9 ms·

Cory Doctorow: Firefox has my business, no matter how shiny the Chrome is

57 points by soundsop 18y ago

tlrobinson 18y ago
It was reasonable until I got to this bit... "Changes the Google logo to a "Gulag" logo showing Google's place as part of the Great Firewall of China, providing a constant reminder to me that for all that I trust Google with lots of key data, I must never forget that it has demonstrated a historical corporate willingness to participate in censorship and surveillance efforts when its profits were on the line"
- gdee 18y ago
  Care to explain what's unreasonable with that?
  - tlrobinson 18y ago
    I like to base my technology related decisions mostly on the technology, not politics. You could say that it was about technology, since he's talking about GreaseMonkey (though the same thing could probably be accomplished with user stylesheets, which I'm sure Chrome does/will support), but really he just wanted to inject his opinion about something pretty irrelevant and couldn't figure out a better way. Plus replacing the Google logo like that is a petty thing to do in the first place.
    - mechanical_fish 18y ago
      I like to base my technology related decisions mostly on the technology, not politics. Well, that's your use case. Cory Doctorow has his own use case -- one which Firefox addresses much better than Chrome, at least for the moment.
  - bmj 18y ago
    I'm not sure I'd label it "unreasonable," but if you feel so strongly about Google's business practices, shouldn't you boycott their services completely? By using their services, aren't you tacitly assenting to their business practices?
    - EliAndrewC 18y ago
      Since he blocks Google's ads, they're not profiting from his usage of their services. So he could argue that he's not really supporting him if he's merely a drain on their resources.
    - mechanical_fish 18y ago
      By using their services, aren't you tacitly assenting to their business practices? Certainly not! I do business with plenty of people that I disagree with. So do you, no doubt. This is a classic (i.e. "really old") line of argument against political activists. To testify to that, I give you MIT's most (in?)famous political activist, Noam Chomsky: As to how I tolerate MIT, that raises another question. There are people who argue, and I have never understood the logic of this, that a radical ought to distance himself from oppressive institutions. The logic of that argument is that Karl Marx shouldn't have studied in the British Museum which, if anything, was the symbol of the most vicious imperialism in the world... But I think Karl Marx was quite right in studying in the British Museum. He was right in using the resources and in fact the liberal values of the civilization that he was trying to overcome, against it. Remember, the goal of an activist is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The goal is to convince the baby to join the activist's side. Which you accomplish by living inside the baby's culture, appealing to its better nature, and using all the tools at your disposal, including the baby's tools. It's not as if the whole idea of Google is fundamentally evil. It's a few specific aspects of Google's business practices that Cory dislikes -- aspects which, he might well argue, could easily be reformed without significantly affecting Google's prosperity.
      - bmj 18y ago
        Point taken. But at what point do you throw the baby out with the bathwater?
        helveticaman 18y ago
        When the baby is Chuckie.
      - david 18y ago
litewulf 18y ago
I find it curious that he is so hostile to Google when he appears to use their services so much. I think there is a severe disconnect with the rah rah privacy Google is bad and the "oh but I really like their apps". Hopefully the cognitive dissonance doesn't make that poor man's head explode. Also, all of these "Google won't let Chrome do X" arguments really weird me out. You have the source. Do what you want with it. Seriously, the concept of permission is really fuzzy when talking about adding features to open source projects.
- ars 18y ago
  The world isn't black and white. It's perfectly logical not to like something, but to use it anyway.
  - litewulf 18y ago
    Uhh. I think its intellectually dishonest. He wants Google to not play in China because he thinks its morally wrong. Yet, he uses Google even though he views their policies as morally wrong. Do you see what I mean?
    - electromagnetic 18y ago
      I think what ars meant was that you can dislike something, a la Microsoft, yet still use their product. I dislike Microsoft, but there is no alternative for me. I have no interest in Linux as it just bores the crap out of me, it's not even an alternative as there's just too many hoops to jump through to get it working and then I'll still have XP on my computer so there's no reason to switch. I would switch to Apple as an alternative, but as you have to have an apple computer to run OS X I don't even consider it. I'm not going to throw out over $1000 on a macbook, and god forbid I want extra ram installed at apple they'll take another $600 for sticking two little chips in two little slots. The guy who does it must be making $550 an hour cause I can install two ram chips for little over $50 tops! (that includes buying them, I know this because I did it just last weekend for someone, $38.99 for 2x1gb) So even though I detest microsoft, I hate them less than the rest.
Zak 18y ago
It's no secret that the nonprofit, free, open Firefox browser depends largely on Google's financial largesse and technical contributions Firefox isn't entirely non-profit. The for-profit Mozilla Corporation exists as a subsidiary of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation and makes a substantial profit. Said profits are reinvisted in the company, but that's not so different from Google. What is different is that there are no options or shareholders.
- menloparkbum 18y ago
  More than 80% of Mozilla's revenue comes directly from Google.
Herring 18y ago
Someone's going to mention forking & rebranding. It's hard, much harder than when you have official support. Google's version has a link on the front page.
yummyfajitas 18y ago
Does anyone know which plugins he is describing? In particular, I'm interested in his better book search plugin.
- silentbicycle 18y ago
  I'm not sure it fits what he's talking about, but I've found book burro (http://www.bookburro.org/ http://www.bookburro.org/) quite helpful. It collects results from several used book price searchers, rather than searching inside book content, but it can also search for library availability in a $distance radius, which is nice.
- sutro 18y ago
  CustomizeGoogle. It strips the ads out of all of Google's webapps.
amoeba 18y ago
Who cares what Cory Doctorow thinks about web browsers?
- jrockway 18y ago
  Who cares?
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
microcentury 18y ago
Oh for God's sake... I admire Doctorow deeply for his writing and work ethic, but he's really venturing into tinfoil hat territory here.
- JabavuAdams 18y ago
  How is that? He's identified that Google's corporate interests are not aligned with your personal interests, if you value privacy and control of your information highly. You may not share these concerns, but his argument is by no means irrational.
Zak 18y ago
I don't think Google really cares about the tiny percentage of people who use tools that reduce Google's ability to collect data or display ads. If Firefox started bundling the extensions referenced in the article by default, Google might get worried, but their business is about volume, not a few Firefox power users.
sgibat 18y ago
All of these arguments are getting really old. Google said they'd provide an API. I bet you'll be able to do all of these things without even having to fork it.

