can i pay for firefox to.have this and all other ads disabled? i would. 10 bucks a month. deal?
Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
481–490 of 721 posts
Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
A browser is expensive. Currently Firefox is funded (though not controlled) by Google's Ad business. I am all for them reducing their reliance on Google's Ad business. In this sense this is a step _towards_ what you want. I really really dislike them double speaking about this though.
Why is a browser expensive ? There are many great and big open source projects out there that are maintained and developed mainly by volunteers. Why can't Firefox be like this?
> Why is a browser expensive?
Read this: https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope....
To quote,
--- start quote ---
The total word count of the W3C specification catalogue is 114 million words at the time of writing.
If you added the combined word counts of the C11, C++17, UEFI, USB 3.2, and POSIX specifications, all 8,754 published RFCs, and the combined word counts of everything on Wikipedia’s list of longest novels, you would be 12 million words short of the W3C specifications.
--- end quote ---
This is why. It's currently impossible to start a greenfield browser [1]. And even forking an existing engine and trying to keep up is almost impossible [2]
[1] There's Flow browser, https://www.ekioh.com/flow-browser/ I don't know if it's truly from scratch
[2] Microsoft forked Chromium and is still almost 2000 APIs behind, https://web-confluence.appspot.com/#!/confluence
Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We need funding Yeah, I guess Baker needs a raise.
Counterpoint, I’d rather NGOs and benevolent societies be attractive for world-class leaders, rather than be the constant underdog. Of course those CEOs have to avoid implementing classic business schemes.
> attractive for world-class leaders
You're equating greed and competence. It's an oddly common mistake.
NGOs and benevolent societies are attractive on the basis of their values.
If monetary compensation were correlatory with quality products, we clearly wouldn't be in this position with Firefox: Mozilla's current leader is clearly world-class by your own definition (where world-class==well remunerated), and is yet demonstrably failing the company on every possible metric.
Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I really, really, really dislike the language they have used lately. That is exactly the problem I have with it - weasel words and euphemisms; FF is scoring an own-goal here and eroding trust. Why not just tell it like it is. "We need funding and are lining up deals with third parties to display their ads/messaging in the address bar search. We vet these third parties by holding them contractually to these standard…
> Why not just tell it like it is. Indeed. Mozilla should be honest. That's what builds trust. We all know they need money, so if this gives them money to improve FF, fine by me. But they need to quit the marketing bullshit-speak.
Except they only need money because they frittered away the massive Google subsidy on pointless projects rather than building up an endowment while sticking to core goals.
… which, in fairness, is itself a species of selling ads! But setting a search engine default is far more benign than what they’re planning here.
Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
#485> Firefox Suggest is a new feature that serves as a trustworthy guide to the better web, surfacing relevant information and sites to help you accomplish your goals. BonziBuddy [1] described itself in a similar way [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy
yeah but I actually miss bonzibuddy. I can't rage-shake firefox and get a reaction out of it. At least in that regard bonzibuddy understood the nature of our engagement as a give and take arrangement.
Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
#486Also note:
> When you see or click on a Firefox Suggest result, Mozilla collects and sends your search queries and the result you click on to our partners through a Mozilla-owned proxy service. The data we share with partners does not include personally identifying information and is only shared when you see or click on a suggestion.
Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How can they make _relevant_ suggestions without spying on my browsing history, profiling it and phoning back to the mothership? If you search for "hotels", they'll show you suggestions that match "hotels". Doesn't seem that complicated to me.
But I don’t want Mozilla to know what I’m searching for?
And that's your choice, and you're free to not enable this feature. I trust Mozilla with what I'm searching for more than I trust Google though
Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
You also have Safari (and GNOME Web on Linux) using the WebKit engine, developed by Apple as an alternative... But that's not available on Android or Windows (the WebKit port exists there, but no good UI frontend as far I know)... which are the two big platforms. (because Apple doesn't care enough about those I guess?)
GNOME WebKit definitely isn't Safari. A lot of websites that work in Safari were broken in WebKit last time I tried it. It does replicate a lot of buggy behaviour in Safari so from what I can tell you can be reasonably sure that your website works in Safari if it works in WebKit, but that's the only use I've found for it so far. As for a good UI on Windows, I think you should be able to compile GNOME's WebKit browser…
> A lot of websites that work in Safari were broken in WebKit last time I tried it.
If you used it in the past from the Debian repos, they didn't use to do security or feature update servicing for WebKit in their repositories. That's no longer a thing nowadays.
You can use both the Technology Preview at https://webkit.org/downloads/ or check if the version is recent on your distribution however.
Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
#489As someone who has used Firefox since v0.* I really, really, really dislike the language they have used lately. > relevant suggestions from our trusted partners The suggestions are not relevant to, and the partners not trusted by, me.
Just like FaceBook, weasel words and pat on the back phrases . . .
Re: Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions
#490“Suggestions from trusted partners” - the sleaziest statement of the Internet age.