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I see 0 problems with this. Disney gets their exposure. Mozilla gets some money (I hope) and exposure. The users don't really get negatively affected. I hope th

I see 0 problems with this. Disney gets their exposure. Mozilla gets some money (I hope) and exposure. The users don't really get negatively affected. I hope this helps increase Firefox's market share to make it more competitive to Chrome. The fact that Disney use DRM means that Mozilla should not have done this is a weak point at best. DRM is used by most media companies. I feel like people just get angry at Mozilla for the hell of it without understanding that they have to pay their employees somehow. Also Mozilla could "team up" with any org and someone would find a way to get angry over it.

Nextgrid 5y ago
> they have to pay their employees somehow What are their employees doing though? If they're churning out BS like this, are they even necessary? Most Firefox features that gave it marketshare long ago have been left to rot if not outright deprecated. What remains is a terrible Chrome knockoff. --- Edit: this comment is rage/venting so I'll elaborate: my problem with Mozilla's recent (~5 years?) evolution is that Firefox's power-user features that not only gave it its original marketshare but are the last line of defense in an increasingly user-hostile web are being left to rot if not outright killed off while being replaced by useless garbage like this and while their marketshare continues to dwindle (no surprise there considering any differentiating features are on the back-burner), their CEO increased their compensation to ridiculous levels. Firefox is the most user-hostile FOSS software I know of - on-par if not worse than a lot of paid, proprietary software. Upon first run it'll load several tabs with Google Analytics spyware, has Pocket, ads/sponsored links and telemetry enabled by default (the latter is in breach of the GDPR) and makes bold claims about privacy while it doesn't even come with a built-in adblocker (even its strongest tracking protection is inferior to uBlock Origin and not even enabled by default). Every update will interrupt your flow with a useless "what's new" tab (and I think the recent "Colorways" update had its own tab/modal in addition to the usual update). I'm worried this new development will also have its own annoying notification next time I start the browser.
- yoasif_ 5y ago
  > What are their employees doing though? This really isn't hard to find: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/ https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/
  - lucideer 5y ago
    While the comment above is certainly hyperbolic, a Mercurial link listing non-hyperlinked usernames of committers that may or may not be direct employees is a somewhat simplistic & ultimately insufficient response. Mozilla recently laid off a significant portion of Firefox developers, while announcing that they are "reducing investment in [...] platform feature development, and transitioning adjacent security/privacy products to our New Products and Operations team", all the while increasing upper management remuneration (management had already made up close to 50% of salary expenditure in recent foundation financial reports)
    - yoasif_ 5y ago
      > While the comment above is certainly hyperbolic, a Mercurial link listing non-hyperlinked usernames of committers that may or may not be direct employees is a somewhat simplistic & ultimately insufficient response. The diffs are linked and it is pretty easy to see if the authors have mozilla.com email addresses. I don't really think it is all that simplistic - you can very easily see what at least a portion of their employees are doing. I think people can fairly easily judge based on that whether they think they are necessary. Perhaps if the poster had asked a different question, a more "sufficient" response could have been provided.
- pelagicAustral 5y ago
  whoa! Don't hold back...
- lancesells 5y ago
  I'm always confused by the Mozilla hate here on HN. I mean Firefox works quite well as far as a browser goes, it's infinitely less evil than Google who is molding the web to their advantage and it's way more customizable than Safari.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    It is - my comment is just pent up rage/venting in hindsight, I'll edit it. Yes, I agree that it's still less evil, but it used to be so much better and clearly going downhill. Initiatives like this don't inspire confidence it's going to become any better.
  - ChrisSD 5y ago
    It's truly weird and I don't understand it. I mean not to defend Firefox but the HN reaction is almost comically extreme. --- Chrome: ...and so our company's puppy kicking campaign was a total success. In other news, we're updating our terms of service so that you agree to hand over your first born child. HN: Meh, I'll still use Chrome though. ---- Firefox: Today we fixed a bug that... HN: OMG FIREFOX SUCKS. I'M USING CHROME NOW.
