5 ms·

I think that Mozilla is harming Firefox much more with their decisions. Adding ads to address bar and sending metadata to unknown third parties alienated lots o

by iakov 5y ago

I think that Mozilla is harming Firefox much more with their decisions. Adding ads to address bar and sending metadata to unknown third parties alienated lots of users, I can’t blame them for looking for alternatives - or making one.

dralley 5y ago
I'm not thrilled with every decision Mozilla has ever made but I think people have gotten so used to the unlimited resources that Apple, Microsoft, and Google are able to pour into their unprofitable ecosystem moats that they've lost sight of what running a self sustaining business in this space would even look like.
- _jal 5y ago
  > they've lost sight of what running a sustainable business in this space would look like Is the claim that it is economically impossible to create a browser without turning it in to surveillance malware? To the extent that's true, it is the best argument yet for shutting down the web.
  - _kulang 5y ago
    Something I vehemently agree with
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      Can't drain the swamps if the goal is to have moats. Except if you go full-on Neo-Amish/Luddite and use [->] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol) or the remaining stuff which stays accessible via simple browsers like [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetSurf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetSurf , [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dillo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dillo , or textmode stuff like Lynx, (E)Links(2), W3M, and similar.
  - ExtraE 5y ago
    I can’t tell if this is supposed to be serious, but just in case [1]. In case it is, really, shut down the web? What would that look like? Why would we do it? How? How can “browsers are expensive” possibly be worth doing something that extreme? [1] https://xkcd.com/1454/ https://xkcd.com/1454/
    - nsonha 5y ago
      The majority of the web should be standardized uniformed wizards. Then people can apply whatever the skin they want onto all of the web. We don't want to deal with all kinds of design that are hard to make, require crazy powerful browsers, and was asked for by no one anyway. Fancy UIs are made to slow people down in their tasks and draw attention to things that don't matter to what they want to do. Web developers and creative people like to think the web is their playground but really the most important role of the web should be delivering informations and services efficiently, and get the hell out the way.
  - jfk13 5y ago
    Are you implying that Firefox is "surveillance malware"? Precisely what surveillance are you referring to? Telemetry isn't surveillance. Recommended content (e.g. on the default New Tab page) doesn't involve surveillance.
    - wintermutestwin 5y ago
      >Are you implying that Firefox is "surveillance malware"? >Telemetry isn't surveillance. (honest question) Why is this necessary then: https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js
      - detaro 5y ago
        Why do you assume it's necessary? FWIW, I'd rate quite a bit of what it does as "not necessary".
        wintermutestwin 5y ago
        On another thread, I was told: "Firefox is feeding your data to Google. You need to disable it in the user.js file"
        jfk13 5y ago
        Oh, some random stranger on the Internet said so? That must be right, then.
        wintermutestwin 5y ago
        I was not proclaiming that it was a fact. I am openly frustrated and confused. An oft repeated claim is that "people just don't care about their privacy." I am moderately technical and I am totally unsure of how to keep my data from these parasite companies. Achieving privacy is incredibly arcane and confusing. Instead of quipping at me with a low value post, why don't you tell me exactly what Mozilla's telemetry does? Do you know?
- taneq 5y ago
  > the unlimited resources that Apple, Microsoft, and Google are able to pour into their unprofitable ecosystem moats No sane company pours money into unprofitable anything. They pour money into those moats precisely because it pays dividends.
  - dralley 5y ago
    My point (which I'm confident you do understand despite the pedantry) is that the browsers themselves are not profitable without taking into account their effects on the entire ecosystem. Mozilla doesn't have an ecosystem like Google, Microsoft and Apple do. If they want to stay afloat they have to be profitable with the browser alone. So trying to directly compare that to the "free candy" approach which the others can get away with is unrealistic. It's like asking why Target and Best Buy can't match the prices of Amazon retail, which has a money fountain named AWS in their backyard that can subsidize their other activities for "ecosystem growth". If Amazon retail had been a separate standalone business which had to succeed on its own for the past decade, it probably would have been run differently.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      Can't see the value of Amazon Retail here without going full-in with Prime, and not even then. Though that may be regional, as I speak from Germany.
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  > they've lost sight of what running a self sustaining business in this space would even look like Get your facts right. Mozilla Corporate receives 400mil a year from Google, for google search to be the default search engine. The engineering costs of Mozilla in 2020 were about 300mil. [0] So in actual fact you could maintain the not-for-profit status, fire all the corporate staff and still sit on a trove of cash every year. The google money will not dry out because it is the only CYA situation that Google has against an anti-trust case on Chrome. There is absolutely no reason Mozilla could not maintain the not-for-profit status and tick along, like other foundations such as Linux, Gnome, Apache, etc. [0] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3600206/mozilla-reports-338m-revenue-spike-from-settlement-over-yahoo-contract.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3600206/mozilla-report...
w6rpv3om 5y ago
excelent explanation

by iakov 5y ago

dralley 5y ago

I'm not thrilled with every decision Mozilla has ever made but I think people have gotten so used to the unlimited resources that Apple, Microsoft, and Google are able to pour into their unprofitable ecosystem moats that they've lost sight of what running a self sustaining business in this space would even look like.

