13 ms·

Sponsored Top Sites

115 points by mmanfrin 6y ago

SturgeonsLaw 6y ago
Fair enough, Mozilla desperately needs to develop alternative income streams, their dependence on their biggest competitor seems to be an existential risk
- calvinmorrison 6y ago
  > Revenue (per year) >2014 $420 million >2015 $420 million >2016 $520 million >2017 $562 million >2018 $436 million I'm sorry, it's just laughable that you need $500 million a year to create an 'open source' web browser. Pathetic
  - tomp 6y ago
    Exactly. Sounds like a certain outsourced government website... If Mozilla was smart and didn't spend coin for useless stuff (Pocket?), they'd be able to set up a trust fund with all this money, that would sustain them indefinitely.
  - gchamonlive 6y ago
    How about 500 mil yearly to create an OS from scratch? Is that laughable too? The level of complexity to create a modern web browser, specially one that has in-house engines like Firefox, is comparable to a modern OS.
    - calvinmorrison 6y ago
      How much do you think the Debian non-profit makes per year? What about ArchLinux? How many full time developers are paid by the Linux Foundation? It's funny, their budget is much smaller than firefox https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460503801 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460... Maybe all this complexity and constant changes to the web comes from the fact that there are hundreds and hundreds of employees paid to tinker around. Mozilla is effectively a $500 Million dollar corporation, not a non-profit. Money corrupts absolutely.
      - ylyn 6y ago
        > How much do you think the Debian non-profit makes per year? What about ArchLinux? These are distributions. Their main role is to package upstream software. That is different from actually writing an entire OS. You should compare to however much Microsoft pays all of the developers that work on the different components of Windows. > How many full time developers are paid by the Linux Foundation? > > It's funny, their budget is much smaller than firefox That's because the vast majority of Linux development is not done by employees of the Linux Foundation. Only a few top-level maintainers, including Linus Torvalds and Greg K-H, are employed by the Linux Foundation. Most Linux code these days is written by people employed by companies like Intel, Huawei, Google, Red Hat, NXP, Facebook, etc. See https://lwn.net/Articles/839772/ https://lwn.net/Articles/839772/ for example. You would do good by reading a bit before saying things online.
        pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
        > Only a few top-level maintainers, including Linus Torvalds and Greg K-H, are employed by the Linux Foundation. Most Linux code these days is written by people employed by companies like Intel, Huawei, Google, Red Hat, NXP, Facebook, etc. This supposed to be a defense of Mozilla? There's a /r/selfawarewolves-style obliviousness to what you're saying.
    - dangwu 6y ago
      That complexity is mostly due to Gecko, right? What's stopping Mozilla from switching to Blink? Does using Google's engine conflict with their mission? Edit: Getting downvotes for this honest question. I didn't realize that browser rendering engines held that much control. Apologies for the silly thought.
      - stefs 6y ago
        that would be a monoculture disaster. monocultures are not resilient.
        Spivak 6y ago
        Not resilient to disease maybe but I'm sure webdevs will be overjoyed at having a much easier time porting sites. The power dynamic that matters is political not technical. Google doesn't really get to exert control over the web with their rendering engine or V8 it's the actual high-level browser policy that matters and Firefox doesn't actually have to follow any of it. Firefox gutted all of their internals with project Servo. If they had instead integrated Blink would it have been any different? I always think it's interesting what things people want to have diverse ecosystems with competing implementations (browsers) and what things people consider that an unnecessary duplication of effort (Wayland compositors).
        ylyn 6y ago
        So you've seen the same person say both of that?
        Spivak 6y ago
        We're on the internet. There's only one other human and the rest are bots. If you go into threads about Wayland the overwhelming public opinion is that having lots of compositors is silly. And then you go into threads about browsers the overwhelming public opinion is that having multiple browser implementations is sacred.
        minikites 6y ago
    - senko 6y ago
      > How about 500 mil yearly to create an OS from scratch? When was Mozilla trying to create an OS from scratch? The closest they came was FirefoxOS which was using Gecko browser engine (existing) on top of Linux kernel (existing) and a host of other existing open source projects, and FirefoxOS was (unfortunately) a dismal failure.
      - gchamonlive 6y ago
        Maybe I wasn't clear enough. The level of complexity of a modern web browser is comparable to that of a OS. It is not an OS though.
  - CobrastanJorji 6y ago
