Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions • Hacker News Board

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#231

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:42 AM UTC

roca wrote: post #133

mrtesthah wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As mismanaged as Mozilla is, they are in it to make the web a decent place for users. Placing ads in the search bar and datamining everything you search for is failing at this mission.

"No new data is collected, stored, or shared to make these new recommendations." "When contextual suggestions are enabled, Mozilla receives your search queries. When you see or click on a Firefox Suggest result, Mozilla collects and sends your search queries and the result you click on to our partners through a Mozilla-owned proxy service. The data we share with partners does not include personally identifying inform…

> "When contextual suggestions are enabled, Mozilla receives your search queries. (...)"

This, right here. They get those regardless of whether you click on anything. What happens with those queries afterwards?

> "No new data is collected, stored, or shared to make these new recommendations."

If that's true, it would imply search queries were already being sent to Mozilla. I hope it isn't true. I feel incredibly dumb that I never bothered to verify it, that I trusted them. If it turns out the queries were sent, I'll look into filing a GDPR complaint, because I sure as hell didn't give consent for my queries - intended for the search engine of my choice, and which might contain PII - to be processed by Mozilla.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#232

Post by Tepix » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:42 AM UTC

FractalHQ wrote: post #203

jedisct1 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox still has no alternative in the privacy / user-centric space Safari.

Safari’s privacy is a joke considering you can’t install browser extensions like UBlock Origin to thoroughly block trackers and other spyware. Not to mention it’s the most buggy and poorly developed rendering engine, breaking more websites than any other major browser. And it’s not even cross platform. Hardly a competitor as far as I’m concerned.

Safari was the only browser to ship with 3rd party cookies disabled by default. Without Safari there'd be tons of websites that required 3rd party cookies to work. These days there are very few.

3rd party cookies make pervasive tracking much, much easier.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#233

Post by roca » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:42 AM UTC

roca wrote: post #164

creshal wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft gave up developing their own engine , because that aspect doesn't make them money, and their engines were too far behind to bother investing into catching up. They're still making a browser , because it's useful even if it doesn't make them money. Mozilla's engine is modern and they have a clear revenue stream to subsidize its development with their browser revenue. But instead the browser revenue goes to d…

FirefoxOS has been dead for at least seven years. That horse is quite dead. The VPN product probably pays for itself. I'm not an insider anymore but aside from FirefoxOS the vast majority of the money has always gone into browser development and I have no reason to believe that has changed.

(Actually FirefoxOS is not quite dead; KaiOS lives on. But Mozilla's not funding that.)

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#234

Post by vadfa » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:43 AM UTC

57844743385 wrote: post #43

Kototama wrote: post #29

If their CEO salary was not paid in millions dollars maybe the users would be more keen to donate money? I never saw a fundraising like the ones from Wikipedia.

What’s wrong with paying market rates for a CEO? Do you think they should find a CEO below market rates? Have you donated money to Mozilla or Wikipedia?

They had an extremely competent CEO who was more than happy to work for a price below market rates, but he was a conservative, so they sacked him. Now Mozilla has what it deserves.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#235

Post by danielheath » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:43 AM UTC

Jenk wrote: post #122

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can't we have one piece of good software that doesn't try to shove "relevant" "suggestions" from "trusted" "partners" down our throats? If you pay for it, yeah. But you can't have that and have the software be £free to use

Many people would pay for firefox. I don't know if it's enough people to offset what advertisers are willing to pay, nor if adding that would dissuade too many users but it'd be nice to have the option to pay so we can support the development of the browser directly, and avoid adverts. Donating to the foundation feels a bit like donating to the WWF because I want to help a specific Panda I met at the zoo.

It’s multiple orders of magnitude less, judging by how opera went.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#236

Post by zaphirplane » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:44 AM UTC

samizdis wrote: post #128

eCa wrote: post #4

As someone who has used Firefox since v0.* I really, really, really dislike the language they have used lately. > relevant suggestions from our trusted partners The suggestions are not relevant to, and the partners not trusted by, me.

