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Thank you, Chris

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Thank you, Chris

#81

Post by eitland »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #44
coldpie wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be happy to support Mozilla financially, but I'm too lazy to go figure out how to do it. Link me to a Patreon, or shove some subscription model more prominently in my face, Mozilla.

https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/?presets=50,30,20,10&amount... There's a monthly option right there

> Contributions go to the Mozilla Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization based in Mountain View, California, to be used in its discretion for its charitable purposes.

I've read about this before I think, for some reason donations cannot be used for development and has to be used for outreach etc?

Re: Thank you, Chris

#82

Post by saidajigumi »

byuu wrote: post #63
saidajigumi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality. I'm rather torn on this point. On one hand, yes, DDG for example feels some years behind Google in its relevance ranking. On the other, Google itself has been degrading the quality of its own results with ads, etc. so badly that they've seriously degraded their own "above the fold" relevant results.

I've always written off Duck Duck Go in the past, but lately after not being able to find relevant info on Google, I've been giving them a go and have been rather impressed. Especially on image results, which are way nicer to use and give you direct image links. Plus they don't obfuscate all the URLs with tracking redirects, so I can copy a link without visiting a page (that might redirect the URL on me again.) There…

Agreed. I've given DuckDuckGo a try a few times in the past, and it never stuck. With the latest rounds of Google-being-Google, I gave DDG another go and so far haven't looked back.

Re: Thank you, Chris

#83

Post by borfohrex »

tapoxi wrote: post #14
_red wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Brave started from nothing and seems to be growing. I use it now on all my devices and really like it as a daily driver. Had Brendan been able to try these ideas with the firefox userbase it could've advanced the privacy conversation much further...

I can't help but feel that a lot of Brave's userbase are pushing it because they have a financial investment in BAT from the ICO. Brave certainly doesn't help with the monoculture threat either, its just Chrome.

Having Google as your default search engine or include Google's safe browsing inside your browser doesn't help with the monoculture threat either, but i guess mozilla thinks otherwise.

Re: Thank you, Chris

#84

Post by [deleted] »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #73
angrygoat wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Firefox decimated Internet Explorer in the 2000s, it was just... better. And I think Chrome had some fairly obvious gains over Firefox and IE which led it to gain market share. I was an early adopter of Chrome, but that was in the days before Google seemed so sinister... I use Firefox now because I care about privacy, and I'd rather use a browser developed by a non-profit that cares about that as well. But I sus…

Chrome also has a persistent advantage in being able to advertise Chrome on google search results. Which they do, if you access them using a non-Chrome browser, or at least used to... I confess I'm not sure because I still use Chrome. I agree with you about the advantage of "if you're already using it, something has to be a LOT better to get you to switch".

[deleted]

Re: Thank you, Chris

#85

Post by cloudytoday »

Just downloaded Firefox again for the first time in ages...what's lame is that some G Suite / Apps / Mail features are only available in Chrome forcing me to use Chrome for work..

Re: Thank you, Chris

#86

Post by [deleted] »

saidajigumi wrote: post #45
huhtenberg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla is now openly peeing in Google's punch all the while being dependent on piles of money they take from it. At some point Google will get tired of this and will withdraw from the agreement. They won't be the default search provider, but that will play to their advantage - Firefox out-of-the-box user experience will take a sharp nose dive. Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a…

Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality. I'm rather torn on this point. On one hand, yes, DDG for example feels some years behind Google in its relevance ranking. On the other, Google itself has been degrading the quality of its own results with ads, etc. so badly that they've seriously degraded their own "above the fold" relevant results.

[deleted]

Re: Thank you, Chris

#87

Post by Endy »

jtbayly wrote: post #65
UweSchmidt wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy! Rethink the whole thing from the ground up with privacy in mind. This includes transparency to whats going on under the hood, an integration of important plugins (your average video downloading plugin is likely siphoning all kinds of information), sandboxing, privacy-aware defaults, and banning and blacklisting a whole lot of known crap!

For some reason I read that as "Piracy!" Got my mind running in a rather different direction. lol

Unfortunately, to most of the adtech and copyright lobby, those two things are always going to go together.

Re: Thank you, Chris

#88

Post by saidajigumi »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #64
saidajigumi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say all you want about DDG and alternatives, but they still can't hold a candle to Google's search quality. I'm rather torn on this point. On one hand, yes, DDG for example feels some years behind Google in its relevance ranking. On the other, Google itself has been degrading the quality of its own results with ads, etc. so badly that they've seriously degraded their own "above the fold" relevant results.

It doesn't sound like your torn at all, if you think DDG still feels year behind Google, despite Google's results degrading. Sounds like you still think Google is a lot better.

No, quite the opposite. To clarify: this is the first time I've started using DDG on multiple devices and it's stuck. I'll rephrase: I think that DDG is still a few years behind Google's unadorned best-effort result set, but not that far behind Google's actual presentation today. I.e. Google's degraded itself so much as to make the competition viable for this search user.

Re: Thank you, Chris

#89

Post by byuu »

icebraining wrote: post #79
byuu wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always written off Duck Duck Go in the past, but lately after not being able to find relevant info on Google, I've been giving them a go and have been rather impressed. Especially on image results, which are way nicer to use and give you direct image links. Plus they don't obfuscate all the URLs with tracking redirects, so I can copy a link without visiting a page (that might redirect the URL on me again.) There…

> Especially on image results, which (...) give you direct image links. Google removed that after pressure from the copyright lobby (they got sued by Getty). It'll happen to DDG too if they ever become big enough.

Oh, I wasn't aware of the lawsuit. That's ridiculous. Well in any case, I wrote a Userscript to restore direct links to Google image results, and also to filter out spam site results (cough e...-e...com), if anyone were interested: https://byuu.org/other/script/google

Middle-clicking or control-clicking will load the original images.

Bing direct links images as well so they'd probably go after Microsoft well before DDG, so I think we're safe. But I can always do the same for DDG if need be.

Re: Thank you, Chris

#90

Post by sciurus »

modzu wrote: post #30
angrygoat wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Firefox decimated Internet Explorer in the 2000s, it was just... better. And I think Chrome had some fairly obvious gains over Firefox and IE which led it to gain market share. I was an early adopter of Chrome, but that was in the days before Google seemed so sinister... I use Firefox now because I care about privacy, and I'd rather use a browser developed by a non-profit that cares about that as well. But I sus…

its so obvious that native ad blocking could be that feature. when a non-tech user opens up a browser with ad blocking it blows their mind. they go to youtube and put on a song, and wait! they don't have to reach for the mute first to silence some loud ad? they don't have to wait to click "skip" on the ad? it just works?? the user just wants the content and we can give it to them. imo this would be the step from chro…

Firefox has tracking protection enabled by default. Given the current state of the ad ecosystem, this has the side effect of blocking most ads.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/06/04/firefox-now-availab...

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