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Firefox search update

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox search update

#201

Post by Tarq0n »

stevenicr wrote: post #76
atomicfiredoll wrote: post #7

Just a shortcut for anybody trying to find it. "Remember, you can always opt out of sending any technical or usage data to Firefox. Here’s a step-by-step guide [0] on how to adjust your settings." --- 1. Click the [hamburger menu button] and select Settings. 2. Select the Privacy & Security panel. 3. Scroll down to the Firefox Data Collection and Use section. 4. Check or uncheck the box next to Allow Firefox to send…

thanks for sharing - just found out you have to do this for each firefox profile if you have more than one. Note says it takes 30 days for them to remove your data history. I wonder if pihole or similar could just block the dns for this crap.

How could they remove your data if it's anonymized? That implies they're using pseudonymization instead.

Re: Firefox search update

#202

Post by JohnFen »

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…

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

Sure they do. I know a lot that have, anyway. I'm one of a tiny percentage of my tech circle who uses it anymore.

Re: Firefox search update

#203

Post by jasonlotito »

romanows wrote: post #11

Seems like this is in support of "Firefox Suggest", which seems to show sponsored links. I really don't like advertising so I really don't like going down that road. Can't they just take Google's yearly $600,000,000 payment and build the best browser "for the user" while also addressing technical debt and organizational issues so it can continue as an open source project if/when the money ever dries up?

> Seems like this is in support of "Firefox Suggest", which seems to show sponsored links.

Browsing history, bookmarks, clipboard, open tabs, shortcuts, search engines, suggestions from firefox, suggestions from sponsors. Each of those can be individually turned off and on.

Why do you think Firefox Suggest using browsing history, bookmarks, clipboard, open tabs, shortcuts, search engines, suggestions from firefox isn't building the best browser "for the user"? Or were you just ignorant of what Firefox Suggest did and didn't bother to take a moment to look it up in Firefox?

Re: Firefox search update

#204

Post by jasonlotito »

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'm sorry, but "Support Firefox with occasional sponsored suggestions." isn't good enough?

More importantly: "Google is offering to pay us a bajillion dollars for some anonymized search data"

Citation needed here. Your head isn't good enough.

Re: Firefox search update

#205

Post by saurik »

ragnese wrote: post #196
saurik wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And yet, every time this comes up people come out to bash Firefox for not going far enough on privacy. The top comments on this HN post are all in that category, as the people who care about privacy actually care about privacy and Firefox's half-assed attempts to walk the line are falling flat for that audience. Meanwhile, as can be seen in these very comments, people seem to have found alternatives: any of the now many forks of Chromium that entirely remove these anti-privacy features they don't want without incurring any other functionality tradeoffs. Firefox could take these users back, but they don't want to: their strategy of throwing away the minority markets so they can be Google-lite in the hope of guilting enough of the majority market into using Firefox is reliant on analytics and they seemingly can't help themselves with the attempts to upsell people on data harvesting services.

Re: Firefox search update

#206

Post by [deleted] »

unethical_ban wrote: post #55
SllX wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy first is just not collecting the data. Everything else is just a compromise and an excuse.

Do you believe there is no utility in knowledge? Do you believe absolutism is the only philosophy for privacy? I think telemetry and the data software collects can help with usability, design, and product enhancement and that it's very likely this can be done to some extent without harming privacy.

[deleted]

Re: Firefox search update

#207

Post by JohnFen »

saghm wrote: post #117
stevenicr wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't like 15? years ago with the AOL search data anonymized release that people found multiple ways to connect dots to whittle it down to just one person or a small subset of people? Wasn't this also shown with anonymized taxi-cab data (released in NY?) many moons ago? Would it not be possible with knowing that you are tracking this data to funnel people into doing searches in a way that would reveal things? Direct…

> Anonymized data is not always anonymous, collected server side or otherwise If anything, I think it's both safer and more accurate to start from the assumption "anonymized" data can be de-anonymized and and require evidence to refute that rather than starting from a place of assumption that anonymization works and then trying to find a way to attack it. In practice, there's just not a good track record of this bein…

There is only one way that data can really be "anonymized": if the individual data points are aggregated and the original collected data is deleted. Short of that, anonymization is basically illusory.

The trouble is that we'd still have to take the word of the entity doing the data collection that they've done this properly, and it's clear that we can't take anyone's word for that.

Re: Firefox search update

#208

Post by JohnFen »

beretguy wrote: post #68

I’d rather they make Firefox subscription based. I’d rather pay $5 a month and have no ads or tracking of any kind. They can even run a separate fork of Firefox or something for this purpose. If Firefox goes down Google will lock internet behind a DRM and we gonna need another rms or Torvalds to deliver us from this hell. Can you imagine a world without Linux, with Windows and Mac pretty much the only mainstream alte…

> I’d rather they make Firefox subscription based.

Software subscriptions are a hard "no" for me. Even if I loved literally everything else about Firefox, if they did this I'd have to stop using it.

Re: Firefox search update

#209

Post by JohnFen »

mrob wrote: post #101
crtasm wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I achieved this by turning off a handful of config options for the address bar's suggestions; setting the search input to be separate from the address bar, and hiding it via Customize Toolbar. I think these were the most important: keyword.enabled browser.fixup.alternate.enabled browser.urlbar.suggest.searches

For many versions now, removing the separate search bar via Customize Toolbar reverts to combined URL bar and search bar. It also leaves the search option in the right-click menu.

Oooh! That explains why I haven't been able to disable that stuff from the omnibar. I hate the omnibar -- I just want text entered there to be interpreted as a URL and nothing else -- but at some point, I wasn't able to configure it to be that anymore.

If this is why, you've just made Firefox better for me! Thank you!

Re: Firefox search update

#210

Post by lxgr »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #180
lxgr wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a browser is never "done", for better or worse, nor are user expectations static. Stopping to iterate on a web browser is like stopping to iterate on an operating system: It'll go well for a while (and users even might love you for it for a year or two, since you can focus your effort on fixing bugs and not introduce new ones with new features), and then you'll slowly but steadily lose users to other browser that…

All you have to do is keep up with web standards. Most people don't use 99% of the browsers features I'd guess. About all I need are tabs and bookmarks and a history and thats it, same stuff since netscape basically, my three features for a complete browser experience that would make me very happy. I'm sure other users feel the same.

Some things technically not part of the core feature set of a browser (at least not the one you've mentioned), yet even just one of them missing would make me immediately drop Firefox:

- End-to-end encrypted tab, history, and bookmark sync across devices

- Content translation, as mentioned above ideally in a privacy-preserving way

- Plugin support

- Cookie-jar-per-tab and proxy-per-tab support (Firefox allows doing both through Multi-Account Containers)

I'm sure some other users also feel the same.

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