12 ms·

“looks like Firefox quietly added ads into the address bar”

190 points by Shank 5y ago

na85 5y ago
Oh for fuck's sake. When will Mozilla stop making boneheaded decisions like this?
- brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
  Probably an unpopular opinion: Never. Mozilla is a hollowed out shell, destroyed by monetary needs. Clearly, today's Firefox, let alone Mozilla, is no longer a bastion of the free web, but an example of how late stage capitalism can destroy such wonderful projects.
  - artificial 5y ago
    They spend money on social causes, advocacy, and not purely on engineering. It has a product in a niche the overwhelming majority of people don’t want to pay for.
    - stubish 5y ago
      As free-to-play games have demonstrated, you don't need an overwhelming majority of people to pay. There are even ways to find out if it is going to work, such as say a crowd source campaign to pay for n years of browser maintenance and development with various levels of branded merchandise so people can signal their allegiance at conferences. So far I've just seen a donation link for the foundation, which gets a lot of hate because it funds all the stuff lots of potential donors want Mozilla to stop doing.
      - dralley 5y ago
        >As free-to-play games have demonstrated, you don't need an overwhelming majority of people to pay. Are free-to-play games really the best example here? Also, a lot of those are funded by ads...
  - uselesscynicism 5y ago
    [dead]
funOtter 5y ago
As a Firefox user, I am very disappointed at this change.
xvilka 5y ago
The only one chance Mozilla had is to finish Firefox conversion to Rust, a complete conversion. That would have made development and updates easier. Apparently, by firing most of the team they put a writing on the wall. It's just a question of time.
- dralley 5y ago
  Lol, what. No. The only chance Mozilla had was for Congress and the FTC to wake up 5 years ago instead of 5 months ago. As someone who made a couple of contributions to the Servo project, semi-followed the development and compiled and ran it every so often, all of the parts which were production ready and had a clear path to being merged into Firefox (apart from maybe Pathfinder) are already merged into Firefox. It was a research project, some parts of the research were spectacularly successful, and these were adopted and merged into Firefox. Other parts of it were less successful. The HTML engine was nowhere even remotely close to production-grade and the interaction with SpiderMonkey was incredibly complex and flaky. Even simple sites like google.com were frequently broken. There was a rewrite [0] underway when the team was let go because various parts of the architecture were incompatible with a fully compliant implementation. Even setting aside that half of the Firefox code is tied to engine internals such as XUL, it would have taken a few more years to get it into a production ready state. I still wish that the project hadn't been dropped, it's a real shame. But it wouldn't have "saved' them. [0] https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Layout-2020 https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Layout-2020
sergiomattei 5y ago
Calling this an ad is a bit of a stretch.
- 93po 5y ago
  Strong disagree. Ads vary wildly, including "native advertising" where companies pay news outlets to report some development on the company and pretend it's some sort of real journalism. It's still an ad.
- celsoazevedo 5y ago
  This looks like an ad: https://i.imgur.com/yCZ7UgY.png https://i.imgur.com/yCZ7UgY.png
  - sergiomattei 5y ago
    Nvm you're right, that is an ad
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bejelentkezni 5y ago
I must ask those who are still sticking with Firefox over Chromium-based browsers, especially those who do so soley for the purpose of staying off a Google web monopoly, to what end? When and how do you think Mozilla will ever do anything to help the web? They integrate all of Google's non-standards just as quickly as Google does, take Google money, and then do adamantly anti-user stunts like this and the Pocket and the incessant VPN shilling. And it's significantly harder to make a good version of Firefox, you have to mess with userscripts or profiles or LibreWolf or cross your fingers and hope some nebulous omnipotent distro maintainers just take care of it. With chromium there are several builds with the spy and suck stripped out readily available because most of it is blobs or API keys, very easy to just exclude at build time. See https://chromium.woolyss.com https://chromium.woolyss.com. I make this comment partially because this is one of the more egregious things Mozilla has done recently but also because I've recently switched to Chromium myself and the whole experience is much faster and smoother so I recommend everyone do it. Happy to be debunked.
- fletchowns 5y ago
  > When and how do you think Mozilla will ever do anything to help the web? Firefox helps the web. MDN helps the web. Mozilla SSL Configuration Generator helps the web. Mozilla has helped the web and continues to do so in so many ways. I think they'd be on the short list of who has helped the web the most.
  - dralley 5y ago
    LetsEncrypt was bootstrapped by Mozilla. Mozilla research contributed large amounts of research and development of Vorbis, Opus and AV1. Dav1d, Wasmtime, Wgpu, Asm.js which later turned into WebAssembly. "rr", the reverse debugger. Rust, obviously. The list continues.
  - mftb 5y ago
