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Firefox 70

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Re: Firefox 70

#151

Post by fouric »

rusk wrote: post #145
burtonator wrote: post #116

Firefox + Mozilla are awesome. I still have a Mozilla 1.0 t-shirt from the first release party! I've recently seen a ton of FF fans state that the reason they love Firefox is that it doesn't have ads or track you and preserves your privacy. However, Firefox wouldn't exist without Google and (to a lesser extent, Google Chrome). They make 94% of their revenue via bundling and distribution deals with companies like Goog…

> we see users just outright refusing to pay I’m not convinced this is true. Surveillance/Market insight/whatever is just too lucrative. There’s plenty of examples of company’s that make a living by charging for a service but for a company like facebook, for example, excluding users runs counter to their whole business model. “Charging” customers is hassle. If you can find a way to monetise without all that icky hass…

> Surveillance/Market insight/whatever is just too lucrative.

Citation needed. Individual users' data is, last time I checked, relatively low-value - isn't the Facebook ARPU less than $10?

Re: Firefox 70

#152

Post by afiori »

gpm wrote: post #129
otachack wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with your points, but piggybacking to post Mozilla's donation page. We can be preemptive and give to them in order to help the cause. https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/

My understanding of the donations is that they don't go towards supporting firefox development because of how the company/non-profit is structured... is this wrong?

You have to donate directly to firefox apparently

Re: Firefox 70

#153

Post by m-p-3 »

komali2 wrote: post #115
redblacktree wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a good transition path for someone who uses a lot of Google products? In particular, I use Chrome across all my devices, and I depend on the ability to search my history/recent tabs/etc from anywhere. Will Firefox give me the same ability? Is the transition literally just: Install Firefox everywhere and start using it instead?

The only feature you may miss is auto-fill of credit card info. It's saved my ass abroad before.

A good password manager will handle that easily.

Re: Firefox 70

#154

Post by rusk »

fouric wrote: post #151
rusk wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we see users just outright refusing to pay I’m not convinced this is true. Surveillance/Market insight/whatever is just too lucrative. There’s plenty of examples of company’s that make a living by charging for a service but for a company like facebook, for example, excluding users runs counter to their whole business model. “Charging” customers is hassle. If you can find a way to monetise without all that icky hass…

> Surveillance/Market insight/whatever is just too lucrative. Citation needed. Individual users' data is, last time I checked, relatively low-value - isn't the Facebook ARPU less than $10?

How many users?

Re: Firefox 70

#155

Post by FreeFull »

johnchristopher wrote: post #144
burtonator wrote: post #116

Firefox + Mozilla are awesome. I still have a Mozilla 1.0 t-shirt from the first release party! I've recently seen a ton of FF fans state that the reason they love Firefox is that it doesn't have ads or track you and preserves your privacy. However, Firefox wouldn't exist without Google and (to a lesser extent, Google Chrome). They make 94% of their revenue via bundling and distribution deals with companies like Goog…

Oh, please. You make it sound like Mozilla is equivalent to Facebook. Is that a smear campaign ? You can donate to the Mozilla foundation. Have you ? Have you convinced your company or your friends to do so ? Because that's a better alternative than outright singling Mozilla out for their ties to Google. Which last time I checked didn't make the user the product of Google like Chrome or Android does.

Firefox is developed by the Mozilla Corporation (a subsidiary of the Foundation). Money donated towards the Foundation doesn't go towards Firefox development. The Corporation has it's own income sources (including money from Google), and actually a lot of money from the Corporation ends up going to the Foundation, to further the mission of "Making web free".

Re: Firefox 70

#156

Post by edoceo »

firebird84 wrote: post #146
edoceo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just import your CA

It's already installed, that's not it.

Does FF use a different cert-store than os? I've frequently had to fiddle with os/app cert-stores to get them to trust. Not just import the cert but the signer too, some times on both sides. I'll likely hit this issue when I upgrade.