    While it's still a lot, software development is only about half of the Mozilla Foundation's expensive (and not all of that is the browser). They spend around $50 million/year on marketing, ~$75 million/year on administration, etc. They publish annual audits and reports (which ironically probably eats up a million bucks on its own).
  - stefantalpalaru 6y ago
    >2017 $562 million "On February24, 2017, Mozilla acquired 100% of the outstanding stock of Read It Later, Inc., known as Pocket, (RIL) for a total purchase price of $25 million in cash, and $5 million in deferred payments." - https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-2018-short-form-final-0926.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-201...
  - pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
    You're leaving out the revenue from the Yahoo lawsuit. When you combine the revenue from actual royalties and the award from the lawsuit, Mozilla's income for the last year we have on record was just under 1 billion USD, and people continue pushing the narrative that Mozilla is more financially insecure than ever. Firefox is certainly at one of the lowest measures of success it has ever seen, but it's also bringing in more money per user than ever. The picture of Mozilla as frail organization just barely squeaking by has been very lucrative. The fact is, Mozilla has been in the current position for the last 10 years, which is one that is far less precarious than it's made out to be, hasn't done anything that substantially ameliorates what precarity does exist, and instead continues making awful decisions that push away both people in its user base and its potential set of contributors, with the kicker being that the purported looming threat of poverty is used as the justification for all decisions made. And they never budge on anything, except to move further down on all measures that they point to. So how smart and well-reasoned are those decisions again? Signed, a lifetime Firefox user (for lack of a better option).
    - matheusmoreira 6y ago
      So what do they use the money for if not actual software engineering? I have a feeling if people start digging they'll uncover a situation similar to Wikipedia.
      - pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
        The problem is cost disease married to managerial incompetence, same as what's afflicting universities and hospitals. They're using the money for software engineering, but they're doing it poorly, including doing a really, really shit job handling unpaid contributors (essentially driving everyone away and thus requiring them to hire others to fill the shoes of the people who stop contributing). They also spend tens of millions of dollars a year on their marketing department -- a bigger budget than Firefox's entire development budget 15 years ago (i.e., when Firefox was actually on an upward trajectory). There's certainly money going into actual marketing, but the returns on that investment are terrible to the point that they'd probably be just as well off cutting the budget in two, keeping one half of it to be allocated for some other purpose, flushing the other half directly down the toilet, and doing no marketing at all (or maybe walking out into the street, handing it to random passersby, and saying, "this is from Mozilla; you should really use Firefox").
  - konjin 6y ago
    They aren't using that for the browser, they are using it to push things like women in code. Which is a dark pattern since if people wanted to fund women in code they would give the money to that charity instead of giving it to a browser and have it diverted. But given what we're reading here it's no surprise that the corpse of Mozilla uses dark patters at every possible level to obfuscate what they are trying to do.
  - ozim 6y ago
    Well now they have 8% of the browser market. I think you need $500 million a year to barely keep at those 8%. If they drop those millions of revenue I believe their market share will sharply drop. Opera is operating on around $100 million of revenue and they are in 1% range of market share. I bet Microsoft can spend $100 million or less just to be around 7% with Edge since they have Windows. I also don't think Google is spending much more to keep Chrome at around 70% when they own search and YouTube and Android. They need $500 million just to keep head above the water and remember they are swimming with sharks.
    - calvinmorrison 6y ago
      Right, it's a corporation worried about market share, not some open source project that random hackers contribute to.
  - AZ-X 6y ago
    This made me smile :-)
neolog 6y ago
That "anonymized technical data" link points to a github repo with no documentation. It's not clear what data you're actually sending. What do you consider personally identifying?
- merlinscholz 6y ago
  That looks like a big red flag for me too. They somehow have to check for ad abuse after all.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- luplex 6y ago
  There is a legal definition for personally identifying data, for example in GDPR
  - neolog 6y ago
    Maybe there are multiple legal definitions
rlaabs 6y ago