    - dleslie 5y ago
      You can use de-Googled variants of Chrome that serve less telemetry, by default, and are more private, by default, than Firefox. They're also faster. And they're open source.
      - opan 5y ago
        If variants are on the table, there's also IceCat and LibreWolf for the Firefox side.
      - prometheon1 5y ago
        Do these forks also undo the changes that google makes to chromium to push their agenda?
  - hartator 5y ago
brimble 5y ago
They'll push it as an ad pop-up, is the problem. Modern Firefox borders on being adware, like Opera was back when Phoenix was first released. And it's more aggressive about pushing ads than that ever was. At least those were constant and stayed in a little banner area, rather than interrupting you while you're trying to do stuff.
- FinalBriefing 5y ago
  If people using Disney+ get an ad for Firefox, that would be great. Firefox needs more exposure to combat Chrome's ads in all of Google's apps.
  - brimble 5y ago
    Now that might be an interesting arrangement. I'm still skeptical that more focus-stealing advertising in a browser that saw early success in no small part precisely because it eliminated focus-stealing advertising from the Web, is a promising direction to be heading. But this take is at least interesting.
- jdlshore 5y ago
  I use Firefox as a daily driver and I've never seen a pop-up ad from Mozilla. Are you fantasizing about what you imagine might happen, or what has actually happened? If the latter, please provide some evidence.
  - brimble 5y ago
    They use pop-up ads for Pocket, or their recent "color ways" thing, or whatever, pretty often. They also like to pop in new tabs and move focus to them, which is at least as bad. The evidence is using Firefox for any length of time, with default settings (maybe there's a way to turn this off, I dunno, I use Safari most of the time these days so it hasn't been worth figuring out, but happens enough to be pretty annoying even in my limited use of FF on my Windows gaming PC)
    - 5y ago
AceJohnny2 5y ago
> I hope this helps increase Firefox's market share to make it more competitive to Chrome. It's got a long way to go :( https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share As of posting, it's at 4.18%, similar to MS Edge, and basically in the bottom-rung of the also-rans. For comparison, the real contenders are Chrome at 63% and Safari at 19.84%.
- mintplant 5y ago
  I'm always skeptical of these reports because they rely on tracking data collection that Firefox has been stricter and stricter about blocking. Inside Mozilla we had different numbers which didn't line up with the public marketshare figures. StatCounter in particular was infamous for under-reporting.
  - 1123581321 5y ago
    How much higher would the internal numbers tend to be vs StatCounter?
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > Inside Mozilla we had different numbers which didn't line up with the public marketshare figures People inside Mozilla are more likely to use Firefox - big surprise?
  - AceJohnny2 5y ago
    > Inside Mozilla we had different numbers which didn't line up with the public marketshare figures How did they obtain those numbers?
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Mozilla is like Barack Obama for certain people, it's a symbol of everything they politically hate. Teaming up with Disney is like Wearing a Tan suit or a bicycle helmet, it's only the worst thing ever when your politcal enemy is doing it and you have nothing better to complain about.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  Disney is one of the worlds worst companies. Mozilla teaming up with them is bad because Disney is bad. It's straight forward. Disliking the choices Mozilla has been making doesn't mean you instantly love Google/Chrome. We're fighting for a better web, not a less worse web.
  - dralley 5y ago
    Google literally works (or worked) on robots and AI for the military and participated in mass surveillance. But Mozilla has a marketing deal with a Pixar movie with a Red Panda, and everyone loses their minds. Typical HN.
    - fartcannon 5y ago
      Yes, Google and Disney are bad companies.
  - akmittal 5y ago
    Really the worst company? Worse than Facebook or all this crypto companies. I don't think Pixar/Disney have done any damages to web/tech. Only that should matter to mozilla
    - fartcannon 5y ago
      Yes Disney and Facebook are bad companies. Mozilla should strive to be better than Disney and Facebook.
  - threatofrain 5y ago
apostacy 5y ago
This is like seeing Obama do a charity event with Halliburton and Dick Cheney. Disney is probably the company most directly aligned against the values that Mozilla purportedly holds. They spent decades funding projects to kill the modern web. Has Disney indicated that they have stopped being the bad guys? As far as I can tell, Disney is still pushing their dystopian nightmare world. The least that Mozilla can do is not normalize them.

