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Thank you, Chris

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Thank you, Chris

#221

Post by BrendanEich »

borfohrex wrote: post #83
tapoxi wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but feel that a lot of Brave's userbase are pushing it because they have a financial investment in BAT from the ICO. Brave certainly doesn't help with the monoculture threat either, its just Chrome.

Having Google as your default search engine or include Google's safe browsing inside your browser doesn't help with the monoculture threat either, but i guess mozilla thinks otherwise.

They rely for most of their revenue on that Google search deal.

Safe Browsing in "update" mode, with an IP hiding proxy as Brave uses, is ok.

Re: Thank you, Chris

#222

Post by BrendanEich »

EastSmith wrote: post #128
mathnmusic wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the difference over Brave then?

It will be handled by a well respected non profit foundation, rather than a for profit company?

Profit motive does not go away in a "non-profit" (FYI, Firefox is produced by the Mozilla Corporation, which is the for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation; top salary last seen [2017] was $2.3M+). Mozilla depends for its profits (to pay such salaries and bonuses) mainly on the Google search deal.

In my opinion, this conflict of interest between users and Mozilla's search revenue share held back tracking protection in Firefox over the years. We (I was there, this is all in public bugs and news now) rejected third-party cookie blocking three times.

Meanwhile Brave has a transparent rate card, where we pay the user 70% of the gross revenue for user-private ads, and 15% for publisher ads (not yet deployed; the publisher makes 70% and we take same as the user). So we get <= what users get, and we will fail if our users don't like the private/anonymous ads+donation model enough to opt in at sufficient scale that we can cover our costs.

Re: Thank you, Chris

#223

Post by sciurus »

modzu wrote: post #219
sciurus wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has tracking protection enabled by default. Given the current state of the ad ecosystem, this has the side effect of blocking most ads. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/06/04/firefox-now-availab...

tracking protection != ad blocking. the side effect is more like it blocks some 'targeted' ads, but it seems disingenuous to say it blocks 'most ads'.

I'm not trying to be disingenuous. I don't have an ad blocker installed, and except for when I turn tracking protection off because it broke some site's functionality I can't remember the last time I saw an ad.

Re: Thank you, Chris

#224

Post by tapoxi »

BrendanEich wrote: post #220
tapoxi wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but feel that a lot of Brave's userbase are pushing it because they have a financial investment in BAT from the ICO. Brave certainly doesn't help with the monoculture threat either, its just Chrome.

In the initial sale, https://etherscan.io/token/0x0d8775f648430679a709e98d2b0cb62... , but we have ~7M users. Check your math.

Is 186,000 not a lot? It doesn't need to be a large percentage of the overall, just influencers with a financial investment in it.

(Yes, in theory people can also own say, Google stock, but BAT is directly tied to the browser's success.)

Re: Thank you, Chris

#225

Post by BrendanEich »

tapoxi wrote: post #224
BrendanEich wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the initial sale, https://etherscan.io/token/0x0d8775f648430679a709e98d2b0cb62... , but we have ~7M users. Check your math.

Is 186,000 not a lot? It doesn't need to be a large percentage of the overall, just influencers with a financial investment in it. (Yes, in theory people can also own say, Google stock, but BAT is directly tied to the browser's success.)

Is 186,000 a large or small fraction of 7M? Also note the largest few accounts are liquidity pools owned by exchanges, and custodial accounts we use for cold BAT.

How does a browser grow from zero share? Hint: it's not by "influence" alone, with zero benefit to the prospect being pitched by the influencer.

Re: Thank you, Chris

#226

Post by BrendanEich »

stakhanov wrote: post #11
_red wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Brave started from nothing and seems to be growing. I use it now on all my devices and really like it as a daily driver. Had Brendan been able to try these ideas with the firefox userbase it could've advanced the privacy conversation much further...

Finding a niche is one thing. If you change a product used by a portion (albeit small) of the mainstream into a product that would appeal only to a niche audience, that may well end up going against you.

The causal arrow points the other way. Today Firefox finally started blocking third party cookies (some, not all as Brave does; they use Disconnect.me's 3rd party cookie blocking list) by default. This does not limit mainstream appeal, it follows Safari and Brave, who have been leading the privacy by default movement among browsers.

Re: Thank you, Chris

#227

Post by BrendanEich »

RandomBacon wrote: post #39
giancarlostoro wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then Brave came along with automatic ad-blocking. I don't think I will ever use Brave due to how it "blocks ads" I think the industry should be doing the job of Brave which is to ensure ads aren't infested with bad code. No ad server should serve arbitrary JS that hasn't been tested and secured. If it costs money to ensure this then they should charge more for ads. If an ad infests machines, the ad company should b…

I will never use Brave because they're replacing ads with their own and making money doing it. uBlock Origin on FF is better and not scummy like Brave. People shouldn't break the law, but until that never happens, I will do what I can to protect myself.

You are misinformed. Brave does not "[replace] ads with their own" and we never have. We are working with publishers to do private/anonymous ads which pay them 70% and the user 15% of gross revenue, but these are not out yet.

We already pay users 70% of revenue for ads that go in the user's own space, not in any publisher slot.

Whether user or publisher ads, in Brave neither kind uses any tracking. Matching is done locally against an objective (same for all users in a region on a given day) catalog; views and clicks confirmed using a Privacy Pass like "blind signature" protocol. No user identifier or linkability among events on any server, even ours.

If you acted on incorrect information, I hope you'll stop repeating it and give Brave a try. Thanks.

Re: Thank you, Chris

#228

Post by cloudytoday »

rosybox wrote: post #103
cloudytoday wrote: post #85

Just downloaded Firefox again for the first time in ages...what's lame is that some G Suite / Apps / Mail features are only available in Chrome forcing me to use Chrome for work..

What Google app features are not available in Firefox? I use Firefox and my work uses Google's products and I never run into any issues with gmail, calendar, docs...

The "send later" feature in Gmail doesn't work outside of chrome and offline mode for drive.

Re: Thank you, Chris

#229

Post by nautilus12 »

bdcravens wrote: post #126
nautilus12 wrote: post #71

Been using firefox ever since chrome became unusuable from a memory perspective to use without the great suspender a few years back. Been happy with the change ever since. Hope the company continues to thrive.

I use Chrome with TGS, and I haven't really seen a disadvantage.

Well for one I can have many tabs open in firefox without having to suspend the page everytime I leave it and my computer won't catch on fire.
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