Unfortunately it seems like I was one of "small percentage of Firefox users" this feature is being tested on. Contrary to what the article claims, there was no way to disable this feature from the menu: it wasn't possible to uncheck the 'Sponsored Top Sites' button. I had search for 'sponsor' settings in 'about:config' to disable it. Sadly, I don't think most users will be able to figure this out. I'm seriously reconsidering moving away from Firefox, or at the very least no longer recommending it to non-technical users
- cookie_monsta 6y ago
  I found the setting by following FF's instructions and turned it off. Took about 5 seconds, I guess a minute total including searching for how to do it.
  - thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
    Do you know if your data was shared with advertisers before you were able to turn it off?
    - cookie_monsta 6y ago
      Of course I know that. What a strange question.
      - ylyn 6y ago
        GP is not literally asking if you know. They are asking you if your data was shared or not.
        cookie_monsta 6y ago
        Well, that makes it an even stranger question. Why ask one thing if what you want to know is something else?
        6y ago
thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
It seems like you're not able to opt out until the feature has been installed and is running which is a bit frustrating. I had a similar issue recently with Heroku not allowing me to delete my account without accepting their new terms of service.
endisneigh 6y ago
I think the lack of pressure on Mozilla has prevented them from innovating at the level necessary to sustain themselves if Google pulled the rug from under them. It might be good for them if they put 50% or so of their revenue in an endowment for sustaining Mozilla and forced themselves to exist on a fixed budget. There are excellent engineers working at Mozilla - the fact that there hasn't been a substantial new product from Mozilla in the past decade is really a shame.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
This thread seems like a good opportunity for everyone to share other browsers they're aware of which are at least somewhat usable. Setting a very low baseline of "works for browsing Hacker News", I'll get the ball rolling. Each of these browsers is already pretty good, and could be even better with your support. I use primarily GNU desktop and Android, others can fill in Mac, Windows, iOS, and other platforms. DESKTOP: Pale Moon Opera Vivaldi Waterfox qutebrowser Links lynx w3m Midori ANDROID: Bromite FOSS Browser Brave Smooz Ghostery Via These are all browsers I regularly test with and they work quite well. Heavy sites like Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and Gmail do not work with them, and I generally avoid those sites, resort to using alternative front-ends, or open Chromium for a minute or two.
- Miraste 6y ago
  It's worth noting that Pale Moon, Waterfox, and Ghostery are variably outdated versions of Firefox, and Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, Bromite, and Smooz are just Chrome.
  - ibraheemdev 6y ago
    Are there any browsers that are not tied to a large for-profit corporation (Google, Apple, MS) other than Firefox?
    - Spivak 6y ago
      I mean Firefox is inexorably tied to Google so that doesn't really work either.
      - ibraheemdev 6y ago
        True, but I meant on the technology side of things. Chromium based browsers like Brave have had issues in the past where they pulled in upstream code that, say, connected to Google servers. Firefox is the only browser I know of the doesn't have that problem.
  - 6y ago
albertgoeswoof 6y ago
They've now added these to the search bar, above everything else. If you already have top sites disabled on your start page, then you have to re-enable this and then disable the checkbox, before re-disabling it all. Terrible UX, arguably a dark pattern and user hostile. https://twitter.com/OhMySMTP/status/1364274675459764231 https://twitter.com/OhMySMTP/status/1364274675459764231
- gruez 6y ago
  ...and that's why I use ESR. I get all the security patches but I only have to deal with browser drama every year rather than every month.
  - ssss11 6y ago
    Sorry could you expand the acronym ESR? I’m unfamiliar and would like to look into it, thanks
    - gruez 6y ago
      https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/choosing-firefox-update-channel https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/choosing-firefox-update...
    - pwinnski 6y ago
      "Extended Support Release (ESR): receives major updates on average every 42 weeks with minor updates such as crash fixes, security fixes and policy updates as needed, but at least every four weeks."
jebronie 6y ago
I'm glad I ditched Firefox half a year ago. Safari under Big Sur is actually not that bad as a daily driver, and with the upcoming webm support it will do everything I want it to. Firefox is just not the same anymore. It used to be tech focused. Now they pretend to sell you "privacy" and virtue signal every chance they get, but it's clear Mozilla Corp is just after more money and behind your back they use every chance to monetize you. Technology doesn't even come second. In hindsight I'm glad they failed at making a successful mobile browser, it's time for them to bite the dust.
ajkjk 6y ago
imo, for companies which are forced to compromise their product to monetize, the only way to maintain goodwill with your users to be candid about it. In this case looks like: "why are we doing this? Because we need the money", more or less.
