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New Search Strategy for Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#191

Post by Yoric »

FeeTinesAMady wrote: post #171
nnethercote wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to love Firefox's new Tracking Protection feature, which is currently under development: http://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/11/12/quantifying-t... It allows you to block things coming from known tracking domains, giving better privacy and faster page loads on many sites.

Why would anyone need that when there's ghostery and noscript? Furthermore, what benefits does that feature have over ghostery? Seems like ghostery blocks more than that feature does, which makes it seem like that's a waste of effort. I suppose it might have some use if it's actually on by default, but they haven't stated that it will be, and if it isn't on by default, then anyone who would know to turn it out would…

Well, for one thing, Ghostery is veeeeery slow (or was last time I checked). For a second thing, what makes you think that it's going to block less than Ghostery?

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#192

Post by Yoric »

drdaeman wrote: post #156
mythmon_ wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo will only respect DNT for Firefox users. This is because DNT was essentially ruined after Microsoft turned DNT on by default in IE. Since it didn't represent an explicit user choice, it carried much less weight. It is an explicit choice in Firefox.

DNT was a terribly flawed idea anyway. If you don't want to be tracked — just don't allow to track yourself. Make your digital fingerprint as indistinguishable as possible and don't persist anything for any longer that's required to work.

And how many users can do that? I'm pretty experienced, I know a number of the fingerprinting techniques that can be used to track me, and I have no idea how I can browse while avoiding them all.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#193

Post by Yoric »

mythmon_ wrote: post #182
Yoric wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Sync could be improved a lot. The good news is that we are working on it, and I have hopes that the next version will solve all issues (both performance and UX) without sacrificing privacy. Now, if the question is whether adopting Yahoo & co will be bad for the user experience, Mozilla is betting on the fact that these smaller search providers can deliver not just a comparable experience, but also innovation fr…

"The next version" is already out. We moved away from the ZK sync a while ago, and use a much more user friendly model now.

I was thinking of CloudSync.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#194

Post by mythmon_ »

FeeTinesAMady wrote: post #171
nnethercote wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to love Firefox's new Tracking Protection feature, which is currently under development: http://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/11/12/quantifying-t... It allows you to block things coming from known tracking domains, giving better privacy and faster page loads on many sites.

Why would anyone need that when there's ghostery and noscript? Furthermore, what benefits does that feature have over ghostery? Seems like ghostery blocks more than that feature does, which makes it seem like that's a waste of effort. I suppose it might have some use if it's actually on by default, but they haven't stated that it will be, and if it isn't on by default, then anyone who would know to turn it out would…

The benefit is that this is built in to the browser, meaning more users will use it. If you want the extra protection of Ghostery, then by all means, go for it. This is easier for other users.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#195

Post by zaachary »

drdaeman wrote: post #145
sroerick wrote: post #81

Mozilla is making some major moves these days. They've ditched Google as their main revenue source, partnering with Tor and Yahoo. Yahoo is angling to be a digital magazine, which I like as a business model much more than Google's. Firefox is making a strong case for itself as the privacy centric browser. I still remember when Firefox started gaining market share. Even non-tech-savvy people were getting firefox, beca…

> Firefox is making a strong case for itself as the privacy centric browser. They try their best to market themselves as a privacy-centric browser. To promote themselves as so they add some shiny things like making clearing browser history a two mouse clicks more accessible. But I'm still worried. I'm really nitpicking but... That 3rd party cookie controversy that lasted for almost an year, the "oh, we're full of FLO…

I'm not going to rebut each mischaracterization, but I did work on Persona, so:

> the BrowserID/Persona thingy that happily continued the trend that makes your identity owned by a third party

Nah. You could happily choose any Identity Provider that implemented the protocol, including a self-hosted one.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#196

Post by mythmon_ »

drdaeman wrote: post #156
mythmon_ wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo will only respect DNT for Firefox users. This is because DNT was essentially ruined after Microsoft turned DNT on by default in IE. Since it didn't represent an explicit user choice, it carried much less weight. It is an explicit choice in Firefox.

DNT was a terribly flawed idea anyway. If you don't want to be tracked — just don't allow to track yourself. Make your digital fingerprint as indistinguishable as possible and don't persist anything for any longer that's required to work.

Many "stealth" techniques actually make you more trackable on the web. The person wearing a mask is easy to track in a crowd.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#197

Post by mbrubeck »

hackuser wrote: post #188
mbrubeck wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that Mozilla has had revenue arrangements with Yandex and Baidu previously. And Google doesn't exactly have clean hands in China itself.

> Note that Mozilla has had revenue arrangements with Yandex and Baidu previously. And Google doesn't exactly have clean hands in China itself. What did Google do in China? I remember them pulling out of China, declining to participate further in censorship there, and being attacked (hacked) by the Chinese government. What am I forgetting?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google#China has a short summary. You're correct that since 2010 they've refused to assist with government censorship; I had been thinking of what came before that. I think you have a good point that today, Google is the better actor in China.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#198

Post by steanne »

twic wrote: post #159
geekam wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember I started moving out of Google's claws when they started pushing Google+ everywhere. Today my primary browser is Firefox, Search engine is DDG (with occassional Google search), Email is FastMail. The dependency on Google had started to annoy me.

The biggest thing i'm looking for now is a replacement for Google's apps suite - mainly Calendar and Docs/Drive. Something that i can use on the web and sync to my (Android) phone. If the Docs replacement just did text documents, that would probably be enough; if it did spreadsheets and text, it would definitely be enough. It would be great if it was free, and fine if it was cheap. Not Apple (no better than Google),…

i sync fastmail's calendar with the built-in android calendar app by using caldav.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.calda...

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#199

Post by tn13 »

Honestly I dont see how this is a "choice". In fact this sounds exactly opposite of the choice. In this particular case Firefox has made the choice on our behalf that we are better off using Yahoo's crappy search results instead of market leader Google.

If you are making a browser which is focused on giving freedom to users you are supposed to :

1. Either let the users chose the search engine as an on-boarding step. 2. Offer industry best/leader as default.

In this particular case Firefox has made a suboptimal choice on our behalf in the name of "choice".

How exactly is this different from :

1. Comcast taking more money from Netflix to give them better bandwidth ?

Now my grandmother will end up seeing 0 organic search results above the fold and will have to learn to either change the search settings or simply use that icon with Red Green and Yellow around a blue dot (Chrome).

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#200

Post by mbrubeck »

olssy wrote: post #176
mbrubeck wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: nnethercote is a Mozilla employee (as am I). These details are straight from the horse's mouth (dino's mouth?).

As long as the horse is in the house, has Mozilla ever given any thought to creating its own search service?

I don't know of any actual projects to that end, but certainly people have thought about it. I know from personal conversations that Asa Dotzler in particular has given it some very detailed thought, though I don't know if or where he's written up any of those ideas...
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