    Exactly. We're just seeing Rust spun out of the Servo effort, does anyone really doubt that Rust can and will be used to write code that will benefit the web? Most importantly Mozilla helps the web just by keeping FF going. Conversely Mozilla if you see this, this change is dispiriting. Including ads in Windows is literally the MS move that caused me to leave Windows for Linux a few years back. It's not the ads themselves or how they are presented that is the issue. It's the inevitable tracking that will follow on to increase the ads value. I'm not going to leave FF immediately over this change, but I am going to investigate what tracking comes with it and ultimately I'm determined to not let my computer and it's software be turned into a device for surveilling me rather than a tool for my use.
jaytaylor 5y ago
Seems an automatic update has led to a downgrade in functionality (newly on-by-default ads), and doesn't seem like a win for users. Is there a truly open source browser, meaning the project collaborates with the community, and is driven by / accepts pull request contributions? A browser developed completely in the open without a corporation whose primary income is derived from said browser?
- ewzimm 5y ago
  Falkon fits those criteria. https://invent.kde.org/network/falkon https://invent.kde.org/network/falkon
  - cropcirclbureau 5y ago
    Falkon uses QtWebEngine which uses Chromium under the hood if I"m reading this right. I believe this disqualifies it from what the author's looking for or is there more to it than that?
    - ewzimm 5y ago
      QtWebEngine uses code from the Chromium project but doesn’t just copy it. https://wiki.qt.io/QtWebEngine https://wiki.qt.io/QtWebEngine The browser is developed in the open, accepts community contributions, and doesn’t have any potential financial conflicts that could work against users. It could benefit a lot from more contributions, especially to the Windows and Mac versions, and there are no mobile versions yet. It’s a very capable browser as it is, but if more people joined the project, it could be the best. Would it be necessary to remove any Chromium code to stay fully open? I wouldn’t say so, but some might disagree.
  - mickotron 5y ago
    Updates are few and very far between.
- thristian 5y ago
  Chrome is advertising based and is not very interested in external contributions, so we'll ignore that. Firefox is developed completely in the open and accepts external contributions, but it's deliberately focussed on end-users, not contributors. WebKit is not a browser, but you can build a browser on top of it, and many people have. I don't think Apple is very interested in individual contributions, but I believe that (for example) the GTK+ port is part of the official source tree and that's not Apple code. Of course, it'd be very difficult to change anything about the core code in a way that Apple didn't like. Then you've got the True Open Source web browsers - things like NetSurf, Dillo, elinks, w3m, lynx. Completely open-source, open to contributions, and generally only work on static documentation pages, not everyday browsing. That seems to be as good as it gets without the financial backing of a multinational corporation.
TrevorFSmith 5y ago
The support page about it shows that they don't send any information about users to the advertisers: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/navigate-web-faster-firefox-suggest https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/navigate-web-faster-fir... Also, I have it turned on but I can't seem to actually get it to show me an ad. Has anyone seen an ad in their suggestions?
- waterhouse 5y ago
  Another of their pages uses "vans" as an example, and I do see a "sponsored" suggestion when I type that. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/firefox-suggest/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/fi... (search the page for "vans")
  - TrevorFSmith 5y ago
    Ok, thanks. Yep, when I type "vans" in the URL field I see a link to eBay marked with a "sponsored" flag. I'm glad it's clearly marked, at least. The sponsored eBay URL I'm given has these parameters: _nkw=vans mkevt=1 mkcid=2 mkrid=711-4011-10148-0 keyword=conducive crlp=318361097US282021100618 MT_ID=562786 geo_id=10232 device=computers cmpgn=216223 I'm not sure what each value means.
    - pseudo0 5y ago
      The crlp looks like it has a timestamp and geo_id appears to be a zip code. The rest is non-trivial to decode.
- TrevorFSmith 5y ago
  It says that they're partnered with adMarketplace: https://www.admarketplace.com/ https://www.admarketplace.com/ Their site uses the word "privacy" a lot but
- joe_guy 5y ago
  But they did basically give a third party marketing company a key logger on your address bar.
zargon 5y ago
Mozilla, how about trying something novel instead? Like, I don't know, maybe allowing your users to give you money?
- strombofulous 5y ago
  Good news, you can! https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/
  - tick_tock_tick 5y ago
    This is a donation to Mozilla which as they clearly don't give a fuck about Firefox's success has a snowballs chance in hell at funding Firefox development. > Contributions go to the Mozilla Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization based in San Francisco, California, to be used in its discretion for its charitable purposes. They are tax-deductible in the U.S. to the fullest extent permitted by law.
    - dralley 5y ago
      Under US tax law, they cannot legally spend tax-exempt donated funds on the development of a for-profit product.
      - MattGaiser 5y ago
        Can workers in a building (or cloud, as things currently are) really be so clearly binned?
      - toss1 5y ago
        Yes, but that does not prevent them from spending it on some other 'priority', pet project, administration or whatever else might cross their mind other than Firefox Development. IDK what are their actual intentions, and they might be 100% focused on FF dev, but nothing in the tax law keeps them on that focus.
