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If Firefox had larger market share, Chrome wouldn’t have been able to make this opt out for websites rather than opt in because it would have given them a bad p

If Firefox had larger market share, Chrome wouldn’t have been able to make this opt out for websites rather than opt in because it would have given them a bad public image. I don’t think it’s fair that some company gets to force every website maintainer (most aren’t extremely technical and just use Wordpress or something similar) on earth to muddle through documentation for their particular setups to 1) learn it exists and 2) turn it off if desired.

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magicalist 5y ago
> If Firefox had larger market share, Chrome wouldn’t have been able to make this opt out for websites rather than opt in FLoC is only opt in for testing the proposal[0]. As a sibling comment says this is technically performative but publicly signals a stance against the proposal. Though we also shouldn't forget that Amazon loves third party tracking and happily falls back to IP address associations if cookies aren't available. Edit: [0] https://developer.chrome.com/blog/floc/#take-part-in-a-floc-origin-trial https://developer.chrome.com/blog/floc/#take-part-in-a-floc-...
- jmholla 5y ago
  Isn't it the opposite. It's opt-out for testing and is supposed to be opt-in when it goes live? I mean, I just disabled it and I am certain I didn't opt-in to it given that I had to go to about:config to have the setting show up. You can opt-in to actively be a part of FLoC, but if you don't opt-out, Google may randomly choose you to be part of their testing. Edit: I think your point may have been from the perspective of a website owner. Sorry.
gpm 5y ago
> opt out for websites This wording annoys me. The websites have nothing to do with it. Google choosing to turn it's browser into spyware that leaks information about what you used to do with it isn't the websites fault, the webserver doesn't do anything and doesn't have anything done to it, there is nothing for it to opt out of. Google chose to give websites a way to request that the users browser doesn't include the fact that they visited this website in it's cohort calculation. That's fine, but the messaging around it is a transparent attempt at shifting the blame. It's not the website opting out or in, it's the website acting as an uninvolved third party bystander asking google to stop. Asking why a website didn't opt out is equivalent to a thief asking "well why didn't you stop me?" to the person looking on from the sidewalk. We shouldn't accept this messaging. We should be very clear that Chrome is the entity spying on you, not the website, and that the website has no power to decide whether or not chrome spies on you, only the ability to make a polite request that it doesn't (or more accurately, does so less).
hahahasure 5y ago
Firefox just sucks. For some computers it works, but me and others have all sorts of breaking issues. I tried Firefox, it just sucks. Edit- shoot the messenger, it won't fix Firefox bugs or help their market share.
- deleted 5y ago
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- tgv 5y ago
  I've been using FF since forever (first Navigator, then a macos variant called Camino, and after it EOL'd, Firefox; tried quite a few others too, but always returned to FF). Never a problem, except of course with websites that don't test if it works on Firefox. > shoot the messenger, it won't fix Firefox bugs or help their market share. Your message doesn't really contribute to it either. If you hate Firefox with a passion and wish that Alphabet dominates the world and turns us all into clicking zombies, keep spreading it. Otherwise, better not.
  - hahahasure 5y ago
    I couldn't access this website with Firefox. Firefox is doing the damage to themselves.
    - tgv 5y ago
      You can't access HN with Firefox? This website loads one simple html file, one style sheet with a handful of media queries, three gifs and a small js file, which only seems to do things like voting and hiding. While FF 3.6 won't do the styling properly, even that ancient version should be able to display the contents.
dreamcompiler 5y ago
I would love to use Firefox, but for some years now Firefox on the Mac (when I have a few dozen tabs open) causes multi-tens-of-seconds pauses whenever I do anything with the mouse like click or scroll. Some of these throw up a rainbow cursor; some just silently do nothing. And yes, I'm using the latest version of everything, including hardware. While Mozilla obsesses about eye candy, they lose market share because they cannot be bothered to fix decades-old memory management problems in Firefox such that: 1. Memory leaks don't happen, 2. Garbage collection happens silently in the background, and 3. Garbage collection actually frees up memory for new allocations. This seems like pretty basic stuff; Chrome figured out how to make tabs scale at close to O[1] a long time ago, but in Firefox tabs still feel like they scale as O[n^2].
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- ysavir 5y ago
  If that's really the only thing keeping you from Firefox, which you would "love" to do, why not stop keeping dozens of tab open at a time?
  - dreamcompiler 5y ago
    because...it's a use case that I like that works fine in other browsers?
paulpan 5y ago
From a purely implementation standpoint, defaulting to opt-in instead opt-out leads to a long and arduous user migration process. Especially if it's a major change and/or somewhat controversial. Furthermore it tends to fragment the userbase and accumulation of tech debt (e.g. feature disparity). I think this is a huge factor in iOS versioning having such good consistency across its install base.
- deleted 5y ago
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mdoms 5y ago
If Firefox wants a bigger market share they need a significantly better product. That's just how the world works. I don't use Chrome but I sure as heck don't use Firefox.
- tentacleuno 5y ago
  Perhaps better for privacy too, unlike the telemetry-riddled Firefox of today. LibreWolf sounds a hell of a lot better, though.