- jebronie 6y ago
  They will just point at others and pretend to "unfck the internet" as a diversion while slowly making the users the product. "Hey watch The social dilemma on Netflix guuuys".
- hypertele-Xii 6y ago
  In 2019 Mozilla got 789 million dollars in revenue. That's half the estimated cost of the Linux kernel. Do they really need more money? Do they?
blakewatson 6y ago
I've never liked the built-in new tab pages in browsers. I made my own years ago never looked back. Since 2017 I’ve run my new tab page as a small SaaS.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hypertele-Xii 6y ago
  Hey that's not a bad idea. I frequently check my website's dashboard anyway, could just add my 'top sites' there.
jebronie 6y ago
Yeah, let's block ads on websites and put them in the browser UI instead. Only ours of course. - someone at mozilla corp
- Tijdreiziger 6y ago
  Firefox does not "block ads on websites", unless you install a third-party ad blocker.
- nicbou 6y ago
  The company that has a major browser, a major mobile operating system, and a few major websites is scribbling notes.
fl0wenol 6y ago
I really hope the Mozilla team sees this thread. I'm not opted-in, but if this goes forward to all users, you better believe I'm withdrawing my annual donation to the foundation, and I'm switching to a alternative. This is not acceptable.
Cynddl 6y ago
Mozilla: “When you click on a sponsored tile, Firefox sends anonymized technical data to our partner through a Mozilla-owned proxy service. This data does not include any personally identifying information.” adMarketplace: “We may also receive technical information such as your approximate location, browser type, language settings, user agent, timestamp, cookie ID and IP addresses.” There's a big discrepancy between Mozilla's statement and adMarketplace's privacy policy. Although there's very little information available, the fact that this technical information is anonymous doesn't appear straightforward. Cookie IDs and IP addresses alone can very easily identify some users uniquely across time and even devices.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  > Firefox sends anonymized technical data Can't we intercept this data and see what it is?
ohazi 6y ago
We really need "corporate bullshit removed" forks of both Chrome and Firefox. IceWeasel and Chromium were effectively Firefox and Chrome without the (surface level) corporate branding. Chromium is soon having many of its Google tie-ins severed. Debian and Mozilla resolved their trademark dispute, so IceWeasel mostly went away. These browsers are open source, yet they both suffer an unpalatable amount of corporate control. Google can do whatever it wants, because it's the king. Mozilla is able to get away with this because they are the only real alternative for people who don't like the king.
- rglullis 6y ago
  How do you expect these projects to afford its development? Free software does not come for free.
  - ohazi 6y ago
    Maybe stopping to live with the browsers that we have for a while wouldn't be the end of the world? You're right that free software development isn't free, but these browsers already exist, and are already free, and for the most part, they work. CVEs can be found and fixed without corporate backing. Instead, we're rushing to pour more and more stuff into the cesspool. WebUSB and WebBluetooth are not things that I particularly need or want. Part of this is Google's fault. They're currently on top, and if they unilaterally decide to add something, everyone else needs to either implement it or die. I mean, I still think they should fucking stop, but obviously they won't, and I don't have a good answer to this.
    - rglullis 6y ago
      Old man yells at (internet) cloud > for the most part, they work. What is stopping you to just keep using an older version? If you are a developer, what is stopping you to target only the subset of features that you seem necessary? > WebUSB and WebBluetooth are not things that I particularly need or want I assume you are thinking about the browser on your desktop OS. What about platforms like FirefoxOS - KaiOS?
corobo 6y ago
I'm starting to regret switching back to Firefox with this move. Wisdom of the crowd: what's the next decent browser? My initial reaction was to search the Amazon tag and found reports of rogue plugins. I thought I'd been done security wise at first..
- slig 6y ago
  I'd recommend you a Chromium fork but I'm not brave enough to do it here.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
aendruk 6y ago
This happened to me yesterday. First thing I did after verifying that it wasn't a malware infection was Help → Submit Feedback, only to be met with: > We've paused submissions to this form so that we can improve how we collect feedback. Stonewalled à la Google; insult to injury. “Unfck” indeed.
totetsu 6y ago
It's funny how we're all so brainwashed by advertising and corporate logo placement, we don't even see it as brainwashing any more... I hate the everpresence of these images. Is anyone maintaining a sensible autoconfig.js and firefox.cfg on GitHub?
sneak 6y ago
How long until there is an Unmozilla'd Firefox distribution?