57 points by soundsop 18y ago

It was reasonable until I got to this bit... "Changes the Google logo to a "Gulag" logo showing Google's place as part of the Great Firewall of China, providing a constant reminder to me that for all that I trust Google with lots of key data, I must never forget that it has demonstrated a historical corporate willingness to participate in censorship and surveillance efforts when its profits were on the line"

gdee 18y ago
Care to explain what's unreasonable with that?
- tlrobinson 18y ago
  I like to base my technology related decisions mostly on the technology, not politics. You could say that it was about technology, since he's talking about GreaseMonkey (though the same thing could probably be accomplished with user stylesheets, which I'm sure Chrome does/will support), but really he just wanted to inject his opinion about something pretty irrelevant and couldn't figure out a better way. Plus replacing the Google logo like that is a petty thing to do in the first place.
  - mechanical_fish 18y ago
    I like to base my technology related decisions mostly on the technology, not politics. Well, that's your use case. Cory Doctorow has his own use case -- one which Firefox addresses much better than Chrome, at least for the moment.
- bmj 18y ago
  I'm not sure I'd label it "unreasonable," but if you feel so strongly about Google's business practices, shouldn't you boycott their services completely? By using their services, aren't you tacitly assenting to their business practices?
  - EliAndrewC 18y ago
    Since he blocks Google's ads, they're not profiting from his usage of their services. So he could argue that he's not really supporting him if he's merely a drain on their resources.
  - mechanical_fish 18y ago
    By using their services, aren't you tacitly assenting to their business practices? Certainly not! I do business with plenty of people that I disagree with. So do you, no doubt. This is a classic (i.e. "really old") line of argument against political activists. To testify to that, I give you MIT's most (in?)famous political activist, Noam Chomsky: As to how I tolerate MIT, that raises another question. There are people who argue, and I have never understood the logic of this, that a radical ought to distance himself from oppressive institutions. The logic of that argument is that Karl Marx shouldn't have studied in the British Museum which, if anything, was the symbol of the most vicious imperialism in the world... But I think Karl Marx was quite right in studying in the British Museum. He was right in using the resources and in fact the liberal values of the civilization that he was trying to overcome, against it. Remember, the goal of an activist is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The goal is to convince the baby to join the activist's side. Which you accomplish by living inside the baby's culture, appealing to its better nature, and using all the tools at your disposal, including the baby's tools. It's not as if the whole idea of Google is fundamentally evil. It's a few specific aspects of Google's business practices that Cory dislikes -- aspects which, he might well argue, could easily be reformed without significantly affecting Google's prosperity.
    - bmj 18y ago
      Point taken. But at what point do you throw the baby out with the bathwater?
      - helveticaman 18y ago
        When the baby is Chuckie.
    - david 18y ago

