles. On the other hand, you have resources to be directed to substitute the analytics backend. The right thing to do would be to pick an option that maximizes the amount of resources available for Firefox development/Mozilla's mission. My impression is that building and maintaining an analytics backend consistent with their mission would not require that much of resources, so the balance would fall in favor of doing it. But maybe (probably?) I'm wrong about this, and it's better to stick with Google for now.
- BurnGpuBurn 7y ago
  From the point of view of their principles, the contract with Google is fine as long as it honored by Google. Hard to check that though, because you never know what Google really does with that data. Google also doesn't have a very good track record with privacy. So, yeah, the contract is fine, but there's also soo much wrong with it. Who trusts it? Mozilla? They seem to. Their target demographic? The people who are smart enough to understand that you can switch your browser, and who don't choose Chrome but Firefox? Those people, not so much.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

From the point of view of their principles, the contract with Google is fine as long as it protects privacy. Some people will always be quick to jump to conclusions, but there's a practical problem when such people form a good chunk of your market (and can amplify their outrage via media). It's a practical problem. On the one hand, you have people turned off by the perception of Mozilla betraying its principles. On the other hand, you have resources to be directed to substitute the analytics backend. The right thing to do would be to pick an option that maximizes the amount of resources available for Firefox development/Mozilla's mission. My impression is that building and maintaining an analytics backend consistent with their mission would not require that much of resources, so the balance would fall in favor of doing it. But maybe (probably?) I'm wrong about this, and it's better to stick with Google for now.

BurnGpuBurn 7y ago
From the point of view of their principles, the contract with Google is fine as long as it honored by Google. Hard to check that though, because you never know what Google really does with that data. Google also doesn't have a very good track record with privacy. So, yeah, the contract is fine, but there's also soo much wrong with it. Who trusts it? Mozilla? They seem to. Their target demographic? The people who are smart enough to understand that you can switch your browser, and who don't choose Chrome but Firefox? Those people, not so much.