115 points by mmanfrin 6y ago

Fair enough, Mozilla desperately needs to develop alternative income streams, their dependence on their biggest competitor seems to be an existential risk

calvinmorrison 6y ago
> Revenue (per year) >2014 $420 million >2015 $420 million >2016 $520 million >2017 $562 million >2018 $436 million I'm sorry, it's just laughable that you need $500 million a year to create an 'open source' web browser. Pathetic
- tomp 6y ago
  Exactly. Sounds like a certain outsourced government website... If Mozilla was smart and didn't spend coin for useless stuff (Pocket?), they'd be able to set up a trust fund with all this money, that would sustain them indefinitely.
- gchamonlive 6y ago
  How about 500 mil yearly to create an OS from scratch? Is that laughable too? The level of complexity to create a modern web browser, specially one that has in-house engines like Firefox, is comparable to a modern OS.
  - calvinmorrison 6y ago
    How much do you think the Debian non-profit makes per year? What about ArchLinux? How many full time developers are paid by the Linux Foundation? It's funny, their budget is much smaller than firefox https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460503801 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460... Maybe all this complexity and constant changes to the web comes from the fact that there are hundreds and hundreds of employees paid to tinker around. Mozilla is effectively a $500 Million dollar corporation, not a non-profit. Money corrupts absolutely.
    - ylyn 6y ago
      > How much do you think the Debian non-profit makes per year? What about ArchLinux? These are distributions. Their main role is to package upstream software. That is different from actually writing an entire OS. You should compare to however much Microsoft pays all of the developers that work on the different components of Windows. > How many full time developers are paid by the Linux Foundation? > > It's funny, their budget is much smaller than firefox That's because the vast majority of Linux development is not done by employees of the Linux Foundation. Only a few top-level maintainers, including Linus Torvalds and Greg K-H, are employed by the Linux Foundation. Most Linux code these days is written by people employed by companies like Intel, Huawei, Google, Red Hat, NXP, Facebook, etc. See https://lwn.net/Articles/839772/ https://lwn.net/Articles/839772/ for example. You would do good by reading a bit before saying things online.
      - pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
        > Only a few top-level maintainers, including Linus Torvalds and Greg K-H, are employed by the Linux Foundation. Most Linux code these days is written by people employed by companies like Intel, Huawei, Google, Red Hat, NXP, Facebook, etc. This supposed to be a defense of Mozilla? There's a /r/selfawarewolves-style obliviousness to what you're saying.
  - dangwu 6y ago
    That complexity is mostly due to Gecko, right? What's stopping Mozilla from switching to Blink? Does using Google's engine conflict with their mission? Edit: Getting downvotes for this honest question. I didn't realize that browser rendering engines held that much control. Apologies for the silly thought.
    - stefs 6y ago
      that would be a monoculture disaster. monocultures are not resilient.
      - Spivak 6y ago
        Not resilient to disease maybe but I'm sure webdevs will be overjoyed at having a much easier time porting sites. The power dynamic that matters is political not technical. Google doesn't really get to exert control over the web with their rendering engine or V8 it's the actual high-level browser policy that matters and Firefox doesn't actually have to follow any of it. Firefox gutted all of their internals with project Servo. If they had instead integrated Blink would it have been any different? I always think it's interesting what things people want to have diverse ecosystems with competing implementations (browsers) and what things people consider that an unnecessary duplication of effort (Wayland compositors).
        ylyn 6y ago
        So you've seen the same person say both of that?
        Spivak 6y ago
        We're on the internet. There's only one other human and the rest are bots. If you go into threads about Wayland the overwhelming public opinion is that having lots of compositors is silly. And then you go into threads about browsers the overwhelming public opinion is that having multiple browser implementations is sacred.
        minikites 6y ago
  - senko 6y ago
    > How about 500 mil yearly to create an OS from scratch? When was Mozilla trying to create an OS from scratch? The closest they came was FirefoxOS which was using Gecko browser engine (existing) on top of Linux kernel (existing) and a host of other existing open source projects, and FirefoxOS was (unfortunately) a dismal failure.
