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Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

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Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#251

Post by criddell »

smsm42 wrote: post #190
criddell wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the exact opposite opinion. They should get out of the rendering engine business and start using Blink like just about everybody else. Take Blink and make a better browser from it using those 20 side projects. Pour resources into them and move them from mediocre to great. Take what Google gives away and spend resources on what Google ignores. Battling Google and Apple on rendering technology makes no sense to…

Having an independent rendering engine has a lot of value, in both diversity and control aspects. Having another chrome layer around he same engine is kinda meh. I mean not that a good chrome can't improve things - it very well may - but the importance of having it is less. > Battling Google and Apple on rendering technology makes no sense to me. And that's exactly why we need a strong independent org to do this. Bec…

> Having another chrome layer around he same engine is kinda meh

Yep. Browsers in general are meh at this point. Mozilla is looking for things like Fakespot because all of the big browsers have been good enough for quite a while now. There really isn't anything they can do with the core of Firefox make a difference. Users don't care.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#253

Post by franga2000 »

hospitalhusband wrote: post #196
franga2000 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sounds like they've set out to play Whac-A-Mole against the all the biggest AI companies in the world. That's exactly what they're doing with the biggest ad trackers and browser vendors. A lot of Mozilla's "side-projects" are stupid and I also agree they should focus more on Firefox, but this one is pretty in line with their general mission of "we'll fight the big guys because, if we don't, nobody else will".

Mozilla is almost entirely funded by half a billion dollars a year from Google. They are a vassal.

Your point being? The fact that it probably isn't sustainable doesn't negate all the good they do.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#254

Post by OkayPhysicist »

bleep_bloop wrote: post #152
micromacrofoot wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my perspective Mozilla is doing a better job with their browser than Google and Apple are, that's why I use it (despite the market share, I prefer their implementation of most things compared to alternatives). Everything else is gravy. I'm not sure that the money Mozilla spends on other things would be better spent on the browser... would it realistically close any existing gaps between their competition? Arguab…

Depends on what metrics you are using. Compatibility, APIs, Performance, Firefox is objectively worse than Chrome on all aspects. I like Mozilla as a company and I still use Firefox over Chrome knowing that it is objectively a worse browser and experience because I dislike Google and their business practices and i support businesses that I believe in. I am very much against the monopoly Google has over the web space…

I do not remember the last time a website actually failed to work in Firefox. Once in a blue moon I'll come across a site (looking at you, SnapChat) that claims it won't work, but suddenly is just just hunky-dory with a quick User-Agent string swap. We've gotten to a point where if your site doesn't work identically in Firefox and Chrome, you're probably doing something pathological.

With regards to APIs, I'm very happy with Firefox's commitment to telling Google to go fuck itself when it comes to Manifest V3 neutering of adblocking.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#255

Post by mdaniel »

godshatter wrote: post #234
mdaniel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony doesn't escape me that if they'd just turn off the extension restriction there are like a thousand extensions that would do that and more for any audience where such a thing still matters I haven't tried to build Firefox for Android in a really long time but I wonder what the level of effort would be to just track the release tags with such a patch applied (i.e. the world's shallowest fork)

> if they'd just turn off the extension restriction That's basically Fennec. Download it from F-Droid. It's basically a clone of Firefox with extensions turned back on.

Negative, I just tried https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/ (which, delightfully, wasn't 0.99.beta-patch3 or some such nonsense) but it for sure was not "allow me to install whatever add-on I want". It's the same stupid list as normal Firefox for Android

Maybe you're thinking of Firefox Nightly, which I do run from the Play store and is better than "normal people Firefox" but this for sure is not the good old days of "Let Me Install Violentmonkey not stupid Tapermonkey"

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#256

Post by INeedMoreRam »

senko wrote: post #170

Mozilla is a company in search of relevance. Right now, if Mozilla doesn't think Firefox is central to its mission and if they're giving up the fight in browser wars (as many in this thread suggest) .. ... I don't see that it has any relevance left. It has income, it has a CEO paid a few $m, aaand ... that's it? I'd like to see Firefox spun out (together with Firefox-related revenue streams), and then let Mozilla (th…

[dead]

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#257

Post by activiation »

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

Normally I'd say... "They'd better write it in the bylaws that Mozilla isn't allowed to buy any more companies" but a system for identifying fake content on the web might (unlike all the other Mozilla acquisitions such as the thoroughly pizzled Pocket) improve the web browsing experience.

Great purchase if they integrate it.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#258

Post by vhcr »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #181
ncann wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Case in point: network ping spikes after using Geolocation that will persist until FF is closed: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1711854

I never understood what geolocation was supposed to be within the context of of a desktop browser. If a website asks for this information, and I approve, what information is transmitted that couldn't be determined serverside via geoip?

Most MacBooks have a GPS antenna, so they will return pretty accurate location. And having a consistent API is important too, not having to care if your code is running on mobile or desktop is pretty nice.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#259

Post by sam_goody »

agumonkey wrote: post #134
Arainach wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bias disclaimer: I've worked on Chrome and Edge, opinions strictly my own >and why is that? Oh because Mozilla hasn't put any energy into getting better or pulling back market share from the moment it started to bleed out to Chrome. Could and should Mozilla have done better? Yes. "Any energy?" is uncalled for, however. There was the entire Quantum rewrite for significant performance boosts (around the time Chrome sta…

That's how it felt to me too. Stretched too thin. Yet as a small company compared to MS or Google, I can imagine how hard it is to try to thrive or just survive and maintaining a stable path when you're fighting big pockets. I just wished they could rebalance their allocation and focus on simple daily usability things. Just a bit more. ps: for instance, the screenshot tool is brilliant

Stretched too thin?

They fired Brendan Eich, who invented JS, led Netscape past IE, and then headed Mozilla. Who, when fired, started Brave and turned it into a bigger system than FF (including the only relatively new free search engine with its own index), from scratch, in a world already dominated by Chrome, and Safari.

I know, I know, Eich donated personal money to some cause that some people on the internet didn't like. But from a business perspective, it was the stupidest thing they could have done, and is the point at which FF went from growth to (fast) loss.

(And the cause itself was not justified, especially considering it was a private donation, it was a legal org (not like KK or whatever), and he apologized afterwards. Even if it was a mistake, that should not have been justification for firing him.)

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#260

Post by jraph »

vxNsr wrote: post #188
KingOfCoders wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me - as a long term FF user and Mozilla critic - it looks like: Spend money on everything except browser development (>$5 billions!). Market share down the drain. Use the market share as an argument for a lost cause and spend money on everything except Browser development. Ladybird - a browser spearheaded by one person - will expose Mozilla of what it is.

>Ladybird What’s the deal with serenityOS? Can it be run on bare metal yet, last I checked they only have a way to run it in a vm.

Yes. The browser, though, is very easy to build, requires few dependencies, a few minutes to build and runs fine on Linux. The result is quite impressive. And experimental.
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