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

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#241

Post by foobar33333 » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:46 AM UTC

blippage wrote: post #191

callahad wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox gets hundreds of millions from Google alone in royalties, that is not enough to build a web browser? Empirically, it is not. Even Microsoft gave up that chase. Browsers are staggeringly complex and expensive to build. Which may be an indictment of the Web itself, but in the absence of a simpler alternative (Gemini?), the Web we have is the Web we've got, and browsers have to meet it where it is.

> simpler alternative (Gemini?) I never heard of that before. I'm off to investigate. I've often thought we need to rewind the clock on the internet, as the whole thing has gotten way out of hand. What's to stop feature creep of Gemini, though?

Gemini throws out way way too much. Inline links and image support for one. It feels like someone wants to have everything exactly as it was in the 80s.

They claim to stop feature creep by not including any kind of optional data support like headers and the spec team will reject any feature additions.

While I would be happy to have HTML/CSS exactly as it is and replace JS with a minimal WASM implementation that lets the website bring whatever tools it wants rather than relying on 1 billion JS apis.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#242

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

owlmirror wrote: post #175

ubercow13 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, no, the address bar is one of Firefox’s best UX features. Thank god it’s not just a simple form element, it’s much more useful now. Before it was something like the Windows run dialog text box but now it’s more similar to my zsh prompt with aliases for searching and fuzzy history recall etc.

I see the benefits for these features, but do not see why the bar had to become that obtrusive in appearance and behavior for them. But for me these features are useless at best and a distraction in practice, I don't want suggestions from my browser, at all, I want to think for my self. I use the url bar simply for entering addresses, or for copying and editing them. I completely disabled my history and what I want t…

There's "switch to tab" which I've found useful when I forget I have a tab already open.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#243

Post by selfhoster11 » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:47 AM UTC

blippage wrote: post #191

callahad wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox gets hundreds of millions from Google alone in royalties, that is not enough to build a web browser? Empirically, it is not. Even Microsoft gave up that chase. Browsers are staggeringly complex and expensive to build. Which may be an indictment of the Web itself, but in the absence of a simpler alternative (Gemini?), the Web we have is the Web we've got, and browsers have to meet it where it is.

> simpler alternative (Gemini?) I never heard of that before. I'm off to investigate. I've often thought we need to rewind the clock on the internet, as the whole thing has gotten way out of hand. What's to stop feature creep of Gemini, though?

> What's to stop feature creep of Gemini, though?

The culture. A portion of Gemini users use it as a way to escape from the complexity of the modern web, including some small "browser" writers who want to target a small and easy to understand spec for their efforts.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#244

Post by toyg » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:47 AM UTC

OneTimePetes wrote: post #216

toyg wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would the alternative be? Any Chromium-based project is tainted. I used to like Konqueror, but that's a KDE-only browser. What else? Mozilla needs reform as an institution, it needs new leadership. But its raison d'être is still very much there.

A fork from firefox, stripping it regularly of the add-tech, updating only from its own trusted source. Basically a open source project were the downstream is considered hostile.

That's unsustainable. It's what some projects already try to do with Chromium, and it just doesn't work: every time Google steers a bit more towards evil, the downstream burden increases significantly, and sooner or later the bad patches creep in anyway.

There is an institutional problem at Mozilla, we should focus on fixing that rather than trying to come up with even more complex sticking plasters.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#245

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:48 AM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #206

Certhas wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much wishful thinking around this... "me and five other people want to pay, if you just cater to my specific tastes, than the me and these 5 people will happily bankroll your massive engineering effort!" Maybe people would be happier if they had to pay to switch off the ads instead of it just being a setting (/switching default search engine)??

(1) Too many ad networks involved; who do you pay for not seeing their ads? (2) You would be unpleasantly surprised by the amount to pay.

(2) is in big part because people who're willing to spend money to get rid of ads are exactly the people advertisers are trying to get to - people with plenty of disposable income.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#246

Post by neuronic » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:49 AM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #167

hnlmorg wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern webbrowsers are hugely more complicated to implement than a kernel with no user space and very limited driver support (as Linux was back when it was a single person operation). In fact modern webbrowsers are bordering on being an operating system in their own right. They're already a virtual machine, with their own run times, plus one of the most complicated document markup standards known to man (and to make…

This severely underestimates the complexity of the Linux kernel.

The Linux kernel today isnt what a single guy in a bathrobe wrote. Tim Berners-Lee was a single guy with a coffee cup and wrote WorldWideWeb/Nexus.

These comparions are caveman level arguments.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#247

Post by selfhoster11 » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:49 AM UTC

foobar33333 wrote: post #241

blippage wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> simpler alternative (Gemini?) I never heard of that before. I'm off to investigate. I've often thought we need to rewind the clock on the internet, as the whole thing has gotten way out of hand. What's to stop feature creep of Gemini, though?

Gemini throws out way way too much. Inline links and image support for one. It feels like someone wants to have everything exactly as it was in the 80s. They claim to stop feature creep by not including any kind of optional data support like headers and the spec team will reject any feature additions. While I would be happy to have HTML/CSS exactly as it is and replace JS with a minimal WASM implementation that lets…

I'd be surprised if the most popular Gemini clients didn't support Markdown.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#248

Post by rightbyte » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:49 AM UTC

roca wrote: post #176

blippage wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like pure naivete. Two can play that game. A little over a year or so ago I downloaded Firefox. It kept bugging me for updates. But I didn't want these pestering updates. Erstwhile, I could just disable updating with a single unchecking of a box. But they changed it to make it almost impossible to disable updates. I never put enough effort into figuring it out. Firefox is getting just like Microsoft, Apple…

It is extremely dangerous to use a browser that is not fully up-to-date.

Security patches and general updates are not distinct anymore. You might aswell end up with more bugs by updating.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#249

Post by foobar33333 » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:49 AM UTC

axelthegerman wrote: post #79

Semaphor wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, you could just choose to opt out when it asks you?

Yes, but how can you then support FF financially to make sure it doesn't go away or development grinds to a halt?

Subscribe to their other things like the VPN thats coming out.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#250

Post by krageon » Thu, Oct 07, 2021, 9:49 AM UTC

laurent92 wrote: post #208

_wolfie_ wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need funding Yeah, I guess Baker needs a raise.

Counterpoint, I’d rather NGOs and benevolent societies be attractive for world-class leaders, rather than be the constant underdog. Of course those CEOs have to avoid implementing classic business schemes.

> world-class leaders

Yes, the kind of leaders that forget the core of what they are doing and that make shady deals and decisions like this. "World-class leaders" are sharks and have no place in a company for common good.