    - gchamonlive 6y ago
      Maybe I wasn't clear enough. The level of complexity of a modern web browser is comparable to that of a OS. It is not an OS though.
- CobrastanJorji 6y ago
  While it's still a lot, software development is only about half of the Mozilla Foundation's expensive (and not all of that is the browser). They spend around $50 million/year on marketing, ~$75 million/year on administration, etc. They publish annual audits and reports (which ironically probably eats up a million bucks on its own).
- stefantalpalaru 6y ago
  >2017 $562 million "On February24, 2017, Mozilla acquired 100% of the outstanding stock of Read It Later, Inc., known as Pocket, (RIL) for a total purchase price of $25 million in cash, and $5 million in deferred payments." - https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-2018-short-form-final-0926.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-fdn-201...
- pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
  You're leaving out the revenue from the Yahoo lawsuit. When you combine the revenue from actual royalties and the award from the lawsuit, Mozilla's income for the last year we have on record was just under 1 billion USD, and people continue pushing the narrative that Mozilla is more financially insecure than ever. Firefox is certainly at one of the lowest measures of success it has ever seen, but it's also bringing in more money per user than ever. The picture of Mozilla as frail organization just barely squeaking by has been very lucrative. The fact is, Mozilla has been in the current position for the last 10 years, which is one that is far less precarious than it's made out to be, hasn't done anything that substantially ameliorates what precarity does exist, and instead continues making awful decisions that push away both people in its user base and its potential set of contributors, with the kicker being that the purported looming threat of poverty is used as the justification for all decisions made. And they never budge on anything, except to move further down on all measures that they point to. So how smart and well-reasoned are those decisions again? Signed, a lifetime Firefox user (for lack of a better option).
  - matheusmoreira 6y ago
    So what do they use the money for if not actual software engineering? I have a feeling if people start digging they'll uncover a situation similar to Wikipedia.
    - pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
      The problem is cost disease married to managerial incompetence, same as what's afflicting universities and hospitals. They're using the money for software engineering, but they're doing it poorly, including doing a really, really shit job handling unpaid contributors (essentially driving everyone away and thus requiring them to hire others to fill the shoes of the people who stop contributing). They also spend tens of millions of dollars a year on their marketing department -- a bigger budget than Firefox's entire development budget 15 years ago (i.e., when Firefox was actually on an upward trajectory). There's certainly money going into actual marketing, but the returns on that investment are terrible to the point that they'd probably be just as well off cutting the budget in two, keeping one half of it to be allocated for some other purpose, flushing the other half directly down the toilet, and doing no marketing at all (or maybe walking out into the street, handing it to random passersby, and saying, "this is from Mozilla; you should really use Firefox").
- konjin 6y ago
  They aren't using that for the browser, they are using it to push things like women in code. Which is a dark pattern since if people wanted to fund women in code they would give the money to that charity instead of giving it to a browser and have it diverted. But given what we're reading here it's no surprise that the corpse of Mozilla uses dark patters at every possible level to obfuscate what they are trying to do.
- ozim 6y ago
  Well now they have 8% of the browser market. I think you need $500 million a year to barely keep at those 8%. If they drop those millions of revenue I believe their market share will sharply drop. Opera is operating on around $100 million of revenue and they are in 1% range of market share. I bet Microsoft can spend $100 million or less just to be around 7% with Edge since they have Windows. I also don't think Google is spending much more to keep Chrome at around 70% when they own search and YouTube and Android. They need $500 million just to keep head above the water and remember they are swimming with sharks.
  - calvinmorrison 6y ago
    Right, it's a corporation worried about market share, not some open source project that random hackers contribute to.
- AZ-X 6y ago
  This made me smile :-)

