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Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

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Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#451

Post by no_wizard »

freediver wrote: post #321
dralley wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but nobody on HN has ever - ever - come up with a better funding model for them. It's all complaints all the time and people don't even seem to bother researching what they have been doing lately. It's also fun to watch people complain about the Google situation and then, 10 seconds later, complain about "side projects" which are actual independent sources of revenue. I don't envy the market dynamics of their sit…

A better funding model is right in front of our eyes and is used by almost every other company - sell the product to the users. There is no rule saying that a browser needs to be directly or indirectly monetized by ads. On the contrary, in this day and age, not helping sell more ads would surely be seen as a good thing? So if the browser is that good as a product, it surely will be paid by a percentage of its current…

Here's the one I have always touted:

They could build themselves to be the independent alternative to conglomerates.

They could be the alternative, offering services above and beyond the browser. I think their VPN service has been a modest success for them. I'd love for them to have moved into the same space as say, 1Password and other cloud based services of that nature. They are the independent 3rd party that works on all platforms. That is what I think their position could be. They're a trusted entity with known good track record of caring about privacy and their users, why wouldn't they move into markets where its a natural extension of this is a win?

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#452

Post by sfink »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #351
dralley wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people keep saying this when Mozilla is and has already been vocally fighting against Google's overreaching proposals? There's new headlines about this every few months. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/privacy-security/privacy-analysi ... https://www.howtogeek.com/756338/mozilla-says-chromes-latest ... There's also this: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/08/04/latest-firefox-roll ... https://twitter.com/__jakub_g…

Maybe because Mozilla collects a massive amount of "telemetry" on users, in a way that is personally identifiable, despite zero need for it to be so? https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/t... Or maybe it's because you can toss some money at Mozilla and they'll silently install a browser extension on behalf of an advertising company for a shitty TV show about a l33t haxx0r d00d? By the way, the b…

> Maybe because Mozilla collects a massive amount of "telemetry" on users, in a way that is personally identifiable, despite zero need for it to be so?

Please point out how to personally identify a telemetry user.

I am a Firefox engineer who uses telemetry data, and know of no way to personally identify any of my users. Well, one way -- you can voluntarily put your email or other info into a crash report, though I know there was some talk of stripping that text field out because it's so rarely useful and touching any potential PII is like touching hot lava.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#453

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

bool3max wrote: post #124
NoboruWataya wrote: post #103

It's a depressing situation, particularly knowing that Firefox is pretty much kept alive at Google's whim. It makes one seriously wonder whether it is feasible at all to maintain an independent open-source web browser in 2021. People tend to blame Mozilla's management and I'm sure there have been management failures but I'm not sure what they could do to make Firefox a thriving, independent, sustainable browser. It s…

I have to strongly agree with your last point - I also never understood the massive hard-on that the technical user-base has against useful telemetry. Perhaps it's just the loud minority, but to me it seems that most of them have never worked on an user-facing product (for-profit or not). Yes, users can themselves explicitly communicate feedback regarding the product or its features, and no, most of them don't do tha…

> I also never understood the massive hard-on that the technical user-base has against useful telemetry.

I'll leave it to others to argue why it's a privacy problem, but I'd like to push back on the "useful" and "feedback" arguments. It's appealing to say "X% of our users use this; we should prioritize it", but Mozilla has a charming history of saying "only Y% of users use this feature; we'll remove it", and for bonus points, "after we pushed this option into a really obscure sub-menu, nobody uses it, so now we can remove it while claiming that nobody cares". That is, telemetry isn't even useful for the thing that people claim it's good at, because it only provides raw data that gets used to justify things regardless of reality.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#454

Post by sfink »

sneak wrote: post #396
jeltz wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is talking about when Mozilla made Firefox send the browsing history of randomly selected German users to a company they had invested in, Cliqz. That is the by far biggest ethical violation of Mozilla and which, justifiably, still haunts them. That said both Chrome and Edge are worse.

Nope, I'm talking about the telemetry that still exists in current Firefox that you can download worldwide today.

Telemetry doesn't contain browsing activity.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#455

Post by Barrin92 »

gigel82 wrote: post #441
Barrin92 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>how do you distinguish 'telemetry' from 'surveillance'? For starters, consent. Telemetry generally supposes that the user opts into, either directly or by accepting the terms of using a service, and is free to walk away. I find the increasing usage of the word surveillance completely silly and ideological. If the NSA vacuums data from some underwater cable that's surveillance, when I exchange information, aware of w…

How aware can you be though? Windows has dozens of different endpoints [1] that collect thousands of data points [2], and I presume that can change at any time with an update. Who has the time to read (let alone "become aware") of the full scope of that? [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/windows-11-... [2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/required-wi...

Here in the EU at least Windows walks you through privacy and telemetry settings on the first start and you get a very direct overview of what's being collected and knobs to turn it off, courtesy of the GDPR I think. I don't think changing data collection automatically is legal either.

I'm all for informed consent, create laws to give users transparency and control over their data. But if users have that and they still decide that exchanging info for better services is worth it, calling it surveillance is I think not appropriate.

Case in point, Vscode. I'll gladly give them telemetry access for getting a better editor.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#456

Post by ls612 »

metalliqaz wrote: post #189
samwillis wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. In many ways Apple's anti-competitive behaviour on iOS/iPadOS is a blessing. It's one of the few things that keep Chromium's dominance in check. Of course, it's not great that Apple are stifling innovation like this, but consider the alternative: Chromium dominance on all platforms. I think it’s worth noting that (at least I believe) the reason apple limit the usage of other browser engines in iOS isn’t (mostly)…

> battery usage is the number one KPI people care about. I wish all phone manufacturers actually understood that /me glances at my Pixel 3XL with 3430 mAh batt

That is legit my favorite feature of the iphone 13 pro max, the battery is like 4300 mAh and it never runs out during the day no matter what I do with it.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#457

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

dharmaturtle wrote: post #422
kwertyoowiyop wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google: ‘We don’t force people to use Chrome! We just ask them again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again…’

Are you talking about Chrome or Edge? Both are better than Safari on iOS though, which does force you to use it.

> Are you talking about Chrome or Edge?

Yes.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#459

Post by sfink »

shakna wrote: post #273
seanw444 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That gave me a laugh. Had no idea this existed, thanks.

For those who may be curious, Firefox still lists all their metapages [0], which makes exploring under the hood pretty easy. [0] about:about

I don't think it lists 100% of them. For example, I think there might be one that forces a crash for debugging purposes? There are definitely some that are used for displaying errors and things (eg about:httpsonlyerror).

You could probably find more with searchfox, using a better query than https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/search?q=about%3A&path...

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#460

Post by SimeVidas »

K0nserv wrote: post #153

I've been meaning to write almost exactly this blog post for a while now, glad that someone else did it. Two things that I think are worth calling out: 1. In many ways Apple's anti-competitive behaviour on iOS/iPadOS is a blessing. It's one of the few things that keep Chromium's dominance in check. Of course, it's not great that Apple are stifling innovation like this, but consider the alternative: Chromium dominance…

> Engineers from Apple and Mozilla are largely our bastion against Google's harmful proposals for the web.

Brave also deserves a mention. As long as Brave exists in its current form, there will be a version of Chromium without Google’s “bad” stuff.

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