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New Search Strategy for Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#261

Post by stephenr »

haberman wrote: post #247
stephenr wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This is a perfect example of how (some) open-standards advocates have impossible expectations. Your complaints about IMAP and XMPP are completely opposite. When Hangouts stopped supporting XMPP (designed in 1998) due to product evolution, you complain that they dropped XMPP support. But when Gmail continued to support IMAP (designed in 1986) despite the product diverging somewhat from traditional email, you complain…

Google's stated reason for abandoning XMPP is nothing to do with product evolution. They publicly stated that the reason for dropping support, was a lack of "industry adoption".

Personally I trust that about as much as I would trust a priest to give me a colonoscopy - open access means less control for Google, which means less ability to collect data and/or display ads.

Keeping XMPP support (and federation) would have allowed interoperability with a range of XMPP clients on desktop/mobile devices, AND with users of other XMPP services - whether they be services provided by third parties, or "private" services run by organisations/individuals. It would also have also been useful as leverage to encourage other "big" IM networks to open up their "private" XMPP based IM networks - Facebook Chat, WhatsApp, Cisco WebEx, etc. They're all using XMPP, but they're islands right now. At this point Google are worse than those islands, because not only are they not embracing open XMPP & federation, they're not even supporting XMPP any more - so if FB/WhatsApp said "hey we want to support XMPP federation from tomorrow" Google users have no possible way to be involved in that any more.

Google's implementation of IMAP is fundamentally broken. The big ticket item, "tags" is ridiculous, as IMAP already has a defined standard for "tags": the IMAP keywords feature.

The usual Google fanboy response to this is "but IMAP clients don't support keywords fully", which of course ignores the fact that standard IMAP clients also don't support the idea of messages appearing in multiple mailboxes (i.e. folders) either, but the network effect of Gmail has meant MANY clients have come to support Gmail specific features.

Imagine for a second, if instead of its current shit soup solution, Google had implemented the existing IMAP standard for keywords. It's not unreasonable to expect that the majority of IMAP clients would have been quick(er) to implement support for this part of the spec, which would mean users of other IMAP services (either hosted services or self-hosted mail servers) would also be able to use IMAP keywords.

It's been said before and I'll say it again: Google is following the same plays that Microsoft made over a decade ago. Latch onto an open standard, use your market position to make "additions" to said standard, and finally pull support for said standard, in favour of your own closed solution.

I'll wait for the regular Google fanboy down votes.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#262

Post by throwaway863434 »

discardorama wrote: post #254
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…

> Mozilla had 3 years to become profitable. Mozilla is a non-profit. This doesn't make sense. Google was paying $300M/year to Mozilla, and I seriously doubt that Mozilla's expenses would be more than that. Most of the work is done by unpaid coders anyways; they don't need vast teams of sales people selling Mozilla, it sells by itself.

Mozilla Corporation--the wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation and that has gutted Mozilla into a support community that's as organic and empowered as the support communities for any other pseudo-grassroots company--is absolutely a for-profit company.

> Most of the work is done by unpaid coders anyways

The only proper response to this is "lol". If you did a comparison, the skew of Mozilla employee versus non-employee contributions would be even more stark than the respective ones from the stats for the Linux kernel that everyone bandies about all the time.

> they don't need vast teams of sales people selling Mozilla, it sells by itself

Wish you could've got this through to Mozilla this when they were facing the prospects of looking for replacement for John Lilly and everybody seemed to be jumping ship to Facebook. They could've saved a ton of cash on the incompetent business folks they brought in and whose only contribution has been to shit on the Mozilla brand and to "other" the existing volunteer community.

Or are you on some sort of [delay](http://olduse.net/)?

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#263

Post by adilmajid »

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),…

Quip is pretty good as a Google Docs replacement. It's got apps for web and mobile-- https://quip.com

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#264

Post by sounds »

stephenr wrote: post #261
haberman wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a perfect example of how (some) open-standards advocates have impossible expectations. Your complaints about IMAP and XMPP are completely opposite. When Hangouts stopped supporting XMPP (designed in 1998) due to product evolution, you complain that they dropped XMPP support. But when Gmail continued to support IMAP (designed in 1986) despite the product diverging somewhat from traditional email, you complain…

Google's stated reason for abandoning XMPP is nothing to do with product evolution. They publicly stated that the reason for dropping support, was a lack of "industry adoption". Personally I trust that about as much as I would trust a priest to give me a colonoscopy - open access means less control for Google, which means less ability to collect data and/or display ads. Keeping XMPP support (and federation) would hav…

I downvoted you, and I feel obligated to explain my reason. Others will vote how they will.

I'm no Google fanboy. But please reply to the argument instead of calling names. Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you.

