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

331–340 of 352 posts

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#331

Post by Grue3 »

inikulin wrote: post #295
opinali wrote: post #148

Yahoo! is OK, but... Yandex and Baidu are not exactly recommended company for an organization that pretends to hold the Open Web's moral higher ground. They practice large-scale censorship, they are instruments of repressive regimes. How does that make any sense?

I'm completely against current behavior of the russian government and I use Google on daily basis. However, I can't see how Yandex should be considered to be the company "that practice large-scale censorship, they are instruments of repressive regimes"? This is a great company, which contributes both to open source and science (numerous collaborations with CERN, etc.). And it really tries to fight for the web freedom…

Because Yandex is based in Russia, it has no alternative but to share its data with the government. If you value your privacy, avoid using any Russian-based search engines or social networks if you live in Russia.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#332

Post by yellowapple »

throwawaymoz wrote: post #82
dragonwriter wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Don't forget that Chrome users are more tech savvy on average than Firefox users, meaning they click ads less.

I actually don't disagree with this. Even though I'm a pretty tech-savvy Firefox user (and by "tech-savvy", I mean "seasoned Unix administrator and backend programmer"), "Mozilla" is also a household name among plenty of less-tech-savvy folks; I've seen Firefox (often called "Mozilla" or "Netscape" by its users, amusingly enough) everywhere from the most high-tech web development shops to computers owned/operated by seniors and running Windows XP and dial-up internet. Chrome hasn't had that level of adoption yet; while it's certainly popular among the tech-savvy, it hasn't trickled into ordinary households quite the same way as Internet Explorer and "Mozillafire Netfox" have.

It helps that Firefox has a lot of brand maturity in non-tech circles, whether it's referred to as "Firefox" or by the names of its ancestors. It also helps that Firefox is the default browser on the vast majority of desktop GNU/Linux distributions (which are gaining some popularity now that Windows XP is unsupported and being phased out more aggressively), though this probably isn't as significant of a factor as the existing brand recognition/maturity.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#333

Post by yellowapple »

Grue3 wrote: post #331
inikulin wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm completely against current behavior of the russian government and I use Google on daily basis. However, I can't see how Yandex should be considered to be the company "that practice large-scale censorship, they are instruments of repressive regimes"? This is a great company, which contributes both to open source and science (numerous collaborations with CERN, etc.). And it really tries to fight for the web freedom…

Because Yandex is based in Russia, it has no alternative but to share its data with the government. If you value your privacy, avoid using any Russian-based search engines or social networks if you live in Russia.

Did you mean Yandex? Yahoo! is based in California.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#334

Post by dang »

stephenr wrote: post #326
netheril96 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people down-vote you, your words will have the connotation that they do it because that they are Google fanboys, rather than have a reasonable argument against your opinion. That is why such wording is not conductive to discussion.

The idea of down voting comments you disagree with is ridiculous anyway. If you have a counter argument, reply. Down voting a comment (which leads to it effectively disappearing) is the electronic equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling "la la la I'm not listening" because you don't like what someone else said. If someone posts a comment saying "I like chocolate ice cream" in a discussion about a…

This is not only off-topic, it's the black hole of off-topicness. Please stop.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#335

Post by dhimes »

alttab wrote: post #317
Curmudgel wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or you know, use Chrome. That way, I don't have to consider what type of "web browsing experience" I need to have today.

That's what I do. I use chrome for a lot of stuff, but if I'm browsing video or or doing web development stuff I use FF.

And people here have told me that I'd like the Chrome dev tools better, but although I tried I was too lazy to completely switch so I just use FF and Firebug.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#336

Post by haberman »

yellowapple wrote: post #328
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…

How old a particular standard is doesn't really have that much bearing on whether or not it's a good standard (if it were, then it shouldn't be long before we all switch away from HTTP and SSH for the sake of "innovation"). Nor is age an excuse for introducing a replacement that's locked down to a specific vendor. I'm fine with Google dropping their support for open standards - their services, their rules, and if the…

> if it were, then it shouldn't be long before we all switch away from HTTP and SSH for the sake of "innovation"

Not great examples. HTTP has evolved several times to address changing needs: HTTP 0.9 (1991), HTTP 1.0 (1996), HTTP 1.1 (1997), HTTP 1.1 again (2007) and HTTP 2.0 (targeted for 2014). So did SSH: SSH-1 (1995) SSH-2 (2006).

