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Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

• paulintrognon 5y ago
  They do that because they need money. Why can't they just ask for money? Can't we just have a healthier business model: you want a good product that cost money to develop, just pay for it? It could be a freemium model: users paying for premium features (Sync, VPN, ...) support the company, for example.
  • krageon 5y ago
    > they need money They don't need money, they have an almost unthinkable amount of capital. If they'd kill all their stupid side stuff and fire that weird shark at the top they could develop this browser for a long time. In fact, instead of firing the servo team that is what they should have done instead of this alienating and frankly extremely problematic policy shift.
• gameswithgo 5y ago
  oh no. what browser can we use now?
• chinathrow 5y ago
  I've been on Firefox since the Phoenix era and used the Mozilla suite before that. This is something I will absolutely not tolerate, at all. How on earth do they think users want that? Seriously Mozilla, how? Why?
• 57844743385 5y ago
  Before you attack Mozilla….. are you using it as your primary browser? I.e are you supporting them already? Do you believe Mozilla should be able to pay its bills? If you’re not happy with this way of raising revenue, what else do you suggest?
  • xxs 5y ago
    how do you support firefox, b/c there is no direct way at all.
  • gpvos 5y ago
    Oh yes, it's my only browser. I'd like to pay for it. Even though I live in an area where they aren't presenting ads yet.
  • o_m 5y ago
    I don't care about Mozilla. I just want to support Firefox.
  • junaru 5y ago
    Yes, since it was named Phoenix. Id pay $50 every five years or so for a new version. But for that five years they only introduce bugfixes and introduce zero UI changes.
  • yosamino 5y ago
    https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/mozilla-fdn-2019-short-form-0926.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/mozilla-fdn-201... I don't have a clue on how to read such a statement correctly. But what I am seeing there is over 800 million USD worth of revenue. For one year. If that is not enough to build one browser that is not crammed with ads then we are all doomed anyway.
  • kongin 5y ago
    I suggest they act like a non-for-profit and live within their means from the mountain of cash they already have.
• owlmirror 5y ago
  Now I better understand why they butchered the address bar the way they did. Instead of treating it like simple form element their change served one point and one point only, draw attention to it and make it more prominent. And the reason for it was just to serve their ads on a bigger and more intrusive canvas and not UX related.
  • ubercow13 5y ago
    Well, no, the address bar is one of Firefox’s best UX features. Thank god it’s not just a simple form element, it’s much more useful now. Before it was something like the Windows run dialog text box but now it’s more similar to my zsh prompt with aliases for searching and fuzzy history recall etc.
    • owlmirror 5y ago
      I see the benefits for these features, but do not see why the bar had to become that obtrusive in appearance and behavior for them. But for me these features are useless at best and a distraction in practice, I don't want suggestions from my browser, at all, I want to think for my self. I use the url bar simply for entering addresses, or for copying and editing them. I completely disabled my history and what I want to remember I keep as bookmarks. When I want so search something I use the search box.
      • hoseja 5y ago
        There's "switch to tab" which I've found useful when I forget I have a tab already open.
• fguerraz 5y ago
  For what it is worth: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1734559 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1734559
  • funOtter 5y ago
    I think logging a bug to remove this associated functionality might have been more "Valid."
• RocketMan9999 5y ago
  Mozilla FYI, the people here represent only a minor portion of 6% of the whole web browser user base, just ignore them and leave some subtle ways for them to disable whatever they hate, and everything will be fine. People here aren't living in the same world where your usual users live.
  • Tom4hawk 5y ago
    And yet, they are probably responsible for 50% of users. My parents, my sister and some of my friends are using Firefox not because they did research but because I recommended/installed it and told them that if they use something else, they are on their own in case of any problems.
  • Narishma 5y ago
    That's a good way to get that 6% to a 0.6% is a few years.
• account42 5y ago
  Currently sticking to 90 because of Mozilla's disregard for their users. I do not have any hope for Mozilla turning themselves around - a replacement can't come soon enough.
• yrro 5y ago
  Oh for fuck's sake. We (users of the free web) desperately need to prevent complete takeover by Google's Chrome ecosystem. But when I see Mozilla wasting valuable resources on integrating advertising... Mozilla, set up a 'Firefox supporters' program. I will gladly chuck you $10 a month to ensure Firefox remains viable. I'm sure I'm not alone!
• moocowtruck 5y ago
  i actually just decided to move back to chrome from FF last night.. good timing i guess
• shomyo 5y ago
  Love the level of mental gymnastics by firefox-xers here in comments.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• password4321 5y ago
  How convenient for 657 comments to disappear off the front page, marked as a dupe... http://hnrankings.info/28783381/ http://hnrankings.info/28783381/
• sva_ 5y ago
  I've been looking for an alternative recently anyways. Haven't quite found the right catch yet. Sad to surrender to Chromium after all these years, but Firefox seems to get worse and worse.
  • okamiueru 5y ago
    I've been using Vivaldi lately, and very happy with it. I really missed the old days of Opera, which for a long time was superior to Firefox and Chrome in so many ways. Up until they changed the web, and Opera dom/rendering engine couldn't keep up. Vivaldi is the successor to Opera in many ways.
  • blippage 5y ago
    I've used Dillo. It's amazing how snappy a browser can be. Alas, it's an impractical browser to use, as most sites require JavaScript. The real problem is websites, ever-increasing the capabilities of browsers. If that went away then the whole problem of choosing a browser would be solved. All browsers are capable of rendering vanilla HTML, and even graphics, so there's usually very little need for JavaScript. There's always the option of processing dynamic content on the backend. I heard that Google Maps originally spat out pages that were in the region of a few 10's of kb. Imagine that! We live in curious times. Engineers used to design for simplicity, now we seem to just sling more mud onto the pile. It's also curious that environmentalism is such a hot-button topic these days, yet manufacturers are pushing out stuff that makes it harder to repair.
  • soundnote 5y ago
    Vivaldi and Brave are the best picks, IMO. Both default to a lot of privacy-friendly settings, try not to track you, and run their own sync stack that's end to end encrypted by default.
• ohgodplsno 5y ago
  Before HN flips its shit and threatens to move to a browser that is either owned by an ad company, or use a browser that replaces all ads with its own ads, you are asked whether you want to enable it or not on the first launch. As much as it sucks, having more sources of income rather than just relying on Google is a net positive.
  • KptMarchewa 5y ago
    If prefer replacing existing ads than adding new ones in places that were "trusted" to me.
  • mnadkvlb 5y ago
    Firefox should split from mozilla and have its own foundation. I dont feel like donating to mozilla under the current bean counter CEO. If its an individual organization doing just firefox, i would 100% buy/subscribe to a paid version of the open source browser, which is not shilling my data for ads. I cant believe i am the only one who wants this.
    • soundnote 5y ago
      Your donations go to Mozilla Foundation anyway. The Foundation doesn't develop Firefox, their subsidiary Mozilla Corp does. You can't donate to Mozilla Corp.
• eCa 5y ago
  As someone who has used Firefox since v0.* I really, really, really dislike the language they have used lately. > relevant suggestions from our trusted partners The suggestions are not relevant to, and the partners not trusted by, me.
  • zenlf 5y ago
    Yes I share the same sentiment. This “Privacy First Data Sharing Platform” for example https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/take-control-over-your-data-with-rally-a-novel-privacy-first-data-sharing-platform/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/take-control-over-your-d...
