I assume they're talking about the use of google analytics on the about:addons page discussed here: https://github.com/mozilla/addons-frontend/issues/2785 Two things to note from that thread: From what I've read, Mozilla had some agreement with Google to keep all the data from their tracking stuff silo'ed so it wasn't aggregated with other data and wasn't used for anything besides showing back to Mozilla people. and…
So is it disabled by default since Firefox now sends Do Not Track by default?
Firefox is a truly fantastic browser now. I've been using it again for about 2 years and haven't regretted it at all. There have been a couple of weird feature hiccups but generally Mozilla seems to get things right.
I wish Firefox was as sleek, fast and no-nonsense as Safari on the Mac, which is my everyday browser. I vastly prefer the idea of an open browser that is not tightly coupled to a particular industry giant. And I wish Firefox actually had a viable Safari competitor on iOS, so that I can sync my state around. Unfortunately, while Firefox has made significant leaps the last couple of years, it's still not a viable alter…
In Firefox preferences, you can change the address bar's suggestions to list history/bookmark matches before search suggestions Or to remove search suggestions altogether.
I wish I could use it but it has serious performance problems on macOS. I tried and it was just terrible. (thought not all Mac users have problems, quite a number do, and Mozilla has an open issue asking for debugging logs from Macs to find the reasons).
I gave up on Firefox on OS X for performance reasons and switched to Safari a while ago and it’s a decent browser. It has support for extensions that I use (ublock origin and 1Password), uses less battery than any other browser, and is fast
Safari 12 no longer supports uBlock Origin. I discovered this over the past weekend. Without ad blocking, Safari is unusable for me.
EDIT: It seems AdBlock Plus has now come out with a new plugin that conforms to Apple's new API.
Google bullies hardware vendors, Apple is its own hardware vendor. That is the essential difference. If MS had done their thing only with hardware they made and sold, instead of twisting the arms of third parties they’d have been OK. There is a qualitative difference between dictating the terms of something you alone build and sell, and using your market dominance to dictate terms to everyone else.
>If MS had done their thing only with hardware they made I recall Ms was banned from building their own hardware. Just like how Car companies are banned from retailing their own cars in the US.
As far as I know (which isn’t perfect knowledge by any means) MS has had a hardware division since 1982, it’s just that it was never their focus. IIRC Bill Gates famously didn’t want to become a major hardware vendor, but wanted to focus on the software. Certainly I’ve never heard of a ban or anything like it, and I was under the impression that dealership laws were essentially unique to cars. If you have some other information to the contrary I’d be happy to read it. Obviously if such a ban existed it was lifted before MS made things like the Zune, or Surface.
I’ve recently launched an experiment to get off of google. I can’t say I had any real reason other than curiosity. I have some privacy concerns but can’t say that was the main driver here. I think I just looked at my laptop, phone, etc and thought about how prevalent google code was in my life. It was my navigator, my file store, my calebdar, my email, my search engine and my browser. It knows everything about me. Th…
I did this a while ago and it really ain't bad at all. Unfortunately to the lay person to search the Internet is "to google."
Search for "gun rights" in Google, and the Wikipedia feature box on the top-right of the results page is the Gun Control article. I've noticed the straight search results making a marked decline in quality over the past few months. If one of the keywords within your search is anything remotely profitable, it will drown out all other terms. Then the search results ended after ~4 pages. Definitely changed from the Goog…
Might just be more web pages about profitable products?
Also the people selling things via their webpages are very much more likely to be investing effort in SEO than "non commercial" web pages...
(And, as much as Matt Cutts might deny it, it seems inconceivable that Google do not use revenue generated by advertising as a search signal...)
Firefox is a truly fantastic browser now. I've been using it again for about 2 years and haven't regretted it at all. There have been a couple of weird feature hiccups but generally Mozilla seems to get things right.
I wish I could use it but it has serious performance problems on macOS. I tried and it was just terrible. (thought not all Mac users have problems, quite a number do, and Mozilla has an open issue asking for debugging logs from Macs to find the reasons).
Really? When I complained about Firefox performance on macOS, I was downvoted by a lot of people. It almost made me consider if the problem was PEBKAC (problem exists between keyboard and chair). I am glad I'm not the only one. I wanted to love Firefox, but I can't because of this.
edit: reading all the comments in this thread, geez, I finally feel like I'm not a stupid user. :) The issues are real!
I was, and it seemed absurd at the time. Bundling IE with windows is no different than the current status quo, where Apple defaults to Safari, or Android defaults to a Chrome version. Google's incredible monopoly in search looks like a large target.
There are other search engines and one can easily just type bing.com into their browser and set it as the default. Even on Chrome. I'm not sure why you remember MS the way you do. There was a much much larger barrier for consumers to move to a different OS. If you owned a PC you pretty much had to run Windows. And MS made it extremely difficult to use a non-IE browser in the OS. That doesn't mean I think they're inno…
I have never used IE as my primary browser... I'm sort of amazed at anyone that does use the OS-native browser as their default, because it has almost always been an inferior choice.
Google started going down the path I would describe as an "evil" path years ago. I'm glad people are starting to notice. I used to be a huge Google advocate, up until about 2008. So many things have changed since then. Adsense was the first breach in trust for me, when they banned my account for no reason and ruined any chance of every monetizing my content...since they are basically a monopoly in that area. Getting…
Search for "gun rights" in Google, and the Wikipedia feature box on the top-right of the results page is the Gun Control article. I've noticed the straight search results making a marked decline in quality over the past few months. If one of the keywords within your search is anything remotely profitable, it will drown out all other terms. Then the search results ended after ~4 pages. Definitely changed from the Goog…
> Search for "gun rights" in Google, and the Wikipedia feature box on the top-right of the results page is the Gun Control article.
That could have a very simple explanation: There is no Wikipedia page for "Gun Rights". There is however a Wikipedia page for "Right to Keep and Bear Arms" which is exactly what appears in the Wikipedia box on the right or as the first Wikipedia article when you search for "right to bear arms", "right to guns" and "arms rights".
I was, and it seemed absurd at the time. Bundling IE with windows is no different than the current status quo, where Apple defaults to Safari, or Android defaults to a Chrome version. Google's incredible monopoly in search looks like a large target.
There are other search engines and one can easily just type bing.com into their browser and set it as the default. Even on Chrome. I'm not sure why you remember MS the way you do. There was a much much larger barrier for consumers to move to a different OS. If you owned a PC you pretty much had to run Windows. And MS made it extremely difficult to use a non-IE browser in the OS. That doesn't mean I think they're inno…