Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New Search Strategy for Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 352 posts

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#231

Post by drdaeman »

nnethercote wrote: post #205
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…

You'll find some recently-announced privacy initiatives interesting: * http://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/2014/11/10/introducing-polar... * http://monica-at-mozilla.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/tracking-pr... * http://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/11/12/quantifying-t...

Thanks. Those look good. Less radical than I could wish for, but certainly good.

Hope the existence of those features will be well-marketed, so they'll be enabled by sufficiently large amount of people to be able to blend into this crowd.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#232

Post by stephenr »

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 agree that the hard part (even more so for a business looking to change) is the docs suite.

It still surprises me a little that there is no web-app capable of editing ODF files. This would allow the email/calendar etc concept to be carried over - host the content (in this case files) on a server in version control, and allow users to either keep an offline copy that syncs, or access via a web app.

From a personal usage view, I disagree with your statement that Apple is no better than Google. No, their software is not open source and doesn't run on any device you want. But their software is also not intended to capture all your personal information and use that to show you more ads. It's basically a perk for using their hardware.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#233

Post by drdaeman »

haberman wrote: post #227
glitchdout wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the move from Talk to Hangouts? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/google-abandons-open-s...

Google added support for XMPP fedederation in 2006, hoping that other messaging services would follow suit: http://www.zdnet.com/google-embraces-open-im-standards-30392... Seven years later, not a single other major IM service had added the same support. All XMPP federation support had accomplished was providing a spam vector to Google Talk users. Google's public statement when they dropped federation in 2013 was: "X…

Thousands of XMPP servers serving millions of people had S2S properly enabled and working among them. Or one has to be a single entity as large as MSN or AIM to be considered worthy to enjoy openness?

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#234

Post by stephenr »

groovecoder wrote: post #128
hrktb wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo's main business is not search, so I don't know how bad it needs it. Of course more money is always good, and Yahoo is not a super growing company, Alaso, this is the same strategy that turned Google from "best buddy" to "arch rival" in the eyes of Apple and pushed Apple to have its own mapping service and offer other search options. This is also the level of control that motivates people to try Duckduckgo, or s…

Indeed - Yahoo is also powering Weather and Stocks apps on iOS. All the competition is good for everyone.

Not since iOS8/Yosemite - Apple now gets weather data directly from The Weather Channel, who also supply Yahoo with their data.

In that situation Yahoo were just a middle man, and supposedly didn't make the full set of TWC data/functionality available.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#235

Post by wodenokoto »

warbaker wrote: post #154
hrktb wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo's main business is not search, so I don't know how bad it needs it. Of course more money is always good, and Yahoo is not a super growing company, Alaso, this is the same strategy that turned Google from "best buddy" to "arch rival" in the eyes of Apple and pushed Apple to have its own mapping service and offer other search options. This is also the level of control that motivates people to try Duckduckgo, or s…

Yahoo's main business is its investments in Asian companies. It's a hedge fund with a side business in tech. It's not crazy for them to try to break out of that.

I would say its a tech company that found itself afloat due to some lucky/wise investments.

At the core it is still a tech / content company, even though the tech is not producing the money.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#236

Post by wodenokoto »

yohui wrote: post #105
nnethercote wrote: post #53

Some more details: * This is a new, more flexible partnership strategy. * Continuing the existing relationship with Google was an option, but Mozilla chose to end the Google relationship. * All the options Mozilla considered had strong, improved economic terms (but the concrete numbers are not public). Because all the options had improved economics, that allowed Mozilla to really consider the strategic outlook. * The…

How does promoting Yandex and Baidu in regions where they are already dominant (Russia and China, respectively) align with Mozilla's new mission? I'm not sure how entrenching their hold on their home markets promotes user choice, innovation, or privacy.

Nowhere does it say that Mozillas new mission is to break up market dominant players.

Their new search strategy is to globally have more search partners than before, while continueing to serve regions with default search that are good/best for that region.

There is no doubt that Baidu gives better result than Google for most Chinese users. I dont know much about Yandex, but Im sure they have a better grasp of the Russian users than Google does right now and thus provides better service.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#237

Post by wodenokoto »

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 believe I have seen the notion pop up once or twice on planet.mozilla and it has been why its not a mozilla project.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#238

Post by stephenr »

groovecoder wrote: post #185
haberman wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Googler who cares very much about open standards, I don't think that assessment is fair or accurate.

As a Mozillian who also cares very much about open standards, I agree. Google has both a long and recent track record of helping to advance open standards - CalDAV, WebRTC, WebM, etc. - and I have no doubt they will continue to do so - e.g., Physical Web. However, Google's purpose in the world is not to advance open standards. That is Mozilla's purpose. That's why this is a strategic, long-term decision on Mozilla's…

Advance open standards?

* Like how they were planning to require whitelisting for CalDAV access? * Like how they completely bastardise the IMAP protocol? * Like how they disabled XMPP federation and then dropped XMPP support completely, for their GTalk replacement?

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#239

Post by wodenokoto »

drdaeman wrote: post #228
pwnna wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Identity is an intrinsic property of a person. However, how would you design a system to check this property? It's a very difficult property to measure. Having someone vouching for it is a relatively safe and easy way to do this.

As usual, with credentials. It's just that credential must be something you can handle by yourself and not require a third party to provide to you. A third party may assert some aspect of your identity by providing a statement that the person who's in possession of the certain credentials has been verified by this notary to indeed have certain properties. But if me and some website are starting to become acquainted w…

Remembering your face is what a cookie can do for you. You log-in via a trusted 3rd party (that may be owned by you) and you receive a cook for use next time.

If you change your face the next time you walk in, like say you visit from your iPhone instead of you PC, they cant recognize you and will of course need strong verification, after which you may receive a cooking.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#240

Post by wodenokoto »

Ntrails wrote: post #118
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.

What if, and this is crazy I know, you needed an explicit action to track me instead of relying on users not knowing such a thing exists to avoid.

Well, if that is the case, then you would be tracked. Read the parent comment.
Post reply on HN