  • davidsergey 5y ago
    Indeed. They should just state "It's an Ad". I doubt they actually going to try every product that they are advertising, to make wording "suggestion" be even close to the truth. That said, I don't understand, why would somebody use Firefox instead of Chrome, Edge, or Safari if they ad in-browser ads.
    • dropmann 5y ago
      For example because Chrome treats Google cookies differently [1]? This is a red flag for people. With Firefox you at least know what you get. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18064537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18064537
      • davidsergey 5y ago
        I didn't know about it, thanks. But I'm software engineer, and I didn't know about it. I don't think most (as in 95%+, even in tech) people would know difference to care. My point is visibly – firefox seem to be just as ad-hungry as competition. They could be better behind the scenes, but customer wouldn't know it.
        • mszcz 5y ago
          You know what I miss? Software I can pay for. I'd happily shell out couple of bucks a year for a browser. Or a social network. I'd be more than happy to pay regularly for something that requires regular, constant, maintenance, upkeep, servers, salaries. But no, somehow humanity landed on free+ads. Ugh. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm just grumpy.
• Semaphor 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28779947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28779947 8 hours ago, 71 comments
• rich_sasha 5y ago
  It’s sucky and I particularly hate ads percolating to every part if my life, BUT how are they meant to support Firefox and other software without a revenue stream? Mozilla seems to attract criticism for how they run the whole operation, I can’t tell how correct it is, but even if they run it perfectly they still need revenue.
  • chaostheory 5y ago
    There should be a paid ad free membership for anyone who doesn’t like ads. Even if not many people take them up on this offer, it would be more fair since there would be a choice.
    • axelthegerman 5y ago
      This! How hard can it be to put a FF subscription payment somewhere inside the browser or on their website? Of course people can always fork it and remove it blabla. But we're talking about people who otherwise would donate and just want to do it more directly (as opposed to the whole Mozilla foundation)
      • cinquemb 5y ago
        Those people should form a DAO, pool their funds in a governable smart contract for disbursing them, and reach out to people thru hn search who have their own forks of FF now and who make comments cough like me cough on hn about it over the years every time FF adds some more garbage in their browser. ;) At this point, threads like this help me add to my list of what garbage i need to compile out every year or so when i feel like syncing up hahaha.
    • Semaphor 5y ago
      Alternatively, you could just choose to opt out when it asks you?
      • axelthegerman 5y ago
        Yes, but how can you then support FF financially to make sure it doesn't go away or development grinds to a halt?
• mhaberl 5y ago
  > You might notice a message inviting you to enable these new suggestions the next time you install or update Firefox. So its opt-in, what is the issue?
  • hericium 5y ago
    It's probably just temporarily an opt-in.
    • monooso 5y ago
      That seems like pure speculation.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • blippage 5y ago
        That seems like pure naivete. Two can play that game. A little over a year or so ago I downloaded Firefox. It kept bugging me for updates. But I didn't want these pestering updates. Erstwhile, I could just disable updating with a single unchecking of a box. But they changed it to make it almost impossible to disable updates. I never put enough effort into figuring it out. Firefox is getting just like Microsoft, Apple, FaceBook, GNOME, etc. "We set the policy, it's our software, you're just the user." I switched to Debian, which managed to sort all this nonsense out, thankfully.
        • roca 5y ago
          It is extremely dangerous to use a browser that is not fully up-to-date.
          • Nextgrid 5y ago
            It should still be the user's choice.
• closewith 5y ago
  Is it time to fork Firefox under a browser-focused organisation? I wish I could donate directly towards the development of Firefox to avoid this kind of deterioration, without funding Mozilla at all.
  • vitro 5y ago
    Yep, same with Thunderbird. I'd like to donate directly to the development of those, but it is not possible, AFAIK.
    • worble 5y ago
      You can donate directly to Thunderbird https://give.thunderbird.net/ https://give.thunderbird.net/ From the FAQ: >How will my gift be used? >Thunderbird is the leading open source cross-platform email and calendaring client, free for business and personal use. Your gift will help ensure it stays that way, and will support future development.
      • krageon 5y ago
        That doesn't say that it goes directly to thunderbird at all.
      • 0des 5y ago
        That doesn't sound specific enough to inspire confidence. Is there perhaps another passage that you can share which is more declarative and direct that the funds are only going to Thunderbird development? I like TB but every time I fire it up I'm getting this ticking-clock feeling
  • grey_earthling 5y ago
    LibreWolf is a soft-fork in this vein. Notably, it's on Flathub, so it's very easy to install. => https://librewolf-community.gitlab.io/ https://librewolf-community.gitlab.io/ Iceraven is a similar (less mature) project for Android. => https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser It would be nice to have a single umbrella project/brand, which could essentially treat Firefox in the same way Edge and Opera treat Chrome.
• flowck 5y ago
  Can anybody think of a sustainable business model for companies that mean well for users? (Mozilla, Signal)
  • krageon 5y ago
    > Signal Signal is run by a known angry dictator. The same goes for Mozilla. These companies don't mean well for users, they mean well for themselves. The rest is the narrative sauce that they abuse to insert themselves into a specific niche.
  • indigochill 5y ago
    Subscriptions. If you're going to keep people permanently on staff, a steady revenue stream is required. Either the users will provide that (aligning the incentives of the company with the users, since financial performance directly correlates to customer satisfaction), or other companies will, in the form of ad spend, corporate partnerships, cross-promotion, whatever. Possibly the more sustainable model overall is for software to become a gig job, where engineers get paid for the features they deliver and there's only a skeleton crew of maintainers keeping the project on track (to keep the ongoing costs minimal). To offset the cost to users even further, you could potentially apply for government grants, at least in Europe. Or corporate sponsorships in some places, in the vein of the Django Software Foundation.
    • leodriesch 5y ago
      Firefox and Signal are both reliant on market share to stay relevant, and I would say they cannot afford losing users to a subscription model. It could work if the base product was free and some addon could be purchased as a subscription, but that is also pretty much happening already with Mozilla VPN.
  • zelphirkalt 5y ago
    It is all over the comments here: People want to donate. They want to donate to specific products they like though, and not to the organization in general. Donations need to have a specific goal, like for example further development of Firefox and keeping it clean of stuff people do not want. When donations are not specific enough, like it seems to be the case with Mozilla, they run risk of being misused. Then the actual thing people want to support are not actually supported by their donation.
• blippage 5y ago
  You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
• gpvos 5y ago
  Hmmm, if they insist, but let me at least pay to remove the ads.
  • Vinnl 5y ago
    I think you can remove the ads without paying, in the settings.
• Kototama 5y ago
  If their CEO salary was not paid in millions dollars maybe the users would be more keen to donate money? I never saw a fundraising like the ones from Wikipedia.
  • 57844743385 5y ago
    What’s wrong with paying market rates for a CEO? Do you think they should find a CEO below market rates? Have you donated money to Mozilla or Wikipedia?
    • Leparamour 5y ago
      >What’s wrong with paying market rates for a CEO? More expensive doesn't mean better, it most likely just means putting someone in charge whose primary metric is short-term profit.
    • tokai 5y ago
      > What’s wrong with paying market rates for a CEO? The rates have bubbled, and do not reflect the value CEO's provides for their organisations. > Do you think they should find a CEO below market rates? Yes. A dedicated person, at home - in a bathrobe, approving code merges would do.
      • 57844743385 5y ago
        Right. So a company with 750 employees should be run at discount rates by someone sitting in a bathrobe in their kitchen .