These evolutions were possible because there were multiple major players that could come together (with multiple implementations) to settle on the new standard.

> but it sounds like XMPP at least could have simply been extended if there were features Google needed for Hangouts

In an alternate future where Google did that, people would have cried "embrace, extend, extinguish." Especially if any of their extensions were anti-spam related, people would have criticized them for being exclusionary.

For example, look at all the flak Google has gotten for SPDY. Evolving XMPP would have probably led to the same criticism.

And XMPP still wouldn't have provided interop with any of the major IM networks, because none of them were implementing it.

You truly can't please everybody, even if you really believe in something.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#337

Post by drdaeman »

xorcist wrote: post #318
drdaeman wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about juridical sense and I'm not sure there's one applicable worldwide. This is true in practice, though. "Your" domain can be seized, blocked or transferred to a third party, its lease terms can be changed to make it unaffordable - and generally there's nothing you can do to prevent this before this happen, since anything of this can happen without involving you at all . That is, because you never poss…

> I don't know about juridical sense and I'm not sure there's one applicable worldwide. The statement is even less true then. I would certainly guess that in every country that leasing is a term, it doesn't match your agreement with your registrar. > "Your" domain can be seized, blocked or transferred to a third party, That is trivially true with pretty much anything, in pretty much any country. The police will take…

> I would certainly guess that in every country that leasing is a term

I'm not talking about how it's called legally. I'm talking how it's actually working. You pay money, you're allowed to control the resource. That looks exactly like leasing to me. You can't buy a domain, so you can't own it. It's that simple

> That is trivially true with pretty much anything, in pretty much any country.

Wrong. It's impossible to make you disclose your private key without your presence, ability and willingness to do so (although you can be forced to disclose, but that's completely another matter). And, obviously, your identity cannot be revoked or seized even if you'd wish for so.

> But it is a system governed by rules. And so is the domain name.

And the rules are made by others and others may change it at any time.

> In most countries you can challenge any stolen or revoked domain in court.

But why do I have to do so in a first place?

Seriously, can you explain me why do I need to entrust my identity to some registrar and ask government to handle that? Or why do I have to pay for a right to posses my identity? I've used to live without those, but now everyone's (Google, Facebook and - what's important and what's the basis of my complaint - Mozilla's continuing the trend) trying to tie me to this third-party-is-necessary approach.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#338

Post by drdaeman »

sroerick wrote: post #323
drdaeman wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What about Namecoin?

I'm not really knowledgeable on the details but - if I got it right - from the overall image it seems good.

But it's not realistically useable for a time being. I'll be fine totally with Persona when the vast majority could type .bit (or whatever it would be called, I guess NameCoin will evolve somehow by that time) name I own (truly own, yay!) and it would resolve for them.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#339

Post by Curmudgel »

alttab wrote: post #317
Curmudgel wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or you know, use Chrome. That way, I don't have to consider what type of "web browsing experience" I need to have today.

I have installed lots of extensions on FF because I find them to be useful. If I were to use Chrome as my primary browser and wanted the same features that my current FF setup gives me, then I would have to install extensions. But the extensions would slow Chrome down and then I would be back to square one. So "just use Chrome" is not a solution.

Re: New Search Strategy for Firefox

#340

Post by fwenzel »

gorhill wrote: post #303
bzbarsky wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Technically, a not-for-profit taxable subsidiary. (That makes a difference because the company purpose of Mozilla Corporation is still not to make money/raise shareholder value, despite the fact this it is fully taxable like any other company).
Post reply on HN