  - theamk 5y ago
analogdreams 5y ago
as much as i hate ads, i'm OK w/ this if it keeps firefox going. i personally can't stand chrome -- i don't know why, it just doesn't 'feel' right to me.
- dymk 5y ago
  I'd much rather they put some big intrusive banner soliciting for donations a-la Wikipedia
da_big_ghey 5y ago
> also whoever posted my tweet to the orange website, fuck you Everybody hate the angry orange site... very sad
amanzi 5y ago
I have the latest version of Firefox (93.0) but don't have this option. Was this an A/B test or was it removed in the latest version? (the OP said they were using version 92)
- gaius_baltar 5y ago
  Probably an A/B triggered in installations that allow Firefox studies. That's the feature used to conditionnally deploy these.
  - CaliforniaKarl 5y ago
    Per one of the followup tweets, that's unlikely: https://twitter.com/ladyaeva/status/1445919761901129728 https://twitter.com/ladyaeva/status/1445919761901129728 > I have "install and run studies" disabled.
indymike 5y ago
This feature is a strong do not want.
blibble 5y ago
there's an ad on the incognito new tab page too https://imgur.com/E9vHjaW https://imgur.com/E9vHjaW pretty obnoxious in dark mode edit: you can get rid of this in about:config by clearing the value of browser.privatebrowsing.vpnpromourl
- keanebean86 5y ago
  Soon we'll go full circle back to the days of banner ads at the top like in Opera 8.
- sellyme 5y ago
  The worst part about that ad is that it even shows up when the product isn't available in your region!
aphroz 5y ago
Is HN the orange website she's talking about when she says: "also whoever posted my tweet to the orange website, fuck you" ? Why?
- someotherperson 5y ago
  Because it’s cool to hate things. Some people form identities through the things they dislike rather than the things they do like.
- kayge 5y ago
  And one of the replies to that tweet: "yes, ywhiteguys.com is terrible." Guess where that redirects to...
- eigengrau5150 5y ago
  Because nobody outside HN likes HN or its regulars.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    A decent chunk of HN hates its regulars too, based on the comments.
- aaomidi 5y ago
  Because this website is shit. The opinions here are usually male and white (while also somehow anti rules but also pro rules for other people? E.g modern day conservative). Anytime a topic about race, gender, etc comes up this website turns into a shithole. Seriously if you don't believe me go look at any thread that was remotely about race, gender, pay gap, etc etc. The opinions here either turn into victim blaming, saying there is no issue, or actively defending billion dollar companies. I like the topics that sometimes get posted here, and I certainly learn from some of the comment threads here. But this website turns worse than reddit when it comes to anything controversial.
  - anontrot 5y ago
    interesting...
stebalien 5y ago
"Enabled for US users only" because they'd go bankrupt due to GDPR violations otherwise. I had disabled search suggestions because I didn't want a key logger in my address bar and Mozilla most certainly did not get my consent or notify me of any changes to the privacy policy before they helpfully enabled this "feature" for me.
gaius_baltar 5y ago
Oh frak, not again. Mozilla, please, allow us to donate money in a way that we can be sure it will be used for *developing Firefox* and not for some nonsensical Mozilla Foundation project.
- 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
  If they can develop a decent VPN product or password manager, I would also pay for that.
  - someotherperson 5y ago
    Please no. No more Mozilla junk. There are plenty of VPN products and equally as many Password Managers. It’s focusing on junk like Lockwise instead of Firefox that is causing Mozilla to consistently get worse.
    - dralley 5y ago
      Half of the critics always complain that Mozilla is too reliant on Google, the other half complain that they spend any time whatsoever on profitable side projects that give them independent sources of revenue.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
      How else do you propose they fund the development of their browser?
  - m-p-3 5y ago
    I'd pay for Firefox Relay to have unlimited aliases.
- someotherperson 5y ago
  Mozilla doesn’t need donations. The $450 million it gets from Google each year is enough for a browser. It’s enough to the point that the CEO is having their seven figure salary doubled in the last five years. Any money you want to give to Mozilla is just going to be a waste: there are plenty of other open source projects worth supporting instead.
peanut_worm 5y ago
The future for web browsers looks pretty dark
temp0826 5y ago
Looks like you can set browser.urlbar.suggest.quicksuggest.sponsored to false to remove sponsored suggestions. Searching about:config for "sponsor" brings up a few items.
- userbinator 5y ago
  The point being made by the OP and the comments here is that shouldn't be necessary. When every update includes new obnoxious shit that you don't want and have to figure out how to revert, it's no longer an improvement. Fighting the software you use is a horrible position to be in.
userbinator 5y ago