neolog 6y ago

That "anonymized technical data" link points to a github repo with no documentation. It's not clear what data you're actually sending. What do you consider personally identifying?

merlinscholz 6y ago
That looks like a big red flag for me too. They somehow have to check for ad abuse after all.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
luplex 6y ago
There is a legal definition for personally identifying data, for example in GDPR
- neolog 6y ago
  Maybe there are multiple legal definitions

rlaabs 6y ago

Unfortunately it seems like I was one of "small percentage of Firefox users" this feature is being tested on. Contrary to what the article claims, there was no way to disable this feature from the menu: it wasn't possible to uncheck the 'Sponsored Top Sites' button. I had search for 'sponsor' settings in 'about:config' to disable it. Sadly, I don't think most users will be able to figure this out. I'm seriously reconsidering moving away from Firefox, or at the very least no longer recommending it to non-technical users

cookie_monsta 6y ago
I found the setting by following FF's instructions and turned it off. Took about 5 seconds, I guess a minute total including searching for how to do it.
- thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
  Do you know if your data was shared with advertisers before you were able to turn it off?
  - cookie_monsta 6y ago
    Of course I know that. What a strange question.
    - ylyn 6y ago
      GP is not literally asking if you know. They are asking you if your data was shared or not.
      - cookie_monsta 6y ago
        Well, that makes it an even stranger question. Why ask one thing if what you want to know is something else?
        6y ago

thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago

It seems like you're not able to opt out until the feature has been installed and is running which is a bit frustrating. I had a similar issue recently with Heroku not allowing me to delete my account without accepting their new terms of service.

endisneigh 6y ago

I think the lack of pressure on Mozilla has prevented them from innovating at the level necessary to sustain themselves if Google pulled the rug from under them. It might be good for them if they put 50% or so of their revenue in an endowment for sustaining Mozilla and forced themselves to exist on a fixed budget. There are excellent engineers working at Mozilla - the fact that there hasn't been a substantial new product from Mozilla in the past decade is really a shame.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

This thread seems like a good opportunity for everyone to share other browsers they're aware of which are at least somewhat usable. Setting a very low baseline of "works for browsing Hacker News", I'll get the ball rolling. Each of these browsers is already pretty good, and could be even better with your support. I use primarily GNU desktop and Android, others can fill in Mac, Windows, iOS, and other platforms. DESKTOP: Pale Moon Opera Vivaldi Waterfox qutebrowser Links lynx w3m Midori ANDROID: Bromite FOSS Browser Brave Smooz Ghostery Via These are all browsers I regularly test with and they work quite well. Heavy sites like Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, and Gmail do not work with them, and I generally avoid those sites, resort to using alternative front-ends, or open Chromium for a minute or two.

Miraste 6y ago
It's worth noting that Pale Moon, Waterfox, and Ghostery are variably outdated versions of Firefox, and Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, Bromite, and Smooz are just Chrome.
- ibraheemdev 6y ago
  Are there any browsers that are not tied to a large for-profit corporation (Google, Apple, MS) other than Firefox?
  - Spivak 6y ago
    I mean Firefox is inexorably tied to Google so that doesn't really work either.
    - ibraheemdev 6y ago
      True, but I meant on the technology side of things. Chromium based browsers like Brave have had issues in the past where they pulled in upstream code that, say, connected to Google servers. Firefox is the only browser I know of the doesn't have that problem.
- 6y ago

albertgoeswoof 6y ago

They've now added these to the search bar, above everything else. If you already have top sites disabled on your start page, then you have to re-enable this and then disable the checkbox, before re-disabling it all. Terrible UX, arguably a dark pattern and user hostile. https://twitter.com/OhMySMTP/status/1364274675459764231 https://twitter.com/OhMySMTP/status/1364274675459764231

gruez 6y ago
...and that's why I use ESR. I get all the security patches but I only have to deal with browser drama every year rather than every month.
- ssss11 6y ago
  Sorry could you expand the acronym ESR? I’m unfamiliar and would like to look into it, thanks
  - gruez 6y ago
    https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/choosing-firefox-update-channel https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/choosing-firefox-update...
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    "Extended Support Release (ESR): receives major updates on average every 42 weeks with minor updates such as crash fixes, security fixes and policy updates as needed, but at least every four weeks."

jebronie 6y ago

I'm glad I ditched Firefox half a year ago. Safari under Big Sur is actually not that bad as a daily driver, and with the upcoming webm support it will do everything I want it to. Firefox is just not the same anymore. It used to be tech focused. Now they pretend to sell you "privacy" and virtue signal every chance they get, but it's clear Mozilla Corp is just after more money and behind your back they use every chance to monetize you. Technology doesn't even come second. In hindsight I'm glad they failed at making a successful mobile browser, it's time for them to bite the dust.

ajkjk 6y ago

imo, for companies which are forced to compromise their product to monetize, the only way to maintain goodwill with your users to be candid about it. In this case looks like: "why are we doing this? Because we need the money", more or less.