        • boomboomsubban 5y ago
          And I'm sure that person will do an excellent job negotiating the next default search contract worth several hundred million dollars.
          • toyg 5y ago
• hericium 5y ago
  I've lost hope for Firefox when the browser started opening spyware-infused ("tag manager") sites describing how Mozilla takes privacy seriously, immediately after browser's installation and before the user has any chance to add uBlock Origin or other Firefox add-on that limits spyware/malware execution on their device.
  • gpvos 5y ago
    Did/do they? I forgot about that. Do you have a source?
    • Nextgrid 5y ago
      On first run it will open 2 pages on the Mozilla website, all of which embed Google Analytics and/or Tag Manager. Mozilla claims they have some special agreement that supposedly prevents Google from using this data for advertising purposes but if you actually believe it then I may have a bridge to sell you.
      • gpvos 5y ago
        Hmm, that's... not good.
• Adrig 5y ago
  Meh, the feature is easily deactivable, the settings are clear and extensive. As far as ads go, it's one of the best implementations. Firefox still has no alternative in the privacy / user-centric space (don't mention Brave, I'm gonna get mad). Mozilla has done a lot for the web, I can give them some slack for exploring different revenue models. Still, I'm going to keep on eye for this kind of practices in the future. I don't want them to get too comfortable with it.
  • daptaq 5y ago
    Knowing Mozilla, the option will be changed and renamed every version and will have to be re-enabled manually again and again.
    • e3bc54b2 5y ago
      And eventually, Mozilla's 'telemetry' will tell them that 95% users never opt out, and that'll justify removing the opt out option entirely.
      • roca 5y ago
        There's still a Preferences option to opt out of "Play DRM-controlled content", even though I'm sure <5% of people opt out of that. Some options stick around for the sake of principle.
        • smitop 5y ago
          It's disabled by default. Enabling DRM installs a non-free binary from Google, and the user is prompted to install it when a website attempts to play DRM media: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm
          • msdrigg 5y ago
            I wondered why they set it up like this. TIL
• weekay 5y ago
  Firefox marketshare has gone down from approx 16% in 2015 to about 6% in 2021. All the while the strategy to monetize and generate revenue streams while maintaining trust has been a challenge. Nothing they have been doing in the recent past has got me to go back to Firefox.
  • mnd999 5y ago
    So what do you use that isn’t worse in this respect?
• Aardwolf 5y ago
  > Firefox Suggest is a new feature that serves as a trustworthy guide to the better web, surfacing relevant information and sites to help you accomplish your goals. BonziBuddy [1] described itself in a similar way [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy
  • 0des 5y ago
    yeah but I actually miss bonzibuddy. I can't rage-shake firefox and get a reaction out of it. At least in that regard bonzibuddy understood the nature of our engagement as a give and take arrangement.
• squarefoot 5y ago
  As a Firefox user, and after having donated to the foundation, I was outraged by reading this. https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html If they need money, they already know where to find it without polluting the experience with ads.
  • boomboomsubban 5y ago
    Their chair shown on that graph has already stepped down, shockingly an extra $2.5 million did not reverse their situation.
  • ajkdhcb2 5y ago
    Very discouraging. Few people seem to realise the importance of the direction of browser development, setting standards of the web etc. The situation is very bad.
  • worrycue 5y ago
    Can’t help but feel the golden goose is being gutted. The massive downsizing was the 1st step. Ads is part 2. The c-suite is paid millions all while their market share (their primary leverage and source of influence) slips towards nothing. Google has won without lifting a finger - they just let their opponent blunder into defeat.
• Kreotiko 5y ago
  I tried moving away from Safari but I can’t find anything equally good. Damn Apple
  • xNeil 5y ago
    I was planning on switching to Safari - any idea on how private it really is?
  • robteix 5y ago
    I’d love to be able to stick to Safari. It’s an awesome browser, except that not having any form of multi-profile support makes it impossible for me to use. It’s really its only showstopper for me.
• enriquto 5y ago
  So, where's the fork that removes this shit and keeps up with upstream?
  • maccolgan 5y ago
    Librewolf, although it does have its own problems, such as IPv6 (wtf), WebGL and WebRTC being disabled by default.
    • askvictor 5y ago
      Perhaps it's time to revive the IceWeasel. Actually, I wonder how Debian will handle this situation...
• toyg 5y ago
  > Users outside of the U.S. will experience this feature with local results only (browsing history, bookmarks, and open tabs). Are they scared of GDPR, or are they just boiling one pot of frogs at a time...?
  • Semaphor 5y ago
    Most of their experiments start in the US, IIRC
• exar0815 5y ago
  By the love of all thats holy, I still don't understand how the development of an entire operating system can be reasonably coordinated by a (admittably singlularly competent) sole finnish guy in a bathrobe from home, while a comparably simple webbrowser needs a foundation, a company, a ceo, a code of conduct, all those outreach and social-action programmes etc... Or maybe, is all that cesspool of ineffectiveness and virtue-signaling the product and the webbrowser just the cashcow and the name at this point?
  • maple3142 5y ago
    I think the main difference between OS kernel and browser is the former can decide what they need to support, but the latter need to be compatible in order to render existing website. IMO, Building a new browser is more similar to building a Windows-compatible operating system.
  • hnlmorg 5y ago
    Modern webbrowsers are hugely more complicated to implement than a kernel with no user space and very limited driver support (as Linux was back when it was a single person operation). In fact modern webbrowsers are bordering on being an operating system in their own right. They're already a virtual machine, with their own run times, plus one of the most complicated document markup standards known to man (and to make matters worse, it's not just as simple as supporting correct standards, they have to support incorrect usages of those standards too because webdevelopers often use deprecated standards, tags or even just use those tags wrongly and people still expect those sites to render). Lets not forget that JS isn't just a simple interpreter like in the 90s. There's 3D rendering with WebGL, audio rendering with WebMidi, real time communications with WebRTC, location services, WASM, and so on and so forth. Let's also not forget that HTML, CSS, JS, etc are not the only standards a browser needs to support, there's GIF, JPEG, SVG, video formats and audio formats too. There are network protocols like HTTP, FTP, SSL/TLS. And HTTP is non-trivial these days because there's multiple revisions of it, each different significantly from the previous. There's websockets, binary encodings, MIME types, etc. And all of that isn't even touching on the UI. Even just supporting a modern multi-platform native desktop UI is more than a single persons job. And that's before any of the complexities mentioned above.
• strogonoff 5y ago
  …In which Mozilla buys into the two-sided market craze and starts exploiting its users for ad money. And here I was hoping that the industry would start recognizing the poison of this business model, exemplified by FB. Instead, we see it spread. (And, notably, in case of Firefox is no overwhelming network effect or potential for user lock-in, unlike with Facebook et al.; so this seems obviously, possibly intentionally short-sighted.) Meanwhile, Firefox could have been such an opportunity to deliver the first actually paid product in the market, and to use direct revenue to make it superior and keep aligned with paying customers’ interests. Such a waste of reputation, which would’ve made this so much easier to pull off.
• rawbot 5y ago
  The moment I see ads on my address bar, is the moment I uninstall Firefox and never come back. I already have given Mozilla too many chances.
• anotheryou 5y ago
  Who the heck makes these decisions? The one asset they have or at least had was being the privacy sensitive good guys! Why not build on that? Building yet another browser just for privacy might not have been the right move (firefox klar on android), but at least the right direction and a good experiment.