Firefox is still "lesser of the evils" when it comes to "modern" (as defined by Google, who essentially controls the Web now) browsers, but it's sad to see its decline. I wish more web developers would stick with basic HTML and CSS so that their content could be accessible with the various other minority browsers out there. Instead we have the constant churn of an immensely complex ecosystem of frameworks and "standards" controlled by a single megacorp whose ultimate goal is to make everyone use --- and remain eternally dependent on --- none other than its spyware-infused browser. In other words, to fight Google's monopoly, we must first refuse its desire for continual change, and that is unfortunately difficult for many.
- fleaaaa 5y ago
  Wish the same thing as an webdev, but modern browser is almost a small vm these days..
ramblenode 5y ago
I would guess a lot of Firefox's core users (the ones who evangelize it, install it for relatives, file bug reports, write plugins, etc.) stick around because this browser has been a hedge against uncomfortable trends in big tech, many of which were spawned from ad tech. Going the way of ads seems like a dangerous line to tinker with if Mozilla wants to maintain the trust of these users. Maybe there is a way to do ads well that isn't intrusive and that adds value to the UX. Or maybe it will annoy people and damage the brand by de-differentiating Firefox from Chrome and Brave. I like to give Mozilla the benefit of the doubt, because it's important that they innovate, but getting into the ad business feels like it could be a deal with the devil. Maybe you make more money---but if you lose your soul then you're just another browser ready to be replaced by the next shiny thing.
- greenyoda 5y ago
  > Maybe there is a way to do ads well... At the very least, they should have made it opt-in rather than opt-out. I don't like them quietly sneaking a pre-enabled advertising option into the configuration options. And they know it's a potential privacy issue, since all the address bar suggestion options are already under the "Privacy & Security" settings.
  - reustle 5y ago
    If they were opt in, would they even make back the investment it took to build the feature to begin with?
- _ofdw 5y ago
  >Maybe there is a way to do ads well that isn't intrusive and that adds value to the UX. There isn't.
  - rschneid 5y ago
    Okay, I'll bite. I believe ads can exist if I consent to being shown them BEFOREHAND and alternatives, such as paying to opt-out completely are offered. The world is vast and changing with increasing velocity. I cannot keep up with all the possible tech products and services coming out even if I had a theoretically perfect RSS feed combined with other follows/subscriptions to content feeds. If a product is commercially successful to the point where they can afford to throw dollars at a probability of acquiring a new user, there's no fundamental reason why that behavior is necessarily bad/unwelcome. If I visit a news website, I want to be presented (before assaulted with ads) with a notice that provides me the option of paying for the content or seeing ads. Off the top of my head, spiegel.de follows this paradigm. A level further, and within reason for a downloaded/heavily-used/customizable software such as web browser is the opportunity to see ads that are relevant to my interests by affording me the option of indicating my interests to the platform before ads are shown and the ability to easily discriminate arbitrarily against a specific ad or categories related to any ad I don't like for any reason. If I don't like the ads a company shows me, even on the free version, they should not be repeated. If I don't want any category of ads that must be fine, but they company may opt to place a generic request for support of their corporation a-la-wikipedia funding request-- I am using their software for free, after all... But to say there isn't exploring the full range of UX that can be afforded by modern software systems. I say this as someone who is deeply disturbed by this latest update and will stop recommending FF as an alternative to chrome with superior privacy settings. Your reply just struck me as horribly defeatist. Ads are not leaving the web, but they _can_ be served with far better motives than they are currently.
omar_kha 5y ago
Can we have two firefox, pro without the ads and pocker for $5 a month?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deflox 5y ago
Is this maybe not rolled out to every user? I have version 93.0 installed and I do not find this option in my settings.
- deflox 5y ago
  Found my answer on their page about Firefox Suggest[0]: "Note: Firefox Suggest is currently available for a limited number of users in the U.S. only." [0]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/navigate-web-faster-firefox-suggest https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/navigate-web-faster-fir...
cV6WB 5y ago
Looks like a nothing here. Mozilla is within their right to add features to monetize their product and provide clear opt-outs for users who prefer “how it used to be”.
errantmind 5y ago
Firefox seems to be following the same path of aging products like Cable TV and newspapers. It is loading the product with ad monetization until only the people who don't care about it are left. I have a hard time sympathizing when they have been paid hundreds of millions of dollars a year for over a decade. Yes, they want to diversify away from Google's payments but I don't believe it takes that much money to make a web browser, even if they are massively complicated. I also believe only a tiny fraction of that money goes towards Firefox development. A lot of people defend Mozilla here but we have needed a decent alternative since Firefox added Pocket integration. I have used Firefox since release many years ago, and this is the last straw.
koziserek 5y ago
can I dedicate a song to certain Mrs? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ye18aMVD7Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ye18aMVD7Q

