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Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

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Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#471

Post by tomcam »

whyenot wrote: post #315
major505 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla is more occupied this days paying multi milionary bonus to its executives and begging users for money they waste on useless projects. Mozilla must die, so Firefox can live.

Their reckoning day is coming when Google stops paying them $500m+ a year to be the default search engine. That payment alone account for 80% of Mozilla's budget, and has made them fat, wasteful, and directionless. It's really upsetting to me personally, I gave a lot (time, code, and money) to Mozilla in the early days when they were really struggling.

That makes me very angry. I am fat, wasteful, and directionless but Google pays me nothing.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#472

Post by paradox460 »

grues-dinner wrote: post #458
echelon wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's so hilariously backwards. Google should be split into several business units [1], should be forced to give up Chrome [2], and should be forced to invest several billion of its war chest into competitors. That's what the DOJ would do if it still had balls. The fact that there's no money in a product like Firefox is insane . It's absolutely bonkers. There is so much value in it, yet everybody's favorite mega mon…

What's bonkers to me is that people are alway complaining about ads and they're not putting "delete web ads from your life" front and center of their value proposition. Go to firefox.com and look at the the "why Firefox" copy. It's could be about basically any modern browser. It's like selling a car with "it has wheels!". I guess that might threaten their tie-up with the world's biggest adtech company which is why th…

I bought a car a couple years ago. It advertised am/fm radio in the feature sheet

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#473

Post by Henchman21 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #405
edoceo wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did they even get this corporation owned by a foundation situation? That just seems like some kind of tax trick.

Yes. Mozilla was originally only the non profit, but it was ruled that selling the search rights violated nonprofit status. So they paid a couple million in back taxes and had to spin off a corporate entity that's fully owned by the nonprofit.

Do you have any info on this lawsuit? I am struggling to find it.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#474

Post by EMIRELADERO »

cosmojg wrote: post #437
mort96 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing about the communication at the time indicated that publishing the source code would happen gradually over a decade. For all intents and purposes, what was promised was that it would be open source within some reasonably short time frame.

Having worked on a similar endeavor, I doubt they intentionally dragged their feet on it. They likely had a smorgasbord of legal bullshit and technical challenges resulting from code omissions mandated by said legal bullshit that they had to muddle through.

How common is it for a SaaS company that isn't an old-enterprisey type to use third-party proprietary code in their business logic? I associated that phenomenon much more with standard installable PC software, especially the type to use specialized workflows for non-standard stuff, not a web service, much less something like this.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#475

Post by paradox460 »

bwat49 wrote: post #376
segphault wrote: post #71

I was a user for so long that I was on it before it even rebranded as Pocket. I finally gave up on it last year, mostly due to frustration with the terrible 2023 redesign of the mobile app. When Mozilla made the unfathomable decision to become an internet advertising company, I figured it was just a matter of time before they had to put Pocket out to pasture. A product that's designed to strip ads from content for re…

I think firefox is going to end up like Opera lack of investment in gecko and dropping marketshare of firefox will result in more and more compatibility issues over time (which further accelerates dropping marketshare), until they're eventually forced to become another chromium based browser

A few years ago it was Safari that was the new IE, the one browser you had to go out of your way to support all its dumb little quirks. Firefox and Chrome+friends more or less "just worked"

Now Firefox is moving into that role. Except Firefox has no killer captive audience. Safari was pushed because of iOS Mobile users. Firefox doesn't have that.

So when you're a frontend dev at big corp, and you have to get stuff done now, targeting the quirks of a browser used by less than a tenthbof a percent of your userbase doesn't factor into the equation

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#476

Post by remram »

So they have been ignoring all feature requests and bug reports to Firefox's "bookmarks", directing users to Pocket. All the while also gutting and eventually shutting down Pocket.

Where do I go to have basic bookmarking functionality in my web browser? Tags for example, will those ever work on mobile? Keywords? Can I even search for a bookmark on mobile (not to go there, but to find its location in my bookmark folders, and edit it)?

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#477

Post by mrehler »

tristanho wrote: post #178
NewsGotHacked wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been paying for readwise for about a year and a half now. I was a pocket subscriber for years before they got bought out by Firefox. All that said, I wouldn't call myself an advanced user of either (tag a lot less than I would like, want to revisit more than I do, etc.). I am reasonably satisfied with read wise as a replacement/upgrade to pocket and will continue to pay for it for the time being. My least favo…

That is definitely one of the biggest painpoints, and we feel it ourselves for whatever it's worth! However, if you're just looking for a replacement for Pocket, you only need the Reader app/extension and it shouldn't be clunky at all. It's only if you want our highlight-specific reviewing/exporting functionality that you would also need the Readwise app... still not ideal, but merging two complex products like this…

Even when I was a new user right as Reader was getting started, I didn't think it was clunky to be honest. I thought it was clear when I was using one vs. the other. The only problem I've ever had is that typing/saying "Readwise Reader" is a bit clunky when discussing the product, but "Readwise" refers to the other one, and "Reader" isn't a sufficient name itself.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#478

Post by snafferty »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #455

> Why is Pocket shutting down? > Pocket has helped millions save articles and discover stories worth reading. But the way people use the web has evolved, so we’re channeling our resources into projects that better match their browsing habits and online needs. Oh yeah, it explains everything. I wish one day a company pr representative will be bold enough to just say "we don't want to tell you".

That seems pretty clear to me—many people were using it at one point, but now few are, so it's not worth maintaining.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#480

Post by cuillevel3 »

uxcolumbo wrote: post #47

They should at least allow to download their copy of the saved articles, PDF or HTML or whatever format they save it in. This is such a betrayal. Some old links might not exist anymore, so it's useless to only get the links. EDIT: Betrayal, because the main reason I paid for Pocket was the archiving of articles and now I can't actually export the archived copies. Their decision of not enabling export of the archived…

I totally agree.

  A forever home for your collection. Pocket becomes your permanent library—so even if a page you've saved is taken down, you'll still have a copy of it in Pocket
That's what I paid for. I trusted in Mozilla being open and allowing me to take my data with me. This is worse than Google?
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