> I really, really, really dislike the language they have used lately. That is exactly the problem I have with it - weasel words and euphemisms; FF is scoring an own-goal here and eroding trust. Why not just tell it like it is. "We need funding and are lining up deals with third parties to display their ads/messaging in the address bar search. We vet these third parties by holding them contractually to these standard…

Firefox doesn’t need 400 million per year to develop

Mozilla has a lot of no value initiatives activities that they want to fund

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#237

Post by ulzeraj » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:45 AM UTC

AegirLeet wrote: post #46

eCa wrote: post #4

As someone who has used Firefox since v0.* I really, really, really dislike the language they have used lately. > relevant suggestions from our trusted partners The suggestions are not relevant to, and the partners not trusted by, me.

Yeah, it really sucks. I've been using Firefox for 15 years or so but this shit is just so discouraging. Can't we have one piece of good software that doesn't try to shove "relevant" "suggestions" from "trusted" "partners" down our throats? I just want a browser that isn't controlled by the ad mafia.

There is the shinny hardware mafia. It might not be your cup of tea but their source of revenue is clearly on their mostly overpriced hardware.

I remember seeing lots of devs complaining about Safari not implementing the latest new shinny google technology for chrome but looking at some of these features those aren't things I'd have in my browser like PWA. Web developers are totally out of touch if they expect that everybody wants a website to have access to things like USB ports.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#238

Post by roca » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:45 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #231

roca wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No new data is collected, stored, or shared to make these new recommendations." "When contextual suggestions are enabled, Mozilla receives your search queries. When you see or click on a Firefox Suggest result, Mozilla collects and sends your search queries and the result you click on to our partners through a Mozilla-owned proxy service. The data we share with partners does not include personally identifying inform…

> "When contextual suggestions are enabled, Mozilla receives your search queries. (...)" This, right here. They get those regardless of whether you click on anything. What happens with those queries afterwards? > "No new data is collected, stored, or shared to make these new recommendations." If that's true, it would imply search queries were already being sent to Mozilla. I hope it isn't true. I feel incredibly dumb…

> What happens with those queries afterwards?

https://blog.mozilla.org/data/2021/09/15/data-and-firefox-su...

> Mozilla approaches handling this data conservatively. We take care to remove data from our systems as soon as it’s no longer needed. When passing data on to our partners, we are careful to only provide the partner with the minimum information required to serve the feature.

> A specific example of this principle in action is the search’s location. The location of a search is derived from the Firefox client’s IP address. However, the IP address can identify a person far more precisely than is necessary for our purposes. We therefore convert the IP address to a more general location immediately after we receive it, and we remove the IP address from all datasets and reports downstream.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#239

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:45 AM UTC

bodge5000 wrote: post #224

samizdis wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really, really, really dislike the language they have used lately. That is exactly the problem I have with it - weasel words and euphemisms; FF is scoring an own-goal here and eroding trust. Why not just tell it like it is. "We need funding and are lining up deals with third parties to display their ads/messaging in the address bar search. We vet these third parties by holding them contractually to these standard…

> Why not tell it like it is I'm no expert, but from what I've heard the reasoning is that ad companies don't like it when you do that and won't want to work with you. They'd rather FF says "we love these guys and they just happen to be handing us bags of money" rather than "look, we dont like this anymore than you do but we need the cash". Not excusing it, and I could well be wrong (there could also be a way of sayi…

If that's the case, this is already grounds for writing Mozilla off. Ad companies are what they are. But if Mozilla was not able to find a partner who's able to tolerate honesty, and decided to compromise instead, what else they're going to compromise on when their new "trusted partners" ask nicely?

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#240

Post by dividedbyzero » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:46 AM UTC

I've observed windowserver on macOS constantly eat 30+% of my CPU whenever Firefox is running for a few versions now, and more and more web apps effectively require Chrome nowadays. Plus now this sort of change coming up ... maybe it's a good time to try out something new. Brave perhaps?