• abbe98 5y ago
  It's a common wish here at HN that one would like to donate directly to Firefox development. Is there a legal reason that Mozilla can't do this considering their setup having the Mozilla Corporation run Firefox development? What else could their reasons be for at least not experimenting with the option?
  • datenarsch 5y ago
    Because alot of people who otherwise donate to Mozilla would then donate to Firefox directly and that is not what the execs really want to happen.
    • abbe98 5y ago
      I would donate to Mozilla if >50% went to FF development. Considering that I haven't seen prompts to donate in Firefox(for that last years at least), in the release notes, etc. It seems like a missed opportunity, both for FF development and for other Mozilla projects.
  • Hendrikto 5y ago
    > What else could their reasons be for at least not experimenting with the option? Greed. They want to have they money to spend on increasing their own salaries each year, while their market share is plummeting.
• ssss11 5y ago
  Rediculous. What a sad day for Mozilla.
• bluefox 5y ago
  Good thing I stopped updating Firefox a long time ago. "But, but, security!" I hear you scream inside. Well, JS disabled by default pretty much covers it. "But, but, security!" I hear you whisper to your fingers, ready to take down my HN comment. Well, I'd rather live "dangerously" than be a MozillaCorp hostage. If security is the only reason to update, no wonder bugs, security updates, and alarmist propaganda are pushed to users in full force.
• wodenokoto 5y ago
  Everybody gets pissed off when firefox tries to move advertisement away from Google for some reason. Firefox recieves 100s of millions in advertisement revenue via Google yearly through the search bar. Firefox is practically 100% advertisement financed.
  • Nextgrid 5y ago
    I think the problem people have is not the company that pays the revenue but the industry. If it's going to be ad revenue it doesn't matter much whether it comes from Google or somewhere else. The main problem is that advertising is ultimately at odds with their objective of protecting users' privacy.
• wheybags 5y ago
  Am I the only one who increasingly wishes that Firefox could be detached from Mozilla? I donate to Mozilla because I care about Firefox, but all the other crap they waste time and money on is not only useless, it is of negative value to me. And then they start pulling shit like this. Why? Just make Firefox, many people will give you money for this, and stop pissing about.
  • timbit42 5y ago
    I'd like to see both Thunderbird and Firefox combined with LibreOffice. It would be able to compete better against MSO.
• tomcooks 5y ago
  How many Google Chrome double agents did they hire in the last 15 years, so that every Firefox update makes the project sink further down? Qutebrowser here I come.
• urhehdhhdhdbs 5y ago
  The people who donate should always get a special version
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• rPlayer6554 5y ago
  _What the hell are you doing Mozilla._ In an age of massive distrust for companies, you are (were?) one of the few companies that had both age and some trust. So many other companies promise privacy but are extremely young. There are so many other directions you could go! Why would you chip away at the value of your greatest asset!? I continue to use Firefox because I want to avoid a chromium monopoly. Yet I don't see any plan by Mozilla to avoid being reliant on their direct competitor.
• 28304283409234 5y ago
  Please please, Mozilla: give me a browser I can subscribe to as an option other than ads. I'd happily pay $10 per month for Firefox.
• ulrikrasmussen 5y ago
  Technologies such as browsers are very important, yet it is very hard to come up with a business model for funding their development in a way that does not compromise the users trust or lead to unhealthy monopolies. I think browsers should be viewed as a public service good and be funded (at least in part) by government subsidies to avoid reliance and corruption by the toxic ad-tech industry. I mean, everybody relies on browsers, they have become the de facto app deployment platform, and funding the development of the major 3-4 browsers would not even make a tiny dent in the budgets of the US or EU.
• dusted 5y ago
  The version prior to that will be my last firefox. Such a shame.
• thrower123 5y ago
  Firefox is intent on torpedoing that struggling ~15% market share...
• dgb23 5y ago
  I stuck with Firefox when Chrome stormed the market with a faster browser. Mozilla has had a highly respected name. I'm not so convinced about that anymore... For me the core values of the browser are: - free software, open source, as in freedom - independent (mozilla is weak here) - developer friendly, good debugging/dev interface (they are slowly losing here) - keeping up with web standards, letting me play with proposed changes - good performance - not tied to a advertising business model (they are weakening themselves here) - privacy defaults These things are very important to me and I'm not alone. The browser is one of my primary tools that I rely on to work as well as the wider open source ecosystem. I'd be very much willing to pay a subscription fee if I end up being the actual customer, as a web developer and not a target for other Mozilla products that I don't care about and advertisements that distract me and get in my way of working. I'm already distracted enough to begin with as I'm literally working within the web... I haven't been a fan of many of the news surrounding Mozilla as of late: - laying off hundreds of workers - continuing to increase C-level salaries while revenue goes down - products I mostly don't care about - dropping support for innovative browser tech like Servo - now spamming their users with ads... What do I do? Recently there was an announcement of the replay browser (replay.io). I played around with it a bit and I'm very tempted at the moment to try it as my primary working browser. They tick some of the boxes above (developer focused browser, subscription fee => I'm the customer). Not sure about it yet. Edit: to the paragraph above about considering the replay browser, I just checked their privacy policy and it's a big no-no... Is there any browser with good developer experience that respects my privacy and freedom?
  • krageon 5y ago
    Functionally there are only two browsers, and they are both terrible. As such, it has to be no. The options you have are reskins of those two browsers or browsers that miss big features and are therefore a PITA to use (I'm looking at you, Safari).
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • funerr 5y ago
• 0x_rs 5y ago
  For all I care there already are ads in the form of pinned websites (Amazon, et cetera, about which I dislike Mozilla assuming I want them on my new tab page) when you set up a new profile and must remove one at a time clicking the tiny burger menu icon that's hidden unless you hover on the icon, and appear in the URL bar when opened. This is just another little addition to the already present task of disabling unwanted annoyances on installs without policies groups setup, so it doesn't bother me too much at this point. I doubt this will help improve the browser at all, let's see if the servo developers and the security team gets hired again from the little income this produces rather than some other significant expenses that have been widely documented in this thread already. Is it really so difficult for a browser to focus on its development and its features alone to gain or recover lost market share? Word of mouth and installations to others' PCs by IT people or privacy aware people really are so worthless now?
• modzu 5y ago
  "for sponsored results, our preferred partner is adMarketplace" firefox continues to kill itself. it seems pretty clear now It's past the point of no return. im hopeful brave fills the void. theyre the only company inelligently addressing the root issue with the web - advertising.
• bouncycastle 5y ago
  GNU IceCat
• dabedee 5y ago
  On a tangentially related point, as much as I love Firefox, their current implementation of search suggestions is a mess when using the search bar. Even if I try to deactivate the "provide search suggestions" option in the "Search" settings, it always keeps the a child-option active (i.e. "Show search suggestions ahead of browsing history in address bar results"). Another nit-pick, when I type "github", the first result shown is "github.blog" which forces me to type "github.com". I assume it uses my bookmarks for this completely irrelevant suggestion.
• nine_k 5y ago
  > We are rolling out a new type of even smarter suggestions. You might notice a message inviting you to enable these new suggestions the next time you install or update Firefox. Off by default? Fine by me. OTOH, if Firefox developers provided e.g. a Patreon link, and could wean themselves off the "default search engine" and "suggestions" revenue, how many people would it take to keep it running in the direction actual users want? Could it score, e.g. a million of $5 monthly pledges worldwide?