litewulf 18y ago

I find it curious that he is so hostile to Google when he appears to use their services so much. I think there is a severe disconnect with the rah rah privacy Google is bad and the "oh but I really like their apps". Hopefully the cognitive dissonance doesn't make that poor man's head explode. Also, all of these "Google won't let Chrome do X" arguments really weird me out. You have the source. Do what you want with it. Seriously, the concept of permission is really fuzzy when talking about adding features to open source projects.

ars 18y ago
The world isn't black and white. It's perfectly logical not to like something, but to use it anyway.
- litewulf 18y ago
  Uhh. I think its intellectually dishonest. He wants Google to not play in China because he thinks its morally wrong. Yet, he uses Google even though he views their policies as morally wrong. Do you see what I mean?
  - electromagnetic 18y ago
    I think what ars meant was that you can dislike something, a la Microsoft, yet still use their product. I dislike Microsoft, but there is no alternative for me. I have no interest in Linux as it just bores the crap out of me, it's not even an alternative as there's just too many hoops to jump through to get it working and then I'll still have XP on my computer so there's no reason to switch. I would switch to Apple as an alternative, but as you have to have an apple computer to run OS X I don't even consider it. I'm not going to throw out over $1000 on a macbook, and god forbid I want extra ram installed at apple they'll take another $600 for sticking two little chips in two little slots. The guy who does it must be making $550 an hour cause I can install two ram chips for little over $50 tops! (that includes buying them, I know this because I did it just last weekend for someone, $38.99 for 2x1gb) So even though I detest microsoft, I hate them less than the rest.

Zak 18y ago

It's no secret that the nonprofit, free, open Firefox browser depends largely on Google's financial largesse and technical contributions Firefox isn't entirely non-profit. The for-profit Mozilla Corporation exists as a subsidiary of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation and makes a substantial profit. Said profits are reinvisted in the company, but that's not so different from Google. What is different is that there are no options or shareholders.

menloparkbum 18y ago
More than 80% of Mozilla's revenue comes directly from Google.

Herring 18y ago

Someone's going to mention forking & rebranding. It's hard, much harder than when you have official support. Google's version has a link on the front page.

yummyfajitas 18y ago

Does anyone know which plugins he is describing? In particular, I'm interested in his better book search plugin.

silentbicycle 18y ago
I'm not sure it fits what he's talking about, but I've found book burro (http://www.bookburro.org/ http://www.bookburro.org/) quite helpful. It collects results from several used book price searchers, rather than searching inside book content, but it can also search for library availability in a $distance radius, which is nice.
sutro 18y ago
CustomizeGoogle. It strips the ads out of all of Google's webapps.

amoeba 18y ago

Who cares what Cory Doctorow thinks about web browsers?

jrockway 18y ago
Who cares?

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

microcentury 18y ago

Oh for God's sake... I admire Doctorow deeply for his writing and work ethic, but he's really venturing into tinfoil hat territory here.

JabavuAdams 18y ago
How is that? He's identified that Google's corporate interests are not aligned with your personal interests, if you value privacy and control of your information highly. You may not share these concerns, but his argument is by no means irrational.

Zak 18y ago

I don't think Google really cares about the tiny percentage of people who use tools that reduce Google's ability to collect data or display ads. If Firefox started bundling the extensions referenced in the article by default, Google might get worried, but their business is about volume, not a few Firefox power users.

sgibat 18y ago

All of these arguments are getting really old. Google said they'd provide an API. I bet you'll be able to do all of these things without even having to fork it.