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New Search Strategy for Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#301

Post by enigmango »

dingaling wrote: post #271
mythmon_ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does this make you less likely to use Firefox? The default search engine is just that: the default. You can change it to something else, and always have been able to. If you care enough to know what search engine you use, you should be able to change it.

> You can change it to something else, and always have been able to. You can't change the default search engine in Firefox for Android, at least through the UI. And mobile is a high-frequency user of search, which makes that decision even more interesting.

Menu > Settings > Customize > Search. Tapping any of the search providers brings up an option to set it as the default. Are you using an older version? (Tested on v33.1)

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#302

Post by Perdition »

bad_user wrote: post #113
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…

> 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've refused to get into any Google product beyond GMail, YouTube, and search. I'm trying to ween myself off Google search and I block YouTube cookies (though I doubt that throws Googles behavioural monitoring off).

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#303

Post by gorhill »

bzbarsky wrote: post #223
gorhill wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They paid Firefox $300mil a year for three years Mozilla's 990 forms are public. For 2012 I see a bit more than $9 million in revenue, of which $5.4 million came from contributions [1]. "$300mil a year" makes no sense -- unless there is something I don't know about how non-profits are supposed to report their revenue. [1] https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/2012_Mozilla_Form_...

There's a difference between the Mozilla Corporation and the Mozilla Foundation. The latter owns the former. Revenue for the former is not revenue for the latter, though dividend payments from the former to the latter are revenues for the latter. The Form 990 is for the Foundation. You probably want to look at https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Fi... instead, since that includes the subsidiary…

Thanks for the clarification, I wasn't aware there was a for-profit subsidiary.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#304

Post by drdaeman »

bastawhiz wrote: post #246
drdaeman wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Too often, people confuse the idea of open standards with "things that have to be implemented". If an open standard doesn't serve any significant portion of a user base (e.g., most Google Talk or Hangouts users) and is very commonly abused (by spammers or otherwise), it's not worth having in a product. It's simply not sensible to make a business decision to support something (open standard or otherwise) if the negati…

I think open standards are things to be implemented if you want to interoperate with others. Google used to do that but doesn't want interop anymore. That hurted communities that used those open standards. I guess, that's a pretty valid reason to complain.

It all boils down to millennia-old issue that if business interests aren't aligned with minorities' demands, those are being ignored. Don't think this can be solved in reality.

> Where's the outrage that Twitter stopped letting users post via SMS and XMPP?

Lost in time. Personally, I had complained. I heard the other rant, too. I had registered for an API token and set up personal XMPP-to-Twitter gateway. And then I got bored with all this stuff and just trashed it and gave up.

But, hey, is it really silly that I had complained and cursed them evil?

Well, maybe it was...

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#305

Post by drdaeman »

haberman wrote: post #244
drdaeman wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Thousands of XMPP servers serving millions of people had S2S properly enabled and working among them. I'm surprised to hear a number that high, but regardless of what the number actually is, it certainly sucked for those people. But remember the context: Google was looking to expand Talk into Hangouts, and XMPP would have needed a makeover to support that product evolution. If Google had extended XMPP unilaterally,…

I get it the numbers are irrelevant, but just wanted to share where those came from.

http://www.process-one.net/en/imtrends/article/usage_estimat... - "that study relies on a panel of 7292 XMPP domains as discovered by the IMtrends engine"

So, I'd guess, if there's was least 7k public servers in 2008, it won't be wrong to say "thousands."

http://xmpp.org/xsf/press/2003-09-22.shtml - this one is old, much before the popularity peak, when XMPP was still called Jabber, and yet: "the JSF's estimate includes more than 4 million paying customers of Jabber, Inc.'s commercial software as well as an estimated 6 million users of open source and other commercial implementations of the Jabber/XMPP protocol"

So, I guess, "millions" isn't a wrong estimate, too.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#306

Post by hessenwolf »

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…

So, Google is pursuing vertical integration.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#307

Post by ultramancool »

toni wrote: post #292
k-mcgrady wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Android without using Google services? Is there a significant impact on the experience?

A while back I flashed my Nexus 5 with a CyanogenMod 11 build. I didn't install the GApps package afterward. One thing you will notice immediately is that the battery life lasts much much longer. With casual surfing, watching video clips, playing casual games and Wifi always on, the battery lasts for almost 24 hours. It looks as if this is what the original Nexus 5 should be. All those background Google services and…

And you can still use 3rd party markets like F-Droid and Aptoide.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#308

Post by ultramancool »

JohnBooty wrote: post #245
bjz_ wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox was great, but the performance was sub-par around version 3, and the time between releases was measured in years, not weeks. Chrome definitely gave Mozilla a nice kick in the backside, which I am very thankful for. These days Firefox is now close to, if not faster and less memory hungry than Chrome.

> Firefox was great, but the performance was sub-par around version 3 Before Chrome, Firefox's performance was sub-par compared to... what? Definitely not to Safari, Chrome, or IE. The main knock on Firefox at that time was that it was too memory-hungry. That was always somewhat of an inaccurate rap. Not totally undeserved, but not totally deserved either. > Chrome definitely gave Mozilla a nice kick in the backside,…

> Heck yes to all of that.

The performance improvements have been great, but I have to admit the UI changes are highly concerning to me. Fortunately the FF extension APIs are the best around, so now I just can't use Firefox without "Classic Theme Restorer".

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#310

Post by Mahn »

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…

> If Google didn't have Chrome and Firefox was the leading browser, they'd be in big trouble with this news.

One could argue Mozilla wouldn't necessarily consider switching if Google wasn't in the browser market at all, though. Much like Apple wouldn't have dropped Google Maps from iOS if it wasn't for Android.

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