190 points by Shank 5y ago

na85 5y ago

Oh for fuck's sake. When will Mozilla stop making boneheaded decisions like this?

brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
Probably an unpopular opinion: Never. Mozilla is a hollowed out shell, destroyed by monetary needs. Clearly, today's Firefox, let alone Mozilla, is no longer a bastion of the free web, but an example of how late stage capitalism can destroy such wonderful projects.
- artificial 5y ago
  They spend money on social causes, advocacy, and not purely on engineering. It has a product in a niche the overwhelming majority of people don’t want to pay for.
  - stubish 5y ago
    As free-to-play games have demonstrated, you don't need an overwhelming majority of people to pay. There are even ways to find out if it is going to work, such as say a crowd source campaign to pay for n years of browser maintenance and development with various levels of branded merchandise so people can signal their allegiance at conferences. So far I've just seen a donation link for the foundation, which gets a lot of hate because it funds all the stuff lots of potential donors want Mozilla to stop doing.
    - dralley 5y ago
      >As free-to-play games have demonstrated, you don't need an overwhelming majority of people to pay. Are free-to-play games really the best example here? Also, a lot of those are funded by ads...
- uselesscynicism 5y ago
  [dead]

funOtter 5y ago

As a Firefox user, I am very disappointed at this change.

xvilka 5y ago

The only one chance Mozilla had is to finish Firefox conversion to Rust, a complete conversion. That would have made development and updates easier. Apparently, by firing most of the team they put a writing on the wall. It's just a question of time.

dralley 5y ago
Lol, what. No. The only chance Mozilla had was for Congress and the FTC to wake up 5 years ago instead of 5 months ago. As someone who made a couple of contributions to the Servo project, semi-followed the development and compiled and ran it every so often, all of the parts which were production ready and had a clear path to being merged into Firefox (apart from maybe Pathfinder) are already merged into Firefox. It was a research project, some parts of the research were spectacularly successful, and these were adopted and merged into Firefox. Other parts of it were less successful. The HTML engine was nowhere even remotely close to production-grade and the interaction with SpiderMonkey was incredibly complex and flaky. Even simple sites like google.com were frequently broken. There was a rewrite [0] underway when the team was let go because various parts of the architecture were incompatible with a fully compliant implementation. Even setting aside that half of the Firefox code is tied to engine internals such as XUL, it would have taken a few more years to get it into a production ready state. I still wish that the project hadn't been dropped, it's a real shame. But it wouldn't have "saved' them. [0] https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Layout-2020 https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Layout-2020

sergiomattei 5y ago

Calling this an ad is a bit of a stretch.

93po 5y ago
Strong disagree. Ads vary wildly, including "native advertising" where companies pay news outlets to report some development on the company and pretend it's some sort of real journalism. It's still an ad.
celsoazevedo 5y ago
This looks like an ad: https://i.imgur.com/yCZ7UgY.png https://i.imgur.com/yCZ7UgY.png
- sergiomattei 5y ago
  Nvm you're right, that is an ad

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bejelentkezni 5y ago

I must ask those who are still sticking with Firefox over Chromium-based browsers, especially those who do so soley for the purpose of staying off a Google web monopoly, to what end? When and how do you think Mozilla will ever do anything to help the web? They integrate all of Google's non-standards just as quickly as Google does, take Google money, and then do adamantly anti-user stunts like this and the Pocket and the incessant VPN shilling. And it's significantly harder to make a good version of Firefox, you have to mess with userscripts or profiles or LibreWolf or cross your fingers and hope some nebulous omnipotent distro maintainers just take care of it. With chromium there are several builds with the spy and suck stripped out readily available because most of it is blobs or API keys, very easy to just exclude at build time. See https://chromium.woolyss.com https://chromium.woolyss.com. I make this comment partially because this is one of the more egregious things Mozilla has done recently but also because I've recently switched to Chromium myself and the whole experience is much faster and smoother so I recommend everyone do it. Happy to be debunked.

fletchowns 5y ago
> When and how do you think Mozilla will ever do anything to help the web? Firefox helps the web. MDN helps the web. Mozilla SSL Configuration Generator helps the web. Mozilla has helped the web and continues to do so in so many ways. I think they'd be on the short list of who has helped the web the most.
- dralley 5y ago
  LetsEncrypt was bootstrapped by Mozilla. Mozilla research contributed large amounts of research and development of Vorbis, Opus and AV1. Dav1d, Wasmtime, Wgpu, Asm.js which later turned into WebAssembly. "rr", the reverse debugger. Rust, obviously. The list continues.
- mftb 5y ago
  Exactly. We're just seeing Rust spun out of the Servo effort, does anyone really doubt that Rust can and will be used to write code that will benefit the web? Most importantly Mozilla helps the web just by keeping FF going. Conversely Mozilla if you see this, this change is dispiriting. Including ads in Windows is literally the MS move that caused me to leave Windows for Linux a few years back. It's not the ads themselves or how they are presented that is the issue. It's the inevitable tracking that will follow on to increase the ads value. I'm not going to leave FF immediately over this change, but I am going to investigate what tracking comes with it and ultimately I'm determined to not let my computer and it's software be turned into a device for surveilling me rather than a tool for my use.

