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New Search Strategy for Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#211

Post by zobzu »

dragonwriter wrote: post #76
throwawaymoz wrote: post #67

(throwaway account) While I believe the party line is probably true ("Mozilla decided not to go with Google"), it's also disingenuous. Mozilla chose not to go with Google because Google wasn't willing to pay what they were before. They straight up told Mozilla this 3 years ago when they signed the billion dollar contract; Mozilla had 3 years to become profitable. That's why they switched focus to FirefoxOS; they thou…

> For the record, Google made billions off being Firefox's default search engine. They paid Firefox $300mil a year for three years, but that was only a small fraction of how much Google profited from Firefox searches. Not sure if it's still true, but three years ago they made more from Firefox than they did from Chrome. Google doesn't really make money from Firefox or Chrome (the browser), per se (except insofar as C…

which is the point. they get money through firefox/chrome. if they didnt have the firefox search deal, then a lot - lot - lot - less money.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#212

Post by zobzu »

hackuser wrote: post #190
throwawaymoz wrote: post #67

(throwaway account) While I believe the party line is probably true ("Mozilla decided not to go with Google"), it's also disingenuous. Mozilla chose not to go with Google because Google wasn't willing to pay what they were before. They straight up told Mozilla this 3 years ago when they signed the billion dollar contract; Mozilla had 3 years to become profitable. That's why they switched focus to FirefoxOS; they thou…

I understand you want to remain anonymous, but care to give us a clue about your credibility? Do you work for Mozilla? Google?

Given his comment i can say he works for Mozilla or worked for Mozilla or have good contacts there. What he wrote is 100% truth as far as I'm concerned. (i have good friends at Mozilla myself and that echo their exact words from 3 y ago)

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#213

Post by contingencies »

DevX101 wrote: post #63

This is why Google built Chrome. Google's strategy has been to remove the layers between the user's intent to search and Google's own server. Every intermediate layer that Google does not control is a risk to their business. When viewed through these lens, many of the seemingly ancillary Google business units start to make strategic sense. Android (control the device), Chrome (control the browser), Fiber (control the…

You forgot Gmail/Picasa/Google Plus/Google Drive/Google Cloud/Youtube type services (control the server), Google Glass (control the user's visual conception).

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#214

Post by drdaeman »

zaachary wrote: post #195
drdaeman wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Nope, that's a pretty common misconception though. You surely can own a server (I do) but you just can't own a domain. You're merely leasing one from a registrar.

You see, I strongly believe identity's an intrinsic property of a person, and if you need a provider for one there's something really wrong with the setup. I'm completely fine with asserting notaries, but not providers.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#215

Post by zobzu »

jimmaswell wrote: post #96

Is this why Firefox mobile started using Yahoo as the default and I can't change it? I tried changing it and it just kept using Yahoo.

I use mobile firefox as well and it switched to yahoo as well. i could change it back without any issue. i think they changed defaults - but if you had put your own engine yourself it didnt.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#216

Post by zobzu »

jonknee wrote: post #85
mythmon_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kind of a moot point. If you read the article carefully, you'll notice that Yahoo will be bringing "a new, re-imagined Yahoo search experience to Firefox users in the U.S"

That's just corporate non-sense. It will be Bing's results with a different stylesheet and different set of ads.

Actually it makes sense IMO. Current yahoo "stylesheet" and ads are freaking terrible. If they bring a clean UI with few or no ads this makes it way more useable.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#217

Post by frabcus »

geekam wrote: post #203
twic wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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),…

This is a tough one. I have seen Etherpad [ http://etherpad.org/ ] being used a lot. The there is Zoho suite of apps [ https://www.zoho.com/ ] but I am not sure if they really match your requirements completely. For writing and other docs, I personally use Dropbox but I know that is not the same as working in the browser itself.

There's also Ethercalc [https://ethercalc.org/], a spreadsheet version of Etherpad.

Etherpad, Ethercalc and Mailpile (and more!) are all available on top of Sandstorm [https://sandstorm.io/apps/] - which basically makes it easier to manage them all.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#218

Post by Curmudgel »

dhimes wrote: post #165
ricardobeat wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe your memory is failing you, but FF and Safari were still great browsers when Chrome first came out. Chrome took over slowly because of constant improvement, it wasn't much different except for some technical details and clean UI.

For simple pages Chrome was faster. But the tradeoff was that you didn't get things like MathML- which was important to- maybe- three of us. And iirc, SVG was better on FF (I did physics tutorial and animation stuff- I told people to use FF). Also, I still prefer video on FF. Chrome is choppier with a lousy connection or hardware. But Chrome is quicker to load a simple site which makes it overall a better experience…

You should restart FF with addons disabled (Help > Restart with Add-ons Disabled) and then compare the two. If you want a "passive web browsing experience" on FF, you could create a separate profile.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#219

Post by enneff »

ricardobeat wrote: post #138
enneff wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why Google built Chrome. Seriously? Do you remember what browsers were like before Chrome?

Maybe your memory is failing you, but FF and Safari were still great browsers when Chrome first came out. Chrome took over slowly because of constant improvement, it wasn't much different except for some technical details and clean UI.

There's nothing wrong with my memory. In fact, I remember (as an OS X user) running a Windows VM specifically so that I could use Chrome; it performed so much better that it was actually worth the emulation overhead to run it in a VM.

FF and Safari were okay, but at the time Chrome was a revelation.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#220

Post by drdaeman »

Yoric wrote: post #192
drdaeman wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're right. But still, DNT is snake oil that only makes things worse by providing a false sense of privacy while not resolving any issue.

And some fingerprinting issues that can't be solved by lone users could be solved by browser vendors. Let's at least start by doing something with those overlong User-Agent headers. And, say, limiting JavaScript capabilities on introspecting the environment.

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