jebronie 6y ago
They will just point at others and pretend to "unfck the internet" as a diversion while slowly making the users the product. "Hey watch The social dilemma on Netflix guuuys".
hypertele-Xii 6y ago
In 2019 Mozilla got 789 million dollars in revenue. That's half the estimated cost of the Linux kernel. Do they really need more money? Do they?

blakewatson 6y ago

I've never liked the built-in new tab pages in browsers. I made my own years ago never looked back. Since 2017 I’ve run my new tab page as a small SaaS.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hypertele-Xii 6y ago
Hey that's not a bad idea. I frequently check my website's dashboard anyway, could just add my 'top sites' there.

jebronie 6y ago

Yeah, let's block ads on websites and put them in the browser UI instead. Only ours of course. - someone at mozilla corp

Tijdreiziger 6y ago
Firefox does not "block ads on websites", unless you install a third-party ad blocker.
nicbou 6y ago
The company that has a major browser, a major mobile operating system, and a few major websites is scribbling notes.

fl0wenol 6y ago

I really hope the Mozilla team sees this thread. I'm not opted-in, but if this goes forward to all users, you better believe I'm withdrawing my annual donation to the foundation, and I'm switching to a alternative. This is not acceptable.

Cynddl 6y ago

Mozilla: “When you click on a sponsored tile, Firefox sends anonymized technical data to our partner through a Mozilla-owned proxy service. This data does not include any personally identifying information.” adMarketplace: “We may also receive technical information such as your approximate location, browser type, language settings, user agent, timestamp, cookie ID and IP addresses.” There's a big discrepancy between Mozilla's statement and adMarketplace's privacy policy. Although there's very little information available, the fact that this technical information is anonymous doesn't appear straightforward. Cookie IDs and IP addresses alone can very easily identify some users uniquely across time and even devices.

matheusmoreira 6y ago
> Firefox sends anonymized technical data Can't we intercept this data and see what it is?

ohazi 6y ago

We really need "corporate bullshit removed" forks of both Chrome and Firefox. IceWeasel and Chromium were effectively Firefox and Chrome without the (surface level) corporate branding. Chromium is soon having many of its Google tie-ins severed. Debian and Mozilla resolved their trademark dispute, so IceWeasel mostly went away. These browsers are open source, yet they both suffer an unpalatable amount of corporate control. Google can do whatever it wants, because it's the king. Mozilla is able to get away with this because they are the only real alternative for people who don't like the king.

rglullis 6y ago
How do you expect these projects to afford its development? Free software does not come for free.
- ohazi 6y ago
  Maybe stopping to live with the browsers that we have for a while wouldn't be the end of the world? You're right that free software development isn't free, but these browsers already exist, and are already free, and for the most part, they work. CVEs can be found and fixed without corporate backing. Instead, we're rushing to pour more and more stuff into the cesspool. WebUSB and WebBluetooth are not things that I particularly need or want. Part of this is Google's fault. They're currently on top, and if they unilaterally decide to add something, everyone else needs to either implement it or die. I mean, I still think they should fucking stop, but obviously they won't, and I don't have a good answer to this.
  - rglullis 6y ago
    Old man yells at (internet) cloud > for the most part, they work. What is stopping you to just keep using an older version? If you are a developer, what is stopping you to target only the subset of features that you seem necessary? > WebUSB and WebBluetooth are not things that I particularly need or want I assume you are thinking about the browser on your desktop OS. What about platforms like FirefoxOS - KaiOS?

corobo 6y ago

I'm starting to regret switching back to Firefox with this move. Wisdom of the crowd: what's the next decent browser? My initial reaction was to search the Amazon tag and found reports of rogue plugins. I thought I'd been done security wise at first..

slig 6y ago
I'd recommend you a Chromium fork but I'm not brave enough to do it here.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

aendruk 6y ago

This happened to me yesterday. First thing I did after verifying that it wasn't a malware infection was Help → Submit Feedback, only to be met with: > We've paused submissions to this form so that we can improve how we collect feedback. Stonewalled à la Google; insult to injury. “Unfck” indeed.

totetsu 6y ago

It's funny how we're all so brainwashed by advertising and corporate logo placement, we don't even see it as brainwashing any more... I hate the everpresence of these images. Is anyone maintaining a sensible autoconfig.js and firefox.cfg on GitHub?

sneak 6y ago

How long until there is an Unmozilla'd Firefox distribution?