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> switching to the only remaining ethical web browser, Firefox Mozilla is actually not an ethical organization, if ethics mean the things that are espoused in
by gunapologist99 3y ago
> switching to the only remaining ethical web browser, Firefox
Mozilla is actually not an ethical organization, if ethics mean the things that are espoused in this article.
Mozilla receives literally billions from Google[1] every year -- $26,000,000,000.00 in 2021 alone, with only 3% market share. That's a lot of zeros -- some startups might be rather happy to see an annual 26 billion funding round!
Mozilla forced privacy-rejecting products like Pocket[2] into Firefox.
Mozilla secretly-installed advertising extensions[3].
1. https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/27/23934961/google-antitrust-trial-defaults-search-deal-26-3-billion https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/27/23934961/google-antitrus...
2. https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/the-firefox-browser-is-a-privacy-nightmare-on-desktop-and-mobile/ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/the-firefox-brows...
3. https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught-shoving-mr-robot-add-on-into-firefox/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/privacy-touting-mozilla-caught...
CORRECTION: a comment below correctly points out that Mozilla wasn't the only recipient of that $26B in 2021; it appears that Apple was the biggest payee.
- sevagh 3y agoI love Firefox and I hate Mozilla.
- NelsonMinar 3y agoThat $26B is for paying all browsers, not Mozilla alone. Mozilla is not receiving literally billions from Google every year; a recent year was $450M. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-google-keeps-paying-mozilla-s-firefox-even-as-chrome-dominates https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-go... It's still a lot of money, more than I suspect Firefox's market share would allow. It seems more like a payment to maintain a monopoly while keeping anti-trust concerns off of Google.
- causal 3y agoThese attacks don't feel like they're being made in good faith. 1. This is patently false. If you read the article you linked you'll see that $26B is Google's total spend on being the default search engine across all platforms including Apple and Samsung devices. Apple gets $18B of that alone. Firefox is a much smaller share, and it's not clear at all why taking this money would be unethical in the first place. 2. Firefox is up-front about the fact they use Pocket to generate revenue, and make it simple to disable. 3. I agree that Firefox should have been more up-front about what gets installed when participating in studies, but it should be noted that Cliqz has since been removed, and this article is 6 years old.