4 ms·

I'm not even sure how to respond to the "selling private information to Google" bit. If you think choosing a default search engine equates to selling private i

• illumen 15y ago
  hi, my main point over all is that both parties should be nice, and improve their communication to make the community a nicer place. It's not just the users that are 'dicks', and they should stop being 'dicks'. Other things can be done to make the community nicer on both sides. Concerning the private searches part that you take issue with... My main point was that Mozilla gets money from the users indirectly (and directly), so the argument that users are not paying so can not expect anything is silly. Mozilla also gets money from Google "for click-throughs on ads placed on the ensuing search results pages", not just the default search engine bit. You're right that people can argue over what the search arrangement with Google should be called. The private searches which people type into Firefox go to Google. Google pays money to Mozilla for this. It reminds me of when people try to work around liquor laws by making up some 'work around'. For example people sell tickets which can then be used to buy alcohol... and because you're not directly selling people the alcohol people think that is ok. But really, the laws still say you can't do that clever little ruse. Now, people don't have to agree on this, but I'm pretty sure many people would think of it as their information being sold to a corporation if they knew that arrangement was in place. I doubt most users of Firefox realise that google pays mozilla for the search arrangement though. We don't need to agree on this, or that the world is flat either, but I think it is the case. To your second issue you raised, "The Mozilla Corporation (abbreviated MoCo) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation". -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation The Mozilla Foundation is a non profit, as such gets special treatment. The government, and tax payers give non profits a break because they are contributing something good to the community - like all the good stuff Mozilla does. cheers, [edit: removed thing about google getting sent url bar entries in ff]
  • bzbarsky 15y ago
    > Google is also told what urls people type in. You must be thinking of Chrome. In Firefox this is very definitely NOT the case. That's why the url bar and the search field are separate.
    • illumen 15y ago
      yup, thanks. I removed that bit from the post. If I type "blabla" into the url bar and press enter it still goes to google, even if you change the default search engine to say duck duck go/wikipedia etc. Also doesn't Firefox send google the url for 'safebrowsing', the anti phishing detection thing?
      • bzbarsky 15y ago
        > If I type "blabla" into the url bar and press enter it > still goes to google It goes to a search engine defined in user preferences, actually. You are correct that this search engine is not correlated with the one selected in the search field. > 'safebrowsing', the anti phishing detection thing? That's carefully designed to not have to send the url to the safebrowsing provider. The browser has a client-side database of blacklisted urls, and there is also a mode where a one-way hash of the url is sent to the safebrowsing provider. In no case is the actual url sent.
  • bzbarsky 15y ago
    Oh, and as regards "special treatment"... what sort? The Mozilla Foundation has very little revenue of its own. All revenue coming via the Mozilla Corporation is handled like any other revenue from any other corporation for tax purposes and the like Either you're a bit confused about what it means to be a "non profit", or I'd really like to see a clear explanation of what sorts of special treatment you think Mozilla is getting here. (Disclosure: I too work for the Mozilla Corporation, though I've been contributing to the project for a lot longer than I've been employed.)
    • illumen 15y ago