• hiisukun 5y ago
  Regardless of how I personally will use Firefox and adjust its settings, this change makes me less likely to suggest it as a browser to friends and relatives. It still has enough large advantages that I will continue to use it (especially on mobile, with extensions), but I'm just one person. Those less knowledgeable about computers in my friends and family make up a lot more potential Firefox users, and they are the ones at risk with this kind of change.
• dividedbyzero 5y ago
  I've observed windowserver on macOS constantly eat 30+% of my CPU whenever Firefox is running for a few versions now, and more and more web apps effectively require Chrome nowadays. Plus now this sort of change coming up ... maybe it's a good time to try out something new. Brave perhaps?
  • neuronic 5y ago
    Brave is Chromium...
    • dividedbyzero 5y ago
      I was under the impression that Brave was a more privacy-friendly variant of Blink/Chromium?
      • ayushnix 5y ago
        If you're looking for a privacy friendly fork of Chromium, the only option that's worth considering is Ungoogled Chromium on Desktop and Bromite on Android. https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium https://github.com/bromite/bromite https://github.com/bromite/bromite Brave has crypto ads and a lot of other unnecessary stuff built in. They've also made questionable decisions in the past, like inserting referral codes in links. If anything, Brave is a worse choice than Firefox in terms of privacy even after enabling this new ad suggestions feature.
        • soundnote 5y ago
          Unnecessary like a native adblocker that won't get fucked over by Manifest v3, tracker blocking, anti-fingerprinting tech and defaulting to privacy friendly search engines?
          • dividedbyzero 5y ago
            That sounds like Brave is worth a look. Thanks for mentioning these things.
• throw_m239339 5y ago
  Oof, Bring back Eich ASAP. What's next? Mozilla to bundle the Ask Toolbar with Firefox installer?
  • blacktriangle 5y ago
    Please don't. He's doing great work with Brave and I'm enjoying watching Mozilla commit suicide.
• mikl 5y ago
  Looks like Mitchell Baker is just trying to suck as much money out of Firefox as she can before retiring. Hard to see another way this strategy of lighting the company’s reputation on fire to earn a few extra bucks makes sense. Bizarre and scummy beyond belief. They claim to be all about privacy to sell their VPN service. And then they also start selling what you type into the address bar to some creepy adtech company, so they can show us ads. Such shame there’s no one to hold Mozilla management to account for this kind of malfeasance.
• TeMPOraL 5y ago
  How are they planning on enabling this by default for European users like me, without first getting express, informed consent? Did they found a GDPR workaround? > Firefox has always provided address bar suggestions, such as websites from your browsing history, bookmarks and open tabs (on by default), as well as suggestions from your default search engine. Beginning in Firefox version 92, you will also receive new, relevant suggestions from our trusted partners based on what you’re searching for. No new data is collected, stored, or shared to make these new recommendations. Given that these recommendation require PII processing (e.g. IP, location) by Mozilla, and "no new data is collected, stored (...)", how does that work? I don't recall ever giving consent to Mozilla to process my data. (Yes, I'm pissed. They just admitted to going to bed with advertisers, and didn't even bother to give us a honest explanation. You can bet I'm looking if they can be slapped with GDPR.) EDIT: missed this on first reading. I blame banner blindness. > Note: Firefox Suggest is currently available for a limited number of users in the U.S. only. Right. I wonder why?
• hnarn 5y ago
  The single largest benefits of Firefox to me is that it's privacy friendly and open source. If the first thing you have to do when installing this "privacy friendly" software is to disable a bunch of privacy invading features, what's the reason to not just use a fork instead? And if you're going to use a fork, why not just use open-source Chromium instead? What arguments are left to the benefit of Firefox, fighting web standard hegemony by picking one privacy-hostile option over the other?
  • aembleton 5y ago
    Support of the blocking webRequest API that allows uBlockOrigin to operate to its full extent.
• Accacin 5y ago
  To be perfectly honest, I'm not too against this. I do not mind DDG showing me lawn mowers when I search for "lawn mowers", and if this is similar but in Firefox, that's OK. The fact is, Firefox needs funding and this seems to be the way of doing it. Brave does something similar too. I hope the ads are purely contextual and do not track me, and I would appreciate a way for people to opt out.
• philipov 5y ago
  Oh, good thing I have address bar suggestions disabled
• DelightOne 5y ago
  Can ublock block this? Do I have to switch browsers?
• C4stor 5y ago
  The sheer difference in placement and style between the "now now" button and the "allow suggestions" button is all one need to know to be certain it's a bad idea to allow that. You don't need dark patterns to opt in your users to something good for them.
• satoshiiii 5y ago
  Honest question, how hard is it to create an extension to disable this "feature?" Or is there an option built-in to disable it?
• darthrupert 5y ago
  I jumped over to chromium a few months ago. I suggest everyone else do the same. This battle is over: Chrome won. Perhaps the war (whatever it is) isn't over yet.
• whoopdedo 5y ago
  Mozilla wants funding? Here's an idea. Track down the corporations using Firefox and convert them to paying customers. I'll start with the two I know off the top of my head: * CVS * Lowes
  • nisegami 5y ago
    I don't see this happening unless they have a very specific reason to use Firefox. If only support contracts were a thing for browsers, a la Red Hat/RHEL.
• Chirael 5y ago
  I’m not crazy about this development but if they were going to add any kind of advertising this is just about the least intrusive way to do it. And, importantly, it’s only based on the search terms, not anything about you personally, so it doesn’t seem like it would feed into the surveillance capital machine. I don’t like it, but if it keeps FF viable I’ll roll with it. I just hope it’s the ONLY thing they do and not the start of a slippery slope down
• yosito 5y ago
  Another nail in the coffin. Mozilla has lost their sense of purpose.
• _Understated_ 5y ago
  For those that are saying things like "Google/Microsoft etc. are worse" and other such pseudo-justifications: You are missing the point! Mozilla is now in exactly the same camp as Microsoft, Google and all the other spyware companies. There is no "worse" any more! Their rhetoric uses the same language and tactics as the others therefore they are the same now. Their plan is to monetize your web views, just like Google. This change is absolutely not for your benefit. Not even a little bit! They have crossed a line. A massive line imo! Firefox held the torch for companies in the "internet space" (couldn't think of a better term) on how to do things without bending your users over and telling them it's for their own good. But no more. This is the end for Mozilla for a group of people that absolutely care about privacy and (total speculation incoming!) the beginning of the end for Mozilla in general. For a number of years, their userbase clearly was more interested in privacy over speed and features but if the playing field is now levelled (in terms of lack of privacy!), then the obvious choice is no longer FF these days as Chrome and Edge are faster. I've watched them over the years become worse, bit by dark-patterned bit. This is a huge leap into a steaming pile of privacy shit though and a clear sign they are circling the drain. Still, I have no idea what to do! Hopefully there sill be a way to turn it off but they've laid their cards on the table now...
• imgabe 5y ago
  No thank you. I really like Firefox but maybe it would be time to move on to Brave. It’s a shame because I want to support an alternative rendering engine besides Chrome so Google doesn’t control the whole Internet. Do they need me to pay? I would 100% pay a reasonable annual subscription for a browser that works for me and not advertisers. Maybe $30 per year?
  • sodality2 5y ago
    Brave literally has built-in ads, except now you're supporting the Chromium engine dependency. What do you think you're improving on by switching to Brave?
    • imgabe 5y ago
      huh, I never really used Brave, thought it was focused on privacy. Oh well, guess there's nothing to do but write your own browser.