jaytaylor 5y ago

Seems an automatic update has led to a downgrade in functionality (newly on-by-default ads), and doesn't seem like a win for users. Is there a truly open source browser, meaning the project collaborates with the community, and is driven by / accepts pull request contributions? A browser developed completely in the open without a corporation whose primary income is derived from said browser?

ewzimm 5y ago
Falkon fits those criteria. https://invent.kde.org/network/falkon https://invent.kde.org/network/falkon
- cropcirclbureau 5y ago
  Falkon uses QtWebEngine which uses Chromium under the hood if I"m reading this right. I believe this disqualifies it from what the author's looking for or is there more to it than that?
  - ewzimm 5y ago
    QtWebEngine uses code from the Chromium project but doesn’t just copy it. https://wiki.qt.io/QtWebEngine https://wiki.qt.io/QtWebEngine The browser is developed in the open, accepts community contributions, and doesn’t have any potential financial conflicts that could work against users. It could benefit a lot from more contributions, especially to the Windows and Mac versions, and there are no mobile versions yet. It’s a very capable browser as it is, but if more people joined the project, it could be the best. Would it be necessary to remove any Chromium code to stay fully open? I wouldn’t say so, but some might disagree.
- mickotron 5y ago
  Updates are few and very far between.
thristian 5y ago
Chrome is advertising based and is not very interested in external contributions, so we'll ignore that. Firefox is developed completely in the open and accepts external contributions, but it's deliberately focussed on end-users, not contributors. WebKit is not a browser, but you can build a browser on top of it, and many people have. I don't think Apple is very interested in individual contributions, but I believe that (for example) the GTK+ port is part of the official source tree and that's not Apple code. Of course, it'd be very difficult to change anything about the core code in a way that Apple didn't like. Then you've got the True Open Source web browsers - things like NetSurf, Dillo, elinks, w3m, lynx. Completely open-source, open to contributions, and generally only work on static documentation pages, not everyday browsing. That seems to be as good as it gets without the financial backing of a multinational corporation.

TrevorFSmith 5y ago

The support page about it shows that they don't send any information about users to the advertisers: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/navigate-web-faster-firefox-suggest https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/navigate-web-faster-fir... Also, I have it turned on but I can't seem to actually get it to show me an ad. Has anyone seen an ad in their suggestions?

waterhouse 5y ago
Another of their pages uses "vans" as an example, and I do see a "sponsored" suggestion when I type that. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/firefox-suggest/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/fi... (search the page for "vans")
- TrevorFSmith 5y ago
  Ok, thanks. Yep, when I type "vans" in the URL field I see a link to eBay marked with a "sponsored" flag. I'm glad it's clearly marked, at least. The sponsored eBay URL I'm given has these parameters: _nkw=vans mkevt=1 mkcid=2 mkrid=711-4011-10148-0 keyword=conducive crlp=318361097US282021100618 MT_ID=562786 geo_id=10232 device=computers cmpgn=216223 I'm not sure what each value means.
  - pseudo0 5y ago
    The crlp looks like it has a timestamp and geo_id appears to be a zip code. The rest is non-trivial to decode.
TrevorFSmith 5y ago
It says that they're partnered with adMarketplace: https://www.admarketplace.com/ https://www.admarketplace.com/ Their site uses the word "privacy" a lot but
joe_guy 5y ago
But they did basically give a third party marketing company a key logger on your address bar.

zargon 5y ago

Mozilla, how about trying something novel instead? Like, I don't know, maybe allowing your users to give you money?

strombofulous 5y ago
Good news, you can! https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/
- tick_tock_tick 5y ago
  This is a donation to Mozilla which as they clearly don't give a fuck about Firefox's success has a snowballs chance in hell at funding Firefox development. > Contributions go to the Mozilla Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization based in San Francisco, California, to be used in its discretion for its charitable purposes. They are tax-deductible in the U.S. to the fullest extent permitted by law.
  - dralley 5y ago
    Under US tax law, they cannot legally spend tax-exempt donated funds on the development of a for-profit product.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      Can workers in a building (or cloud, as things currently are) really be so clearly binned?
    - toss1 5y ago
      Yes, but that does not prevent them from spending it on some other 'priority', pet project, administration or whatever else might cross their mind other than Firefox Development. IDK what are their actual intentions, and they might be 100% focused on FF dev, but nothing in the tax law keeps them on that focus.
- theamk 5y ago

analogdreams 5y ago

as much as i hate ads, i'm OK w/ this if it keeps firefox going. i personally can't stand chrome -- i don't know why, it just doesn't 'feel' right to me.