Nextgrid 5y ago

> they have to pay their employees somehow What are their employees doing though? If they're churning out BS like this, are they even necessary? Most Firefox features that gave it marketshare long ago have been left to rot if not outright deprecated. What remains is a terrible Chrome knockoff. --- Edit: this comment is rage/venting so I'll elaborate: my problem with Mozilla's recent (~5 years?) evolution is that Firefox's power-user features that not only gave it its original marketshare but are the last line of defense in an increasingly user-hostile web are being left to rot if not outright killed off while being replaced by useless garbage like this and while their marketshare continues to dwindle (no surprise there considering any differentiating features are on the back-burner), their CEO increased their compensation to ridiculous levels. Firefox is the most user-hostile FOSS software I know of - on-par if not worse than a lot of paid, proprietary software. Upon first run it'll load several tabs with Google Analytics spyware, has Pocket, ads/sponsored links and telemetry enabled by default (the latter is in breach of the GDPR) and makes bold claims about privacy while it doesn't even come with a built-in adblocker (even its strongest tracking protection is inferior to uBlock Origin and not even enabled by default). Every update will interrupt your flow with a useless "what's new" tab (and I think the recent "Colorways" update had its own tab/modal in addition to the usual update). I'm worried this new development will also have its own annoying notification next time I start the browser.

yoasif_ 5y ago
> What are their employees doing though? This really isn't hard to find: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/ https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/
- lucideer 5y ago
  While the comment above is certainly hyperbolic, a Mercurial link listing non-hyperlinked usernames of committers that may or may not be direct employees is a somewhat simplistic & ultimately insufficient response. Mozilla recently laid off a significant portion of Firefox developers, while announcing that they are "reducing investment in [...] platform feature development, and transitioning adjacent security/privacy products to our New Products and Operations team", all the while increasing upper management remuneration (management had already made up close to 50% of salary expenditure in recent foundation financial reports)
  - yoasif_ 5y ago
    > While the comment above is certainly hyperbolic, a Mercurial link listing non-hyperlinked usernames of committers that may or may not be direct employees is a somewhat simplistic & ultimately insufficient response. The diffs are linked and it is pretty easy to see if the authors have mozilla.com email addresses. I don't really think it is all that simplistic - you can very easily see what at least a portion of their employees are doing. I think people can fairly easily judge based on that whether they think they are necessary. Perhaps if the poster had asked a different question, a more "sufficient" response could have been provided.
pelagicAustral 5y ago
whoa! Don't hold back...
lancesells 5y ago
I'm always confused by the Mozilla hate here on HN. I mean Firefox works quite well as far as a browser goes, it's infinitely less evil than Google who is molding the web to their advantage and it's way more customizable than Safari.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  It is - my comment is just pent up rage/venting in hindsight, I'll edit it. Yes, I agree that it's still less evil, but it used to be so much better and clearly going downhill. Initiatives like this don't inspire confidence it's going to become any better.
- ChrisSD 5y ago
  It's truly weird and I don't understand it. I mean not to defend Firefox but the HN reaction is almost comically extreme. --- Chrome: ...and so our company's puppy kicking campaign was a total success. In other news, we're updating our terms of service so that you agree to hand over your first born child. HN: Meh, I'll still use Chrome though. ---- Firefox: Today we fixed a bug that... HN: OMG FIREFOX SUCKS. I'M USING CHROME NOW.
  - dleslie 5y ago
    You can use de-Googled variants of Chrome that serve less telemetry, by default, and are more private, by default, than Firefox. They're also faster. And they're open source.
    - opan 5y ago
      If variants are on the table, there's also IceCat and LibreWolf for the Firefox side.
    - prometheon1 5y ago
      Do these forks also undo the changes that google makes to chromium to push their agenda?
- hartator 5y ago

brimble 5y ago

They'll push it as an ad pop-up, is the problem. Modern Firefox borders on being adware, like Opera was back when Phoenix was first released. And it's more aggressive about pushing ads than that ever was. At least those were constant and stayed in a little banner area, rather than interrupting you while you're trying to do stuff.