• jacquesm 5y ago
  One more reason not to upgrade, with as a result decreased security. This is beyond stupid. Stop wasting money and focus on the browser instead.
• henearkr 5y ago
  Holy crap, that news would be worth of an April 1st! I swear I double checked the date.
• thedailymail 5y ago
  boo
• mactavish88 5y ago
  Can someone please just offer an open source browser that I can pay towards somehow? IMO adtech is the root of all that’s wrong with the modern internet. It gives companies 2 masters: advertisers and users. Guess who’s prioritized when there’s a conflict between the needs of the two? Whoever’s paying the bills, of course.
  • ayushnix 5y ago
    There's qutebrowser and you can donate directly to the developer but I'm not sure if you'd be comfortable using it. The major downside is that web extensions (addons) don't work in qutebrowser.
    • 0des 5y ago
      > but I'm not sure if you'd be comfortable Oh I like this. It's subtle in a way that flies under the radar but still blesses someone's little heart effectively. On a side note: I love qutebrowser, even as someone who doesn't prefer Vim or Vim keybindings in things. I like it because it is slim up top, and does what you tell it to and not a stitch more. If it got paywalled tomorrow, but everything else remained the same and open, I could see paying 10 bucks a month for it.
      • The-Compiler 5y ago
        FWIW you can donate (via my GitHub Sponsors profile), I'd rather not force people to pay for it, though ;) One thing I would perhaps consider is having more "proper" releases for macOS and Windows (with things like code signing, automatic updates, etc. - perhaps even via the Windows and macOS stores) for a small one-time fee. But that's mainly because supporting those platforms properly costs me additional money (and additional time).
        • 0des 5y ago
          Thanks, hopefully github just emailed you about a new $10 monthly supporter :) edit: I am not a windows or mac user, I just like the thing you make.
• messo 5y ago
  I recently switched to LibreWolf, a privacy focused fork of Firefox and it works really well. It tracks upstream closely and has reasonable defaults for power users.
• AndyMcConachie 5y ago
  And of course they allow you to turn it off, but it's on by default. Notice how they don't really tell you whether it's on by default, they tell you that another feature was on by default and this new feature is getting wrapped up into that. No discussion on how much money they're making from this. So absolutely sleazy. Whoever wrote this has read too much marketing bullshit from other tech companies and wants to emulate their intros. The weasel wording in this is just sad and pathetic coming from Mozilla. I expect this from a company like Facebook, but if Mozilla is going to introduce something like this they should at least have the decency to talk to their users like competent human beings and not complacent idiots. It's insulting.
• urthor 5y ago
  Vivaldi it is?
• TacoSteemers 5y ago
  Are there good browsers that we can fund by buying a copy/license?
• dmos62 5y ago
  I can't help but think that this constant conflict of interest seemingly inherent in browsers has technological causes. If Web were simpler, its design better, there would be more implementations and they would be cheaper. Even though it upsets me that the Firefox we knew is doing itself in, Web becoming more dystopian is the most likely catalyst to a better alternative appearing. Darkest before the dawn type of scenario.
• southerntofu 5y ago
  On an economical perspective, i wish we had more choice than between Google, Mozilla and Brave, all of which have shown to be corrupt and care little about users. I'm sure a popular browser could receive tons of donations if it was based on such model and stopped remunerating execs/managers (or did away with those vampires entirely). On a technical perspective, i'd like a modern document browser, not a webapp engine. I can appreciate a cross-platform app runtime (WASI project sounds good), but running random code from every website i visit has only downsides for me. I feel like the useful aspects of the web are declarative (HTML/CSS) that the browser is free to ignore/override to provide better UX, and i'm sad innovation in declarative web seems to have entirely stopped after HTML5 shipped <audio> and <video> (and a few others). Why can't login/logout, drag & drop, background polling for dynamic content updates, and content "tabs" in page (not based on :checked hack) be part of the HTML spec? <section reload="2m" src="https://foobar/newarticles.rss https://foobar/newarticles.rss" schema="https://foobar/template.html https://foobar/template.html"> ^ my browser would let me opt-in/opt-out of background updates and/or change the frequency... which i can't control with crappy JS applets that just make tons of background activity and break in the most unhelpful ways when wifi/VPN/tor looses connectivity All in all, declarative formats empower users, whereas imperative formats (ECMAScript) empower content producers and advertisers. I wish we had a sort of web users union doing R&D on such topics and employing people to work on user-respecting tech.
• zeta0134 5y ago
  Hmm. I wonder how much revenue is Mozilla expecting from this deal? How much would a crowdfunding effort need to raise, month to month, to buy out 100% of the ad space?
• hartator 5y ago
  How can people still support Mozilla at this point?
  • galgalesh 5y ago
    In case you are interested in a real answer: This doesn't change my opinion of them in any way. Although I think ads are cancer, I think it's much worse for Firefox to stay dependent on Google for their entire revenue. I want them to experiment with finding ways to make money off their browser. I want them to keep existing long-term and that's only possible if you have money. Would I like Firefox to have no ads at all? Yes. But I believe it's better for Firefox to have ads than to be dependent on Google's money.
• feliyur 5y ago
  I would certainty pay for a decent browser that doesn't sell out my information to advertisers - just like I do for the email service and the office suite and other pieces of software. I would ditch firefox over this if I hadn't done this already a while ago.
• eointierney 5y ago
  Fuck no. I'm sure this will be able to be disabled in about:config but seriously. From Mozilla: Principle 4 Individuals’ security and privacy on the internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional. Principle 5 Individuals must have the ability to shape the internet and their own experiences on it.
• a012 5y ago
  I've disabled suggestion on Brave for awhile, it's a PITA if you start from fresh so you have to work on bookmarking a lot. But now this, I don't regret to have no suggestion in address bar at all.
• Aeolun 5y ago
  Can they just have me pay them $10 a month so we don’t have to deal with this kind of shit? I pay that for my IDE, and the browser is arguably more important.
• Aleatoire24 5y ago
  People still use Firefox ? I'm little surprised. Librewolf, yes I can understand, but Firefox ? Unfortunately, the day Mozilla die, Librewolf will follow (and Google will cry).
• southerntofu 5y ago
  It's a shame Mozilla is doing this. It's not the first insult to users/developers Mozilla has made, though they're still the less worst in the major browser developers. I'm relatively okay with non-targeted advertising (in fact i'm strongly against it, but i respect their perspective). Just replace your Google partnership for default search engine with something else if it suits you. But why on earth would my browser transmit all of my keystrokes in the URL bar to a third party?! That's an unexpected and very frightening development. That means a single centralized entity gets notice of all the websites i browse and queries i search for. All in all, this change means Firefox would no longer be better than Google from a privacy perspective.
• NazakiAid 5y ago
  It says that when this is enabled, "Mozilla receives your search queries". This is a real shame as I was hoping it would be more privacy focused. Maybe it could just download a list of advertisers locally and then locally compare the search text to the ads but instead everything typed in to the address bar will get sent to someone else's servers. I might have had it on if it was all done locally (but I guess there is too many flaws in doing it locally for Mozilla). Still very sad they are doing this, but at least it seems an easy opt-out/not opt-in.
• johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago
  When their market share has dwindled from ~30% to 3% in the past 10 years....? Not the smartest move imho. Focus on speed, not ads.
• throwaway510921 5y ago
  With the erosion of the W3C as a standard body, ongoing IP lawsuits and closed source/specs, some day the browser lockin may become real and slowly manifest all around us. Compare that scenario to the nowaday advertising popup and thank <pasta> that the market hasn't been taken over and the numb masses haven't adopted it yet. It feels weird to write this, but somehow i am glad.