dymk 5y ago
I'd much rather they put some big intrusive banner soliciting for donations a-la Wikipedia

da_big_ghey 5y ago

> also whoever posted my tweet to the orange website, fuck you Everybody hate the angry orange site... very sad

amanzi 5y ago

I have the latest version of Firefox (93.0) but don't have this option. Was this an A/B test or was it removed in the latest version? (the OP said they were using version 92)

gaius_baltar 5y ago
Probably an A/B triggered in installations that allow Firefox studies. That's the feature used to conditionnally deploy these.
- CaliforniaKarl 5y ago
  Per one of the followup tweets, that's unlikely: https://twitter.com/ladyaeva/status/1445919761901129728 https://twitter.com/ladyaeva/status/1445919761901129728 > I have "install and run studies" disabled.

indymike 5y ago

This feature is a strong do not want.

blibble 5y ago

there's an ad on the incognito new tab page too https://imgur.com/E9vHjaW https://imgur.com/E9vHjaW pretty obnoxious in dark mode edit: you can get rid of this in about:config by clearing the value of browser.privatebrowsing.vpnpromourl

keanebean86 5y ago
Soon we'll go full circle back to the days of banner ads at the top like in Opera 8.
sellyme 5y ago
The worst part about that ad is that it even shows up when the product isn't available in your region!

aphroz 5y ago

Is HN the orange website she's talking about when she says: "also whoever posted my tweet to the orange website, fuck you" ? Why?

someotherperson 5y ago
Because it’s cool to hate things. Some people form identities through the things they dislike rather than the things they do like.
kayge 5y ago
And one of the replies to that tweet: "yes, ywhiteguys.com is terrible." Guess where that redirects to...
eigengrau5150 5y ago
Because nobody outside HN likes HN or its regulars.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  A decent chunk of HN hates its regulars too, based on the comments.
aaomidi 5y ago
Because this website is shit. The opinions here are usually male and white (while also somehow anti rules but also pro rules for other people? E.g modern day conservative). Anytime a topic about race, gender, etc comes up this website turns into a shithole. Seriously if you don't believe me go look at any thread that was remotely about race, gender, pay gap, etc etc. The opinions here either turn into victim blaming, saying there is no issue, or actively defending billion dollar companies. I like the topics that sometimes get posted here, and I certainly learn from some of the comment threads here. But this website turns worse than reddit when it comes to anything controversial.
- anontrot 5y ago
  interesting...

stebalien 5y ago

"Enabled for US users only" because they'd go bankrupt due to GDPR violations otherwise. I had disabled search suggestions because I didn't want a key logger in my address bar and Mozilla most certainly did not get my consent or notify me of any changes to the privacy policy before they helpfully enabled this "feature" for me.

gaius_baltar 5y ago

Oh frak, not again. Mozilla, please, allow us to donate money in a way that we can be sure it will be used for *developing Firefox* and not for some nonsensical Mozilla Foundation project.

2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
If they can develop a decent VPN product or password manager, I would also pay for that.
- someotherperson 5y ago
  Please no. No more Mozilla junk. There are plenty of VPN products and equally as many Password Managers. It’s focusing on junk like Lockwise instead of Firefox that is causing Mozilla to consistently get worse.
  - dralley 5y ago
    Half of the critics always complain that Mozilla is too reliant on Google, the other half complain that they spend any time whatsoever on profitable side projects that give them independent sources of revenue.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
    How else do you propose they fund the development of their browser?
- m-p-3 5y ago
  I'd pay for Firefox Relay to have unlimited aliases.
someotherperson 5y ago
Mozilla doesn’t need donations. The $450 million it gets from Google each year is enough for a browser. It’s enough to the point that the CEO is having their seven figure salary doubled in the last five years. Any money you want to give to Mozilla is just going to be a waste: there are plenty of other open source projects worth supporting instead.

peanut_worm 5y ago

The future for web browsers looks pretty dark

temp0826 5y ago

Looks like you can set browser.urlbar.suggest.quicksuggest.sponsored to false to remove sponsored suggestions. Searching about:config for "sponsor" brings up a few items.

userbinator 5y ago
The point being made by the OP and the comments here is that shouldn't be necessary. When every update includes new obnoxious shit that you don't want and have to figure out how to revert, it's no longer an improvement. Fighting the software you use is a horrible position to be in.

