Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately they lack a lot of the features that make Google useful. Like limiting by when the page appeared.
Almost nobody uses those features, useful though they may be.
I use that feature almost every day.
Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%
221–230 of 304 posts
Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%
#222Any modification of content by browser, ISP or any third party should be illegal.
Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
That $300 million is coming from Yahoo now, actually.
Does it really take $300 million dollars per year to develop a browser? Ok, fine, a browser, an OS, and a programming language? I am more curious than anything, are there other things that Mozilla does that I am missing?
They have over 1000 employees.
Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%
#224Man, ads are great. They allow content to be targeted towards people that could potentially not afford the content and towards people that might not necessarily use the product normally. The world is already significantly divided by wealth. Assuming someone poor even has access to a service like Google, imagine if it was behind a paywall. Could they afford it? If not imagine how much of a life advantage someone wealt…
You're trying too hard. Before Google the Internet was more useful. Smaller and more content focused. I'd gladly go back to hotbot or whatever to get away from Google and their ilk. A combination of disconnect, Adblock pro, and self destructing cookies gets me there.
The way I see it, the Internet has had three major business models:
1. Academia. Money is obtained from teaching and grants, which requires researchers, which requires publications, which can be made on the Internet.
2. Ads. Content and services attract users, ad networks pay for pixel space / clicks / views.
3. Payments. Users pay for content and services directly. They are otherwise in the deep web.
There are combinations (such as Premium, which is a mix of Ads and Payments), and marginal other models (such as donations, which are typically for free content and (yet rarer) services).
Considering I am running a successful donation-supported service, I can tell you it does not pay the bills. It merely sustains itself. Projects such as app.net show that even payment-based projects can be challenging.
Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%
#225Any modification of content by browser, ISP or any third party should be illegal.
Interesting... how would you enforce such a 'law' and how would you define the 'content' of a page when the appearance of a page in a Web browser depends on large numbers of history dependent transactions with several servers, possibly in different countries?
Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's quite a big inference you made from just a few words. Where am I proposing tracking without knowledge or consent? The dichotomy is either you have generalized ads or they're targeted closely to you. What is false about this?
no, your false dichotomy was "either we track people or they complain about irrelevant ads". Note the juxtaposition of imagined agency on part of the user, they supposedly complain a lot about it and want it changed right? So the solution is tracking! Also some vauge language burried 40 pages into a EULA isn't knowledge or consent.
You're attaching your opinions to something I never wrote. If you read my first comment and it's parent again, you'll see that the generalized vs targeted situation is exactly what I'm talking about and no more or less. There is no falsity there, you can have one or the other.
How this is actually implemented is not something I ever wrote about nor is HN really the place for it. There are some contextual based options other than tracking user behaviors but at the end of the day, yes tracking is how you get to the most targeted information. This is used in more than just ads by the way, everything from your search results to emails to music/video services to any other place you get recommendations is personalized to you. And the vast majority of the population has time and again shown they have more interest in the end result of better content for them than the collection of anonymized information.
Do you have a better solution? How would you provide targeted ads that match people's interests and intent without any tracking? And please don't say you just don't want ads or that sites should just figure out a different way to get paid. This is a serious question because it's not like the industry has just been sitting around wondering, so if you have a better idea it would be helpful and there are lots of companies willing to hear it.
Last thing re: EULA. I'm sorry but I have to disagree. Legal agreements do not become void because you signed a big contract and then claim it's too long or you didn't actually read it. And yes, signatures are not required for agreement and acceptance to be binding. These documents do not exist for convenience and the long length with all the complex edge case wording is precisely because standard language is so often contested by anyone who suddenly feels like they no longer want it to apply.
Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
It pretty amusing to see pro advertisement people argue that ads aren't predatory because they're not ACTUALLY effective you see..
That would truly be a foolish argument to make. However the argument I am making is, is ad supported content is one of the few monetary schemes which allows you to produce a product that allows for poorer people to part of the audience.
Your argument supposes that you know the surplus earned by brands segmented by user wealth group
(how much money users give to brands after using the service - how much they would without)
Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%
#228Any modification of content by browser, ISP or any third party should be illegal.
Interesting... how would you enforce such a 'law' and how would you define the 'content' of a page when the appearance of a page in a Web browser depends on large numbers of history dependent transactions with several servers, possibly in different countries?
Imagine cable operator or TV manifacture to do the same as Mozilla. They disable ads on all programs they stream. Do you think this is legal?
Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%
#229This is no news to anybody that ever tried an ad blocker, a proxy/content filter or even a generic hosts file. The difference is very noticeable. In fact, it's the main reason I run such filters. The difference is not only in traffic saved/lower latency, but also much lower cpu usage.
However, this it would be a bit hypocritical for Mozilla (and probably the reason why the filter is off by default). Firefox is not much better than Chrome when it comes to phoning home and privacy invading features. Heck, on mobile it's even worse.
What about disabling by default "beacon.enabled" for a start? Contrarily to massive ad blocking, nobody would notice. Err, maybe these ad networks would? Oops.
At every new Firefox release I do a tour of new settings/flags and it's saddening how many times I have to switch something off.
Re: Firefox tracking protection decreases page load time by 44%
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're trying too hard. Before Google the Internet was more useful. Smaller and more content focused. I'd gladly go back to hotbot or whatever to get away from Google and their ilk. A combination of disconnect, Adblock pro, and self destructing cookies gets me there.
"Before Google the Internet was more useful" Wow, could not disagree more. It's order of magnitudes easier for me to find a good answer for virtually any question. Not to mention how much better gmail is than mail clients of old. Or google maps, my lord how it has simplified my life. Google isn't solely responsible for this, but them and other ad-financed companies played a crucial part in building the web as we know…
I don't find Google results to be noticeably different from other search engines. For many types of questions wolframalpha is a much better option.