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Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

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Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#261

Post by [deleted] »

daveoc64 wrote: post #194
huhtenberg wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> RELEVANT suggestions The fuck with this? How can they make _relevant_ suggestions without spying on my (s/browsing history/activity/), profiling it and phoning back to the mothership? (Edited, "browsing history" -> "activity")

> How can they make _relevant_ suggestions without spying on my browsing history, profiling it and phoning back to the mothership? If you search for "hotels", they'll show you suggestions that match "hotels". Doesn't seem that complicated to me.

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#262

Post by xxs »

57844743385 wrote: post #24

Before you attack Mozilla….. are you using it as your primary browser? I.e are you supporting them already? Do you believe Mozilla should be able to pay its bills? If you’re not happy with this way of raising revenue, what else do you suggest?

how do you support firefox, b/c there is no direct way at all.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#263

Post by vadfa »

foobar33333 wrote: post #253
vadfa wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It wasn't "because he was a conservative". It was because he was funding a campaign to limit peoples rights and and everyone / every website was running a campaign to tell users to get off Firefox if they want to stop funding this. It would have destroyed Mozilla if they did nothing.

No it wouldn't have. The outraged were a minority and have a short attention span. I'm sure Firefox would be doing better today with him at the helm. But we'll never know.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#264

Post by zaphirplane »

roca wrote: post #126
datenarsch wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is a browser expensive ? There are many great and big open source projects out there that are maintained and developed mainly by volunteers. Why can't Firefox be like this?

Building a shell around Chromium or Webkit isn't very expensive. Maintaining an independent, high-quality browser engine so that the design and implementation of the Web isn't up to a Google/Apple duopoly is incredibly expensive: https://robert.ocallahan.org/2017/12/maintaining-independent... (4 years old, but the situation I describe hasn't changed, except that Microsoft has switched to Chromium so Mozilla's engine…

700 people from wiki is more than I would have guessed even after accounting for the Multiplatform and mobile versions

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#265

Post by 1123581321 »

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.

If Mozilla hired a better CEO with the money, I agree that’d justify paying the position more.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#266

Post by TeMPOraL »

roca wrote: post #238
TeMPOraL wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 princ…

>> When passing data on to our partners, we are careful to only provide the partner with the minimum information required to serve the feature.

That's hogwash without access to details of actual cases. What is the definition of "minimum" for a given partner here?

Reminds me of the UX of Android a couple years ago:

- Android: "I'm a better system than desktops, I offer fine-grained permissions that ensure apps only have access to what they need, nothing more."

- Every single app, upon installation: "I need every single permission enumerable in the current SDK version."

>> A specific example of this principle in action is the search’s location. (...)

Oh, that's nice, I feel a bit more relaxed - this means they can't enable this feature for me at all, because they first have to seek informed consent from me for this kind of processing. They'd better remember to ask.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#267

Post by Jenk »

danielheath wrote: post #235
Jenk wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I used Opera for many years. It had/has many more problems than just its payment model.

Notably was the notion that it came with a kitchen sink when most just wanted a web browser.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#269

Post by hnlmorg »

vadfa wrote: post #225
exar0815 wrote: post #85

By the love of all thats holy, I still don't understand how the development of an entire operating system can be reasonably coordinated by a (admittably singlularly competent) sole finnish guy in a bathrobe from home, while a comparably simple webbrowser needs a foundation, a company, a ceo, a code of conduct, all those outreach and social-action programmes etc... Or maybe, is all that cesspool of ineffectiveness and…

Chrome keeps adding more and more features to the web standards to make sure no one else can keep up with the price of implementing them, and Mozilla likes sucking Google's cock until they gag, so they accept and put all of them in Firefox. Not to mention all the absurd overhead you pointed out. All of Mozilla's wounds are self-inflicted.

Mozilla are in a no-win situation:

- implement the standards and they get blamed for dancing to Google's tune

- don't implement the standards and people quickly drop Firefox because it doesn't support "the modern web"

The only way Mozilla can compete is to play along. So it's better they do that and take the criticism than ending up obsolete through stubbornness.

Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions

#270

Post by TeMPOraL »

Swenrekcah wrote: post #217
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)??

If you get 5000 people paying $5/month for every person working on a truly private browser, you have $25,000/month per teammate. I'm sure you could find 50,000 people in the world willing to pay this. I'm one of them. The problem is how you get started while building reputation, but I'm sure that it's possible.

> The problem is how you get started while building reputation, but I'm sure that it's possible.

In case of Mozilla/Firefox: do this while you still have some reputation left. It's literally the one party on the Internet that would have a chance of pulling it off.

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