userbinator 5y ago

Firefox is still "lesser of the evils" when it comes to "modern" (as defined by Google, who essentially controls the Web now) browsers, but it's sad to see its decline. I wish more web developers would stick with basic HTML and CSS so that their content could be accessible with the various other minority browsers out there. Instead we have the constant churn of an immensely complex ecosystem of frameworks and "standards" controlled by a single megacorp whose ultimate goal is to make everyone use --- and remain eternally dependent on --- none other than its spyware-infused browser. In other words, to fight Google's monopoly, we must first refuse its desire for continual change, and that is unfortunately difficult for many.

fleaaaa 5y ago
Wish the same thing as an webdev, but modern browser is almost a small vm these days..

ramblenode 5y ago

I would guess a lot of Firefox's core users (the ones who evangelize it, install it for relatives, file bug reports, write plugins, etc.) stick around because this browser has been a hedge against uncomfortable trends in big tech, many of which were spawned from ad tech. Going the way of ads seems like a dangerous line to tinker with if Mozilla wants to maintain the trust of these users. Maybe there is a way to do ads well that isn't intrusive and that adds value to the UX. Or maybe it will annoy people and damage the brand by de-differentiating Firefox from Chrome and Brave. I like to give Mozilla the benefit of the doubt, because it's important that they innovate, but getting into the ad business feels like it could be a deal with the devil. Maybe you make more money---but if you lose your soul then you're just another browser ready to be replaced by the next shiny thing.

greenyoda 5y ago
> Maybe there is a way to do ads well... At the very least, they should have made it opt-in rather than opt-out. I don't like them quietly sneaking a pre-enabled advertising option into the configuration options. And they know it's a potential privacy issue, since all the address bar suggestion options are already under the "Privacy & Security" settings.
- reustle 5y ago
  If they were opt in, would they even make back the investment it took to build the feature to begin with?
_ofdw 5y ago
>Maybe there is a way to do ads well that isn't intrusive and that adds value to the UX. There isn't.
- rschneid 5y ago
  Okay, I'll bite. I believe ads can exist if I consent to being shown them BEFOREHAND and alternatives, such as paying to opt-out completely are offered. The world is vast and changing with increasing velocity. I cannot keep up with all the possible tech products and services coming out even if I had a theoretically perfect RSS feed combined with other follows/subscriptions to content feeds. If a product is commercially successful to the point where they can afford to throw dollars at a probability of acquiring a new user, there's no fundamental reason why that behavior is necessarily bad/unwelcome. If I visit a news website, I want to be presented (before assaulted with ads) with a notice that provides me the option of paying for the content or seeing ads. Off the top of my head, spiegel.de follows this paradigm. A level further, and within reason for a downloaded/heavily-used/customizable software such as web browser is the opportunity to see ads that are relevant to my interests by affording me the option of indicating my interests to the platform before ads are shown and the ability to easily discriminate arbitrarily against a specific ad or categories related to any ad I don't like for any reason. If I don't like the ads a company shows me, even on the free version, they should not be repeated. If I don't want any category of ads that must be fine, but they company may opt to place a generic request for support of their corporation a-la-wikipedia funding request-- I am using their software for free, after all... But to say there isn't exploring the full range of UX that can be afforded by modern software systems. I say this as someone who is deeply disturbed by this latest update and will stop recommending FF as an alternative to chrome with superior privacy settings. Your reply just struck me as horribly defeatist. Ads are not leaving the web, but they _can_ be served with far better motives than they are currently.

omar_kha 5y ago

Can we have two firefox, pro without the ads and pocker for $5 a month?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deflox 5y ago

Is this maybe not rolled out to every user? I have version 93.0 installed and I do not find this option in my settings.

deflox 5y ago
Found my answer on their page about Firefox Suggest[0]: "Note: Firefox Suggest is currently available for a limited number of users in the U.S. only." [0]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/navigate-web-faster-firefox-suggest https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/navigate-web-faster-fir...

cV6WB 5y ago

Looks like a nothing here. Mozilla is within their right to add features to monetize their product and provide clear opt-outs for users who prefer “how it used to be”.

errantmind 5y ago

Firefox seems to be following the same path of aging products like Cable TV and newspapers. It is loading the product with ad monetization until only the people who don't care about it are left. I have a hard time sympathizing when they have been paid hundreds of millions of dollars a year for over a decade. Yes, they want to diversify away from Google's payments but I don't believe it takes that much money to make a web browser, even if they are massively complicated. I also believe only a tiny fraction of that money goes towards Firefox development. A lot of people defend Mozilla here but we have needed a decent alternative since Firefox added Pocket integration. I have used Firefox since release many years ago, and this is the last straw.

koziserek 5y ago

can I dedicate a song to certain Mrs? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ye18aMVD7Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ye18aMVD7Q