Instead of calling gmail "shit soup," just talk about the existing IMAP standard for keywords.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#265

Post by stephenr »

sounds wrote: post #264
stephenr wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's stated reason for abandoning XMPP is nothing to do with product evolution. They publicly stated that the reason for dropping support, was a lack of "industry adoption". Personally I trust that about as much as I would trust a priest to give me a colonoscopy - open access means less control for Google, which means less ability to collect data and/or display ads. Keeping XMPP support (and federation) would hav…

I downvoted you, and I feel obligated to explain my reason. Others will vote how they will. I'm no Google fanboy. But please reply to the argument instead of calling names. Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you. Instead of calling gmail "shit soup," just talk about the existing IMAP standard for key…

I didn't complain about being down voted nor did I "invite others to down vote", I referenced a well-known phenomenon where opinions (and even statements of fact) that criticise Google are often down voted on HackerNews, simply because they are critical of Google.

The whole concept of "don't complain about being down voted" is itself quite ridiculous. Given how hacker news works (i.e. down voted comments are hidden) this effectively encourages people to simply "go with the crowd". I disagree with this entire concept. Differences of opinion, and yes even criticism, are what drive people to make things BETTER.

> But please reply to the argument

What, like identifying why I believe Google's actions are "bad", what I think they could/should have done that would be "good", and how those alternative actions would have been had a more positive outcome?

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#266

Post by vph »

geekam wrote: post #116
bad_user wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every intermediate layer that Google does not control is a risk to their business. Every intermediate layer that Google does control is also an opportunity for lock-in. Which is seriously starting to piss me off, as they are increasingly turning their back on open standards.

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 dependency on Google had started to annoy me.

Either Chrome or Firefox or something else. Choose your poison. One's life has to be depended on something.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#267

Post by tempestn »

riffraff wrote: post #83
kibwen wrote: post #72

It's always seemed as though Google's and Mozilla's relationship would weaken over the years, though honestly I expected Bing rather than Yahoo to be the one to step up and fill Google's shoes. Also surprising is that apparently Mozilla was the one to initiate the switch. As a Firefox user, all in all I'm rather pleased. I've just tried a few of my typical searches on Yahoo and though the expected links aren't the to…

isn't yahoo search powered by bing anyway?

It uses the Bing index, but there are at least some differences in how it retrieves and prioritizes results. (If you run the same search on yahoo and bing, even with fresh cookies, you won't normally get identical results.)

Yahoo may do some spidering of their own as well, although not to my knowledge. I know at least the above is true though. Also as an aside the Yahoo BOSS API is significantly more powerful than the comparable Azure Bing web search API. Unfortunately, they also just doubled the access price this month.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#268

Post by dang »

stephenr wrote: post #265
sounds wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted you, and I feel obligated to explain my reason. Others will vote how they will. I'm no Google fanboy. But please reply to the argument instead of calling names. Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you. Instead of calling gmail "shit soup," just talk about the existing IMAP standard for key…

I didn't complain about being down voted nor did I "invite others to down vote", I referenced a well-known phenomenon where opinions (and even statements of fact) that criticise Google are often down voted on HackerNews, simply because they are critical of Google. The whole concept of "don't complain about being down voted" is itself quite ridiculous. Given how hacker news works (i.e. down voted comments are hidden)…

"I'll wait for the regular Google fanboy down votes" is baiting other users into downvoting you, and that is against the HN guidelines. Please stay on topic.

Also, phrases like "about as much as I would trust a priest to give me a colonoscopy" and "the usual Google fanboy response" are inflammatory and inappropriate for substantive discussion, which is what HN calls for. Please edit such flamebait out of your comments. It's understandable that it sneaks in there—we're all susceptible to it—but that's what the edit button is for. Not only will excising it not hurt your argument, it will help it considerably, and display good manners to your fellow users to boot.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#269

Post by stephenr »

joelhaus wrote: post #253
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.

Agreed. Sometimes I think the people who don't appreciate Google's "openness" are not old enough to remember either the early closed internet platforms (Prodigy/CompuServe/AOL) or the Microsoft products that are only recently getting around to open standards.

Luckily, those people who didn't experience/don't remember the Microsoft experience the first time around, will get to experience it all over again now with Google.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#270

Post by stephenr »

dang wrote: post #268
stephenr wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't complain about being down voted nor did I "invite others to down vote", I referenced a well-known phenomenon where opinions (and even statements of fact) that criticise Google are often down voted on HackerNews, simply because they are critical of Google. The whole concept of "don't complain about being down voted" is itself quite ridiculous. Given how hacker news works (i.e. down voted comments are hidden)…

"I'll wait for the regular Google fanboy down votes" is baiting other users into downvoting you, and that is against the HN guidelines. Please stay on topic. Also, phrases like "about as much as I would trust a priest to give me a colonoscopy" and "the usual Google fanboy response" are inflammatory and inappropriate for substantive discussion, which is what HN calls for. Please edit such flamebait out of your comment…

If people down vote simply because I mentioned the concept of people down voting an opinion or fact simply because they disagree with it, then my point about the stupidity of the "don't mention being down voted" concept is proven true.
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