Firefox 65.0 released • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox 65.0 released

#41

Post by ForHackernews » Tue, Jan 29, 2019, 3:20 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #22

oosjc9a5 wrote: post #3

A question regarding the advertisements they show on the home page: https://www.neowin.net/news/firefox-640-is-now-showing-a-boo... Are these ads introduced with these updates, or does Firefox include a backdoor so the Mozilla Corporation can show whatever they want on your home page?

Firefox as an organization does not get branding at all. They claim to be the champions on privacy and user freedom yet they keep breaking that image over and over again with unwanted ads, telemetry, and services you can't disable. I still use Firefox as my main browser, but I can't fathom how they come up with such poor decisions every single time.

Maybe if users were willing to pay for a browser, they wouldn't be so desperately scrambling around for non-Google revenue sources.

They could try to offer some kind of "pay us to forgo marketing partnerships" deal, but I somehow doubt even most of the well-paid privacy advocates on HN would sign up.

Re: Firefox 65.0 released

#42

Post by ekianjo » Tue, Jan 29, 2019, 3:20 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #28

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you still use it?

"Choose Firefox now, or later you won't have a choice" https://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/08/choose-firefox-now-or-l...

Honestly that's a very poor rationale. People should be choosing Firefox because it's a better product or a more ethical one (sadly they are doing a poor job at convincing us of that), not because we need to keep a competitor alive forever no matter what.

Re: Firefox 65.0 released

#43

Post by bluejekyll » Tue, Jan 29, 2019, 3:20 PM UTC

olavgg wrote: post #11

I love Firefox and use it all the time, but for the last few years one of my biggest pains is the OSX performance on my Macbook Pro. Is this close to be resolved soon?

What do you mean by performance? I’ve found Firefox to be generally faster than Safari and Chrome on my MacBook Pro. I generally find it to be more energy efficient than Chrome, but Safari is still king there.

This is personal experience, no lab tests, etc.

Re: Firefox 65.0 released

#44

Post by lugg » Tue, Jan 29, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

NamTaf wrote: post #6

oosjc9a5 wrote: post #3

A question regarding the advertisements they show on the home page: https://www.neowin.net/news/firefox-640-is-now-showing-a-boo... Are these ads introduced with these updates, or does Firefox include a backdoor so the Mozilla Corporation can show whatever they want on your home page?

In addition to this: Even though the link claims that it is not a paid placement, it's still an advertisement. If Mozilla really wants to provide more value to me, they'll tell me how to permanently disable it. Its presence provides negative value to me.

What.. Have you even used FF in the last decade? It comes with tracker and 3rd party cookie blocking built in. Your accusation is a bit of a stretch.

I guess you think I should use chrome? Because that has zero to do with serving me up more profitable advertising at all..

But aside from that, you do know you can disable everything on the home page under general preferences - including the ad section.

And worst case if they remove the option, ublock will still block it and if it can't you can just disable it's display in userChrome.css.

Re: Firefox 65.0 released

#45

Post by x0x0 » Tue, Jan 29, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

NamTaf wrote: post #6

oosjc9a5 wrote: post #3

A question regarding the advertisements they show on the home page: https://www.neowin.net/news/firefox-640-is-now-showing-a-boo... Are these ads introduced with these updates, or does Firefox include a backdoor so the Mozilla Corporation can show whatever they want on your home page?

In addition to this: Even though the link claims that it is not a paid placement, it's still an advertisement. If Mozilla really wants to provide more value to me, they'll tell me how to permanently disable it. Its presence provides negative value to me.

I would suggest you consider this: with Microsoft moving Edge to chromium, there are now only 3 engines standing: Chromium, webkit, and gecko. Therefore Firefox is important to deny Google enormous control over the browser and therefore the internet.

Firefox desperately needs a revenue stream that is independent from Google. Although Google has not done so yet -- it's imo very valuable to Google to preserve the illusion of not having a browser monopoly -- a huge amount of their revenues come from their Google search deal. Google can, for example, cut that deal at any time: Firefox is selling into a monopsony.

I don't love advertising, but we need Firefox to have a non-google revenue source.

Re: Firefox 65.0 released

#46

Post by vishnu_ks » Tue, Jan 29, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

I don't understand why Firefox doesn't include an option to download the .deb package instead of tar file for Ubuntu and Debian during release announcements. The market share is already shrinking and why make it harder for people to install or upgrade Firefox? Chrome does it. Why can't Firefox do that as well?

Re: Firefox 65.0 released

#47

Post by kemenaran » Tue, Jan 29, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

Handoff on macOS, finally! \o/

Just tested opening Firefox on iOS, and the "Open page in Firefox" pops up in the Dock of my Mac. Neat.

(It is advertised as also working with Mobile Safari.)

Re: Firefox 65.0 released

#48

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 29, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

sambe wrote: post #4

I feel like I've been waiting a long time for autoplay blocking - does this keep being pushed back or have I missed a feature cancellation/config setting/extension announcement?

[deleted]

Re: Firefox 65.0 released

#49

Post by Vinnl » Tue, Jan 29, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

vezycash wrote: post #39

numbsafari wrote: post #32

I wish Mozilla started to compete with Google on ChromeOS. Just make it the browser and leverage containers to keep things locked down. There’s a total business here and Mozilla could make it happen, without the entanglements of the ads business. Real missed opportunity to help promote open standards at the services level as well.

They had FirefoxOS remember? Doubt think they'll want to do it again soon.

A relevant recent article: https://medium.com/@bfrancis/the-legacy-of-firefox-os-c58ec3...

Re: Firefox 65.0 released

#50

Post by tombert » Tue, Jan 29, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

vezycash wrote: post #39

numbsafari wrote: post #32

I wish Mozilla started to compete with Google on ChromeOS. Just make it the browser and leverage containers to keep things locked down. There’s a total business here and Mozilla could make it happen, without the entanglements of the ads business. Real missed opportunity to help promote open standards at the services level as well.

They had FirefoxOS remember? Doubt think they'll want to do it again soon.

I think the intended market for FirefoxOS was pretty different than ChromeOS. Wasn't FirefoxOS for low-powered phones? ChromeOS is designed around a "streamlined" laptop system.