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magicalist 5y ago

> If Firefox had larger market share, Chrome wouldn’t have been able to make this opt out for websites rather than opt in FLoC is only opt in for testing the proposal[0]. As a sibling comment says this is technically performative but publicly signals a stance against the proposal. Though we also shouldn't forget that Amazon loves third party tracking and happily falls back to IP address associations if cookies aren't available. Edit: [0] https://developer.chrome.com/blog/floc/#take-part-in-a-floc-origin-trial https://developer.chrome.com/blog/floc/#take-part-in-a-floc-...

jmholla 5y ago
Isn't it the opposite. It's opt-out for testing and is supposed to be opt-in when it goes live? I mean, I just disabled it and I am certain I didn't opt-in to it given that I had to go to about:config to have the setting show up. You can opt-in to actively be a part of FLoC, but if you don't opt-out, Google may randomly choose you to be part of their testing. Edit: I think your point may have been from the perspective of a website owner. Sorry.

gpm 5y ago

> opt out for websites This wording annoys me. The websites have nothing to do with it. Google choosing to turn it's browser into spyware that leaks information about what you used to do with it isn't the websites fault, the webserver doesn't do anything and doesn't have anything done to it, there is nothing for it to opt out of. Google chose to give websites a way to request that the users browser doesn't include the fact that they visited this website in it's cohort calculation. That's fine, but the messaging around it is a transparent attempt at shifting the blame. It's not the website opting out or in, it's the website acting as an uninvolved third party bystander asking google to stop. Asking why a website didn't opt out is equivalent to a thief asking "well why didn't you stop me?" to the person looking on from the sidewalk. We shouldn't accept this messaging. We should be very clear that Chrome is the entity spying on you, not the website, and that the website has no power to decide whether or not chrome spies on you, only the ability to make a polite request that it doesn't (or more accurately, does so less).

hahahasure 5y ago

Firefox just sucks. For some computers it works, but me and others have all sorts of breaking issues. I tried Firefox, it just sucks. Edit- shoot the messenger, it won't fix Firefox bugs or help their market share.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tgv 5y ago
I've been using FF since forever (first Navigator, then a macos variant called Camino, and after it EOL'd, Firefox; tried quite a few others too, but always returned to FF). Never a problem, except of course with websites that don't test if it works on Firefox. > shoot the messenger, it won't fix Firefox bugs or help their market share. Your message doesn't really contribute to it either. If you hate Firefox with a passion and wish that Alphabet dominates the world and turns us all into clicking zombies, keep spreading it. Otherwise, better not.
- hahahasure 5y ago
  I couldn't access this website with Firefox. Firefox is doing the damage to themselves.
  - tgv 5y ago
    You can't access HN with Firefox? This website loads one simple html file, one style sheet with a handful of media queries, three gifs and a small js file, which only seems to do things like voting and hiding. While FF 3.6 won't do the styling properly, even that ancient version should be able to display the contents.

dreamcompiler 5y ago

I would love to use Firefox, but for some years now Firefox on the Mac (when I have a few dozen tabs open) causes multi-tens-of-seconds pauses whenever I do anything with the mouse like click or scroll. Some of these throw up a rainbow cursor; some just silently do nothing. And yes, I'm using the latest version of everything, including hardware. While Mozilla obsesses about eye candy, they lose market share because they cannot be bothered to fix decades-old memory management problems in Firefox such that: 1. Memory leaks don't happen, 2. Garbage collection happens silently in the background, and 3. Garbage collection actually frees up memory for new allocations. This seems like pretty basic stuff; Chrome figured out how to make tabs scale at close to O[1] a long time ago, but in Firefox tabs still feel like they scale as O[n^2].

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ysavir 5y ago
If that's really the only thing keeping you from Firefox, which you would "love" to do, why not stop keeping dozens of tab open at a time?
- dreamcompiler 5y ago
  because...it's a use case that I like that works fine in other browsers?

paulpan 5y ago

From a purely implementation standpoint, defaulting to opt-in instead opt-out leads to a long and arduous user migration process. Especially if it's a major change and/or somewhat controversial. Furthermore it tends to fragment the userbase and accumulation of tech debt (e.g. feature disparity). I think this is a huge factor in iOS versioning having such good consistency across its install base.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

mdoms 5y ago

If Firefox wants a bigger market share they need a significantly better product. That's just how the world works. I don't use Chrome but I sure as heck don't use Firefox.

tentacleuno 5y ago
Perhaps better for privacy too, unlike the telemetry-riddled Firefox of today. LibreWolf sounds a hell of a lot better, though.