_jal 5y ago
> they've lost sight of what running a sustainable business in this space would look like Is the claim that it is economically impossible to create a browser without turning it in to surveillance malware? To the extent that's true, it is the best argument yet for shutting down the web.
- _kulang 5y ago
  Something I vehemently agree with
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    Can't drain the swamps if the goal is to have moats. Except if you go full-on Neo-Amish/Luddite and use [->] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol) or the remaining stuff which stays accessible via simple browsers like [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetSurf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetSurf , [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dillo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dillo , or textmode stuff like Lynx, (E)Links(2), W3M, and similar.
- ExtraE 5y ago
  I can’t tell if this is supposed to be serious, but just in case [1]. In case it is, really, shut down the web? What would that look like? Why would we do it? How? How can “browsers are expensive” possibly be worth doing something that extreme? [1] https://xkcd.com/1454/ https://xkcd.com/1454/
  - nsonha 5y ago
    The majority of the web should be standardized uniformed wizards. Then people can apply whatever the skin they want onto all of the web. We don't want to deal with all kinds of design that are hard to make, require crazy powerful browsers, and was asked for by no one anyway. Fancy UIs are made to slow people down in their tasks and draw attention to things that don't matter to what they want to do. Web developers and creative people like to think the web is their playground but really the most important role of the web should be delivering informations and services efficiently, and get the hell out the way.
- jfk13 5y ago
  Are you implying that Firefox is "surveillance malware"? Precisely what surveillance are you referring to? Telemetry isn't surveillance. Recommended content (e.g. on the default New Tab page) doesn't involve surveillance.
  - wintermutestwin 5y ago
    >Are you implying that Firefox is "surveillance malware"? >Telemetry isn't surveillance. (honest question) Why is this necessary then: https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js
    - detaro 5y ago
      Why do you assume it's necessary? FWIW, I'd rate quite a bit of what it does as "not necessary".
      - wintermutestwin 5y ago
        On another thread, I was told: "Firefox is feeding your data to Google. You need to disable it in the user.js file"
        jfk13 5y ago
        Oh, some random stranger on the Internet said so? That must be right, then.
        wintermutestwin 5y ago
        I was not proclaiming that it was a fact. I am openly frustrated and confused. An oft repeated claim is that "people just don't care about their privacy." I am moderately technical and I am totally unsure of how to keep my data from these parasite companies. Achieving privacy is incredibly arcane and confusing. Instead of quipping at me with a low value post, why don't you tell me exactly what Mozilla's telemetry does? Do you know?
taneq 5y ago
> the unlimited resources that Apple, Microsoft, and Google are able to pour into their unprofitable ecosystem moats No sane company pours money into unprofitable anything. They pour money into those moats precisely because it pays dividends.
- dralley 5y ago
  My point (which I'm confident you do understand despite the pedantry) is that the browsers themselves are not profitable without taking into account their effects on the entire ecosystem. Mozilla doesn't have an ecosystem like Google, Microsoft and Apple do. If they want to stay afloat they have to be profitable with the browser alone. So trying to directly compare that to the "free candy" approach which the others can get away with is unrealistic. It's like asking why Target and Best Buy can't match the prices of Amazon retail, which has a money fountain named AWS in their backyard that can subsidize their other activities for "ecosystem growth". If Amazon retail had been a separate standalone business which had to succeed on its own for the past decade, it probably would have been run differently.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    Can't see the value of Amazon Retail here without going full-in with Prime, and not even then. Though that may be regional, as I speak from Germany.
DoingIsLearning 5y ago
> they've lost sight of what running a self sustaining business in this space would even look like Get your facts right. Mozilla Corporate receives 400mil a year from Google, for google search to be the default search engine. The engineering costs of Mozilla in 2020 were about 300mil. [0] So in actual fact you could maintain the not-for-profit status, fire all the corporate staff and still sit on a trove of cash every year. The google money will not dry out because it is the only CYA situation that Google has against an anti-trust case on Chrome. There is absolutely no reason Mozilla could not maintain the not-for-profit status and tick along, like other foundations such as Linux, Gnome, Apache, etc. [0] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3600206/mozilla-reports-338m-revenue-spike-from-settlement-over-yahoo-contract.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3600206/mozilla-report...

w6rpv3om 5y ago

excelent explanation