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Firefox search update

blog.mozilla.org

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191–200 of 253 posts

Re: Firefox search update

#191

Post by autoexec »

computator wrote: post #179
autoexec wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is still the most secure browser you can get once you've beaten it into submission through hundreds of about:config changes. Last I checked you couldn't even fully disable service workers or WebRTC in chrome.

Do you have a recommended list of the about:config changes to get optimal security and privacy?

Not for most people. I deal with compromised/malware infested websites so my team has a document with over 600 entries that locks down as much as possible. Arkenfox is included in that and that should cover what most people need in terms of privacy. Firefox on my work PC has things disabled that most people would probably want like SVG, Wasm, JS, auto/form fill, saved passwords, searching from the address bar, reader view, mathml, browser.fixup, remote fonts, PDF viewer, etc.

Re: Firefox search update

#192

Post by kevincox »

wavemode wrote: post #92

I would respect the announcement more if they just came out and said it - "we need cash to keep running and Google is offering to pay us a bajillion dollars for some anonymized search data. Sorry folks."

I don't know why they didn't say it in this article, but in https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/126.0/releasenotes/ they said:

> This data will not be associated with specific users and will be collected using OHTTP to remove IP addresses as potentially identifying metadata. No profiling will be performed, and no data will be shared with third parties.

So it seems they aren't selling it directly. But I wouldn't be surprised if aggregated numbers could be used for sales deals. (Hi Bing, we have 137M "travel" searches a month, I'm sure that you could put some big juicy ads next to those if you purchase the default search engine status)

Re: Firefox search update

#193

Post by kevincox »

AzzyHN wrote: post #144

Reading just the blog post... these feel like useless metrics. Why do you care what percentage of your users are searching about animals. What do you possibly have to gain from this? Are they planning to introduce animal-based features? And if it's not for their own metrics, but to sell... who's going to buy? Facebook tracking pixels and other statistics cookies are so much more valuable that this kind of data

I suspect it is mostly for selling things like default search engine and ads via Firefox Suggest. Some search categories are far more valuable than others for ads.

Re: Firefox search update

#194

Post by DavideNL »

computator wrote: post #179
autoexec wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is still the most secure browser you can get once you've beaten it into submission through hundreds of about:config changes. Last I checked you couldn't even fully disable service workers or WebRTC in chrome.

Do you have a recommended list of the about:config changes to get optimal security and privacy?

This might interest you... (if you know how to set it up):

"Firefox privacy, security and anti-tracking: a comprehensive user.js template for configuration and hardening "

https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js

Re: Firefox search update

#195

Post by ragnese »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #173
aquova wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I constantly see this take and I'm afraid I don't agree with it. Firefox is continuing to lose market share, and I think it's less anything they're doing and due simply to the fact that Google is a household name while Mozilla is not. When the user is already using a Google phone, email, search, maps, drive, and document editor, it follows to also use their browser. Simply being a solid browser isn't enough to motiva…

> When the user is already using a Google phone, email, search, maps, drive, and document editor, it follows to also use their browser. I think it's more that everyone used Google for search (because it at least was legitimately the best by a good margin) and then Google used that position to push Chrome. The other stuff may have helped, but I think search was 90% of it.

Well, when Chrome first came out, it was definitely way faster than the other browsers for websites that had heavy JavaScript usage a la GMail. I imagine the gap has closed quite a bit, but I would suspect that it's probably still there, since they can coordinate development of both their web apps and the browser to work well together.

More recently, there was that whole thing where YouTube was "accidentally" adding delays to non-Chrome browsers.

Re: Firefox search update

#196

Post by ragnese »

saurik wrote: post #185
aquova wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I constantly see this take and I'm afraid I don't agree with it. Firefox is continuing to lose market share, and I think it's less anything they're doing and due simply to the fact that Google is a household name while Mozilla is not. When the user is already using a Google phone, email, search, maps, drive, and document editor, it follows to also use their browser. Simply being a solid browser isn't enough to motiva…

I just feel like they should be concentrating their time into adding features to Firefox which Google either will not or doesn't care to add to Chrome, not trying to compete with Google's entire business suite: that's a losing uphill battle and the pitch "we're slightly more private" is a hard one that they aren't even doing well... if they want to make a commitment to 0 data storage with no suggestions or analytics,…

> the pitch "we're slightly more private" is a hard one that they aren't even doing well... if they want to make a commitment to 0 data storage with no suggestions or analytics, that would be one thing, but they refuse to do that and so can't hold this narrative.

Or... they can, because they are still more private and respectful than Chrome and Edge, at least.

Re: Firefox search update

#197

Post by JumpCrisscross »

JeremyNT wrote: post #168
aquova wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I constantly see this take and I'm afraid I don't agree with it. Firefox is continuing to lose market share, and I think it's less anything they're doing and due simply to the fact that Google is a household name while Mozilla is not. When the user is already using a Google phone, email, search, maps, drive, and document editor, it follows to also use their browser. Simply being a solid browser isn't enough to motiva…

I agree with this take. It's not like the power users who currently use Firefox and yet dislike this stuff are going to switch away from Firefox, since there's nothing to switch to other than Chrome, which is clearly worse. Personal anecdote, I didn't like Pocket being added to Firefox, but eventually I did start using it - only because it came from Mozilla. And I currently pay Mozilla money for Relay (along with VPN…

> not like the power users who currently use Firefox and yet dislike this stuff are going to switch away from Firefox

Not a Firefox power user, but also not a fan of having to learn through HN that I need to disable some random opt-in to not have my browsing leaked by my browser. Was genuinely on the fence about deleting it and simplifying to Safari.

Re: Firefox search update

#199

Post by sunnybeetroot »

kevincox wrote: post #192
wavemode wrote: post #92

I would respect the announcement more if they just came out and said it - "we need cash to keep running and Google is offering to pay us a bajillion dollars for some anonymized search data. Sorry folks."

I don't know why they didn't say it in this article, but in https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/126.0/releasenotes/ they said: > This data will not be associated with specific users and will be collected using OHTTP to remove IP addresses as potentially identifying metadata. No profiling will be performed, and no data will be shared with third parties. So it seems they aren't selling it directly. But I wouldn't be…

Good catch

Re: Firefox search update

#200

Post by elaborate4013 »

mrob wrote: post #78

I don't even want my browser to support searching from the browser UI. If I want to send information to Google I'll visit their web page directly. I don't want to do it by a misclick. It's surprisingly difficult to disable searching from the browser UI in Firefox. Firefox insists you have at least one search engine enabled at all times. The best option I know of is to set the undocumented setting "browser.urlbar.upda…

Are you talking about the address bar search? Just disable keywords in about:config then.
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