• matheusmoreira 5y ago
  We couldn't care less about Mozilla's "partners". We certainly don't want their "suggestions". So many people were switching to Firefox due to Chrome's crippled extensions. How is it possible to be this out of touch? How hard is it to charge money for the browser? Literally make it a paid app and I'll buy it.
• madjam002 5y ago
  I must be the only one who finds Chromium a less invasive experience than Firefox. People harp on about how we must all switch to Firefox, but in the years I have been using Chromium I’ve not once had any marketing BS popups, nags, or issues like this. And no, Chrome is not the new IE, it’s open source and there’s various different builds available and ways that is is distributed.
• 0des 5y ago
  Is there a fork of Firefox that doesn't have this? I don't want to be too presumptuous, but perhaps without Pocket as well?
• gerbilly 5y ago
  For me, the most germane question becomes: 1. Can it be blocked without recompiling Firefox? 2. If so, how?
  • nvr219 5y ago
    1. yes 2. in about:config
    • Tom4hawk 5y ago
      List of things I have to do on new Firefox install is getting ridiculous. It's probably time to look into forks or one of the WebKit browsers...
• kiryin 5y ago
  It's sad to see Mozilla go down this road, one time after another. I don't mind it if they need the money (they don't, look into their finances and come tell me with a straight face that this non-profit isn't making the ends meet), it's comparable to default search engine placement and search suggestions, can be turned off etc. What I have a problem with is the dark-pattern-esque language, like "relevant suggestions" and "trusted partners." I'm used to seeing that kind of messaging from the FAANG boogeymen, not Mozilla who's supposed to be the last fortress of the open internet. After years of conditioning it very strongly implies untrustworthiness to me, makes me immediately suspicious of some nefarious scheme. I would vote with my feet but there are no options left, any other choice would mean betraying my values even further. I am being held hostage.
  • pseudalopex 5y ago
    Their finances show almost all their funding is from their biggest competitor.
• glenstein 5y ago
  At this point, I just feel bad. I feel like the high school coach having to sit down with my star player after they've made a bad personal choice. I was going to say I will pay a subscription for the best browsing experience you can offer, sans ads. But this is opt-out. And there's a donation option at https://donate.mozilla.org/ https://donate.mozilla.org/. As long as it's opt-out, that's fair enough to me.
  • soundnote 5y ago
    The donation goes to Mozilla Foundation, not to its subsidiary Mozilla Corp, which actually develops Firefox. You're basically donating to activist blogging, not browser development.
• denton-scratch 5y ago
  > from our trusted partners based on what you’re searching for Wut?? You must be referring to the partners that you have, that I trust. But I don't know who your partners are, and I have no reason to trust them. And how is it that you are privy to what I'm searching for? Is DDG among your partners? I know you're in bed with Goo, but I am migrating away from Google Search, partly because I know you are infected with Google Search addiction. Please stop adding "features" to Firefox.
• 999900000999 5y ago
  And this is how a browser dies. At this point I imagine for most people it makes more sense to download Chromium, if you're worried about privacy, or use Chrome if you're not. Mozilla's been running out of money for a very long time though, this isn't exactly a surprise.
• Traf444 5y ago
  I agree that this erodes some trust and I can understand and agree with people that are upset about this change. They did inform us though, even though the language used could use less marketing speech, instead of trying to fly it in under the radar and at least it seems to be possible to disable the "feature".
• nbzso 5y ago
  In the near future: Option 1: FOSS community will actively participate in developing one big web-browser project to free the web from malicious corporate practices and guarantee respect of users freedom. Option 2: A corporation will create commercial web-browser with fixed price or SaaS model without "partnerships" and data-hoarding business model. Option 3: There will be only one way to browse the internet: The Google's way. Option 4: Users will learn to use "text-browsers" with hardened security and move to "standard" web-browser UX only if necessary. Option 5: P2P local networks will provide a "cached" versions of scraped websites for safety and free access. Option 6: The Internet will be used only in embedded IOT systems, apps from closed app stores, government approved experiences with mandatory ID verification.
• mothsonasloth 5y ago
  This is what happens when an organisation deviates from its original policy and starts diverting money into social justice or causes which have no bearing on a browser. Along with the layoffs and now this unscrupulous decision to bring in revenue to offset the haemorrhage. Time to go back to a no thrills browser.
• tomaskafka 5y ago
  Just let me f**ing pay for it, it's the last usable user agent on the internet that's actually user agent and not owning-company agent.
• digitalsin 5y ago
  What an absolutely slime ball, sleazy, patronizing way to say what they're doing. I trust Mozilla these days about as much as I trust career politicians. It really is a damn shame that this organization has become what it is.
• mpfundstein 5y ago
  can i pay for firefox to.have this and all other ads disabled? i would. 10 bucks a month. deal?
• jrochkind1 5y ago
  Also note: > When you see or click on a Firefox Suggest result, Mozilla collects and sends your search queries and the result you click on to our partners through a Mozilla-owned proxy service. The data we share with partners does not include personally identifying information and is only shared when you see or click on a suggestion.
• kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
  “Suggestions from trusted partners” - the sleaziest statement of the Internet age.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• tomrod 5y ago
  Darn. I really enjoy Firefox. I left Ubuntu over their Amazon integration. First comes ads, then the seductive siren call of selling user data to advertising partners, then the irresistible funding for selling that user data in a more packaged format. We've seen this story play out. The only thing that keeps/kept you above the others has been your drive to be user focused, and I hate that you feel your niche can't be performant without adopting a third party advertising model. Au revoir, Mozilla. May you find sense and abandon this model.
• abcd_f 5y ago
  They are just set on killing whatever’s left of their hardcore loyalists, aren’t they?
• myfonj 5y ago
  I have very few requirements for personal browser I absolutely insist on. Some of the most important ones are that it must be possible to configure it so it: > 1) Never-ever in any circumstances sends anything I type into URL bar outside my PC until I press Enter. All suggestions must come from my local bookmarks and visited sites history, and there must be "old-school" dedicated Search bar (or explicit keyword searches) triggering remote lookup for fuzzy suggestions and stuff like that. > 2) After I press the Enter, it loads precisely what I've typed. No implicit searches, no www+.., ..+.com|org|net guesswork, nothing. If I type invalid address, I want to see error message saying that the browser does not understand my intention. The only exceptions are adding default protocol (if what I've typed is not keyword command), and doing URI encoding stuff if necessary. Nothing more. And "keyword searches" done from URL bar must display resulting address. Thankfully, Firefox is still capable of being configured this way, except that "display Keyword remote URL result verbatim"), but it is increasingly more and more difficult to keep it this way. It makes me sad, and confused, because I see these requirements as a clear manifestation of philosophy Firefox is (used to be) built on.
• piggybank 5y ago
  final nail in the coffin
• tauntz 5y ago
  Please let me pay for Firefox! I'll never enable or click on any of these ads but I'd gladly pay a monthly subscription _that goes only to the Firefox budget and not Mozilla_. I don't think I'm alone here - it would be a non-negligible revenue stream.
• finalflopper 5y ago
  "Turn on by default the tools to AMPLIFY FACTUAL VOICES over disinformation. - https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat... The feature is clearly designed to push their Trusted Partners into the faces of their ideological opponents. Wikipedia is non-scary entry point. Expect SPLC or some fact-checkers next. The low revenue un-targeted advertising feature can easily be jettisoned to placate people while the real payload is deployed.