Re: Firefox 70

#157

Post by bad_user »

burtonator wrote: post #116

Firefox + Mozilla are awesome. I still have a Mozilla 1.0 t-shirt from the first release party! I've recently seen a ton of FF fans state that the reason they love Firefox is that it doesn't have ads or track you and preserves your privacy. However, Firefox wouldn't exist without Google and (to a lesser extent, Google Chrome). They make 94% of their revenue via bundling and distribution deals with companies like Goog…

> I'd rather we live in a world where customers paid directly for the product and I was the customer (not the product).

Out of curiosity, what services and products are you paying for?

I'm willing to bet that a vast majority of HN users are still using a @gmail.com email address. And I'm actually in that super small minority that pays for services such as FastMail, Dropbox, Newsblur, 1Password, or YouTube (premium). I also donated to Mozilla among others.

---

The problem is that browsers should be part of the "commons", just like roads, since browsers are indespensible platforms in this day and age.

Are your taxes funding browsers? If no, then are you suggesting that only the privileged should have access to a good, modern browser?

---

Also products like Firefox are very unlike other products, because it's open source, both by license and by how it is developed. If Mozilla dies due to Google pulling the plug on their deal, Firefox is still open source and with enough resources somebody else can pick up its development.

To wit Thunderbird may still live under the Mozilla Foundation, but it is community driven, with donations from individuals being its primary source of funding. And it is moving along. Not as fast and it isn't as polished as its users would want, but it lives.

---

I'd rather use Mozilla's Firefox, instead of products with obscure VC-backed business models that just piggyback on top of Chromium and are thus in no way a threat to Chrome's monopoly.

Re: Firefox 70

#158

Post by metalliqaz »

rusk wrote: post #133
burtonator wrote: post #116

Firefox + Mozilla are awesome. I still have a Mozilla 1.0 t-shirt from the first release party! I've recently seen a ton of FF fans state that the reason they love Firefox is that it doesn't have ads or track you and preserves your privacy. However, Firefox wouldn't exist without Google and (to a lesser extent, Google Chrome). They make 94% of their revenue via bundling and distribution deals with companies like Goog…

> Without Google's ad business Firefox wouldn't exist Really? My recollection of events 15 years ago is a little hazy, but wasnt FF a browser-only release of Mozilla, itself Netscape which has been around as long as time itself (~25 years?) What are we talking about here? There was very definitely a push around 2003 to get FF adopted en masse, and I guess Google probably were a big factor in this ... Bit of a stretch…

Most of Mozilla's funding came from Google in exchange for making Google the default search page.

Re: Firefox 70

#159

Post by ProfessorLayton »

lisper wrote: post #142
pier25 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I installed it, but this should be solved at the native level and not on JS.

What difference does it make?

Having features function by default matters a lot in regards to user adoption. A very large portion of users will never change their default settings, let alone discover and install an add on for something Chrome has by default.

Here’s an article by Mozilla stating the power of default settings:

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/06/04/when-it-comes-to-pr...

Re: Firefox 70

#160

Post by eitland »

gpm wrote: post #129
otachack wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with your points, but piggybacking to post Mozilla's donation page. We can be preemptive and give to them in order to help the cause. https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/

My understanding of the donations is that they don't go towards supporting firefox development because of how the company/non-profit is structured... is this wrong?

Last time it was brought up, this was the conclusion.

And it is not necessarily wrong but if I just want to donate more to good causes then I already have two very good candidates ready that I would be happy to donate more to.

The reason I want to donate to Mozilla would be to make sure it can continue development even of Google should stop paying them.

I have a small hope that their VPN project might be able to funnel money back to developments, and I also think there's some kind of deal with scroll.

If anyone from Mozilla reads this: I'm all for donations (as long as they go towards the product we depend on) or paid products that can work as cash cows.

Just make sure it is optional and don't lie or be sneaky about it and I should be happy

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