FinalBriefing 5y ago
If people using Disney+ get an ad for Firefox, that would be great. Firefox needs more exposure to combat Chrome's ads in all of Google's apps.
- brimble 5y ago
  Now that might be an interesting arrangement. I'm still skeptical that more focus-stealing advertising in a browser that saw early success in no small part precisely because it eliminated focus-stealing advertising from the Web, is a promising direction to be heading. But this take is at least interesting.
jdlshore 5y ago
I use Firefox as a daily driver and I've never seen a pop-up ad from Mozilla. Are you fantasizing about what you imagine might happen, or what has actually happened? If the latter, please provide some evidence.
- brimble 5y ago
  They use pop-up ads for Pocket, or their recent "color ways" thing, or whatever, pretty often. They also like to pop in new tabs and move focus to them, which is at least as bad. The evidence is using Firefox for any length of time, with default settings (maybe there's a way to turn this off, I dunno, I use Safari most of the time these days so it hasn't been worth figuring out, but happens enough to be pretty annoying even in my limited use of FF on my Windows gaming PC)
  - 5y ago

AceJohnny2 5y ago

> I hope this helps increase Firefox's market share to make it more competitive to Chrome. It's got a long way to go :( https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share As of posting, it's at 4.18%, similar to MS Edge, and basically in the bottom-rung of the also-rans. For comparison, the real contenders are Chrome at 63% and Safari at 19.84%.

mintplant 5y ago
I'm always skeptical of these reports because they rely on tracking data collection that Firefox has been stricter and stricter about blocking. Inside Mozilla we had different numbers which didn't line up with the public marketshare figures. StatCounter in particular was infamous for under-reporting.
- 1123581321 5y ago
  How much higher would the internal numbers tend to be vs StatCounter?
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Inside Mozilla we had different numbers which didn't line up with the public marketshare figures People inside Mozilla are more likely to use Firefox - big surprise?
- AceJohnny2 5y ago
  > Inside Mozilla we had different numbers which didn't line up with the public marketshare figures How did they obtain those numbers?

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

Mozilla is like Barack Obama for certain people, it's a symbol of everything they politically hate. Teaming up with Disney is like Wearing a Tan suit or a bicycle helmet, it's only the worst thing ever when your politcal enemy is doing it and you have nothing better to complain about.

fartcannon 5y ago
Disney is one of the worlds worst companies. Mozilla teaming up with them is bad because Disney is bad. It's straight forward. Disliking the choices Mozilla has been making doesn't mean you instantly love Google/Chrome. We're fighting for a better web, not a less worse web.
- dralley 5y ago
  Google literally works (or worked) on robots and AI for the military and participated in mass surveillance. But Mozilla has a marketing deal with a Pixar movie with a Red Panda, and everyone loses their minds. Typical HN.
  - fartcannon 5y ago
    Yes, Google and Disney are bad companies.
- akmittal 5y ago
  Really the worst company? Worse than Facebook or all this crypto companies. I don't think Pixar/Disney have done any damages to web/tech. Only that should matter to mozilla
  - fartcannon 5y ago
    Yes Disney and Facebook are bad companies. Mozilla should strive to be better than Disney and Facebook.
- threatofrain 5y ago

apostacy 5y ago

This is like seeing Obama do a charity event with Halliburton and Dick Cheney. Disney is probably the company most directly aligned against the values that Mozilla purportedly holds. They spent decades funding projects to kill the modern web. Has Disney indicated that they have stopped being the bad guys? As far as I can tell, Disney is still pushing their dystopian nightmare world. The least that Mozilla can do is not normalize them.