  • soundnote 5y ago
    I don't think cynicism is warranted on that. It's probably just normal advertising. Still don't like the way they talk about it, but I think the ad feature is separate from their wokeness efforts. They just want non-Google money.
• throwaway123x2 5y ago
  Anyone use Brave? Is it a good alternative to FF?
• blacklight 5y ago
  No problem for me. I'll just slam whichever domain they use to provide the ads in my PiHole configuration, and I'll use the SurfingKeys (JS-customizable) search bar to get results. I already give monthly contributions to the Mozilla Foundation. Do they need more money? Fine, I can increase my donation. But the whole point of donating money is to avoid ads harassment. If I don't have that right anymore, then I'll either stop donating to Mozilla, or use all my power user skills to ensure that not a single ad shows in my search bar.
• INTPenis 5y ago
  So just disable it. I'm sick and tired of people smearing Firefox because they're trying to make a living. It's still the best open source browser out there, it's still free, as in freedom and as in beer. Any fork of Firefox is mainly a change in default settings or branding. None of them would exist without the huge contributions Mozilla Foundation receive. People who criticize Firefox and then use one of its many forks, I'd like to tell them to just stop whining and appreciate what they have.
  • matheusmoreira 5y ago
    How many millions do they make? How much of that money goes towards Firefox development?
    • INTPenis 5y ago
      Good question, I actually went through their budget report a few days ago. I'm not from the states but they seem to be spending over 300 million dollars a year on developer salaries alone. And considering they're HQ'd in Silicon Valley I guess that's not so strange. The bulk of their income is from Google donating 450 million USD every year just to remain the default search choice. That shouldn't reflect poorly on Mozilla, it should make you question how Google can just throw 450 million dollars on remaining the default search choice in a browser with 1% market share. It should make you question the massive monopoly that is Google, not Mozilla who are struggling to make open source software for people.
  • chobytes 5y ago
    They're choosing a very unethical, and (given their own ads) hypocritical funding model. The corporate speak euphemisms for this model signal the further underlying rot. To me your position reads analogous to "Im sick of people smearing organic produce corp for trying to make a living selling agent orange. If you dont like it dont buy it!"
    • INTPenis 5y ago
      You're overreacting, it's not agent orange. It's a setting you can disable. It's also an open source browser with forks that disable the setting for you. But this is exactly why I feel Mozilla and Firefox deserve more respect. If we're free to fork their code, then any such decision from their part to keep their funding should be met with respect from the user base.
• chobytes 5y ago
  Mozilla has been a shambling corpse for awhile, and theyre dragging whats left of firefox with them. Their only goal is to line administrators pockets as much as possible before the end. To that end theyll use up whatever good will and trust they have left. Personally Ive been done with them since that incident a fee years ago where they were silently pushing out some adware extension for some movie. That followed by their explanation and non-apology told me they were already dead.
• animal_spirits 5y ago
  At least it is easily disabled
• air7 5y ago
  sigh Why can't they go the wikipedia funding way? I'm sure many people would support them. Although it might be too late...
• roter 5y ago
  On a tangent, I noticed when opening a new private window they are now pushing the VPN service. This may have been implemented in a previous update. This seems to disable it... for now: browser.privatebrowsing.promoEnabled: false
• kmeisthax 5y ago
  This leaves the same bad taste in my mouth as that one time Canonical added Amazon search to Unity. In practice (like the Amazon search), it probably won't cause much actual harm; but it's still a net negative to user experience.
• Yizahi 5y ago
  Firefox chromification continues, along with a slow movement to the software cemetery while losing last user base.
• lobocinza 5y ago
  It's good because this puts an end to the farce that Mozilla cares for it's users privacy and that we should use Firefox even though it's lagging behind Chromium. I do not trust Google but I don't trust Mozilla either. I just hope they don't kill MDN. We can't trust big corps be it for profit or non-profit.
• EastOfTruth 5y ago
  For me it is much worst that they block 99% of addons on Firefox Mobile... at least the ads can easily be disabled.
• funerr 5y ago
  I really wouldn't mind paying for Firefox. Why can't I pay for not having ads?
  • tomrod 5y ago
    Ultimately this model proves untenable in almost every space where folks try for the freemium model. It is especially apparent in cable and online streaming, where you have no ads to start with but as people grow to like they service ads are added for additional revenue. Eventually, the user pays for ads in addition to the service or product.
• elcapitan 5y ago
  Stupid question, but with FF being open source, would it be possible to provide alternative builds without much of the recent bullshit? It seems the browser gets more and more useless or user-hostile "features" with every new version.
  • errantmind 5y ago
    There is a 'de-Googled Chromium' so there probably could be a 'de-Mozillad Firefox'
• errantmind 5y ago
  Google pays Firefox $450 million dollars a year. Why do they need to keep adding ads and tracking features? Yes, they want to diversify in case that valve gets shut off but they should be 'set for life'. They have been making hundreds of millions a year on average for over a decade. Why does it take that much to make a web browser and how much of that money goes to Firefox? We need an ad-free open-source alternative that is focused on speed and encourages an extensive plugin ecosystem.
• adontz 5y ago
  I honestly do not understand why people hate this idea. Mozilla have found perfect place to put ads, they do not cover screen space, are not annoying or always visible. Not that different from Google paid search results, honestly even better. YouTube has 1,500,000,000 monthly users and 50,000,000 YouTube Premium subscribers. 1,500,000,000 users 50,000,000 subscribers That is how much people want to pay for what they use vs. ready to watch unskippable ads. How many of 200 million Firefox users who do not like ads are ready to pay as little as $1 per month? I am pretty sure even 10%, i.e. $20M/month will help Mozilla a lot. But people love free things and whine.
  • freediver 5y ago
    > YouTube has 1,500,000,000 monthly users and 50,000,000 YouTube Premium subscribers. That is actually about 3.3% which is much higher than ad-click conversion raters (0.77% for display ads). So a premium model is a superior way to monetize long term from a standpoint of what users prefer.
• 015a 5y ago
  Please, Firefox; just give me a way to pay you $10/month. Call it "Firefox Pro" and you get some new color themes or whatever, I don't care. I'm standing outside your window in the rain, waving cash at you, and you're still selling your body on the street-corner for quarters.
• m-p-3 5y ago
  I hate that I have to actively check every other update for new settings to opt-out of these ad-based invasions.
• oblio 5y ago
  Probably unpopular opinion: Firefox should not be managed and lead developed from Silicon Valley. There's too much overlap with the VC crowd plus the salaries are huge. Mozilla should be a regular, frugal non-profit.
• kevwals 5y ago
  It's probably a good way to introduce users to new websites that they might find interesting.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• intelMgmntEnema 5y ago
  Dear Dang, Semaphor, To label a thread with 671+ comments a dupe and kill and abandon it for one with 81 comments is dubious. It should be the reverse. Not accusing, but this almost appears protectionism against scrutiny of Mozilla. Regardless, it's odd.
• capedape 5y ago
  No thanks. I’ve used Firefox since their beginning and never took to Chrome. Use Brave on iOS and guess will start seeing how that and other alternatives are on Mac. I’d rather pay a few bucks a month then have the area of the browser that should be signal littered with noise.
• jayp1418 5y ago
  For Foss OS gnome web, KDE browser can do trick
• cannabis_sam 5y ago
  Don’t these people realise that this kills the firefox?