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Mozilla Announces Experimental Partnership with ProtonVPN

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla Announces Experimental Partnership with ProtonVPN

#3

Post by preinheimer »

(disclaimer I guess I own a company that offers VPN services, it's like ~1% of revenue though).

I think this seems like a bit much. I'd love Firefox to double down on building a great browser, rather than getting into Pocket, VPN, a Phone, IOT, etc.

Sure, a VPN can be really helpful when you're on sketchy open wifi, or other adversarial network conditions. But you're still trusting someone to handle your connections reliably and fairly. Several ISPs have proven themselves to be sketchy: injecting ads, adding tracking headers, etc. But do we really expect VPN providers to not crunch the same numbers and come to the same conclusions?

Note that despite my thinking, it does fit in well with their agenda:

> Mozilla has identified five key issues that are critical to build the open Internet we want:

    Privacy and Security
    Open Innovation
    Decentralization
    Web Literacy
    Digital Inclusion

Re: Mozilla Announces Experimental Partnership with ProtonVPN

#5

Post by [deleted] »

preinheimer wrote: post #3

(disclaimer I guess I own a company that offers VPN services, it's like ~1% of revenue though). I think this seems like a bit much. I'd love Firefox to double down on building a great browser, rather than getting into Pocket, VPN, a Phone, IOT, etc. Sure, a VPN can be really helpful when you're on sketchy open wifi, or other adversarial network conditions. But you're still trusting someone to handle your connections…

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla Announces Experimental Partnership with ProtonVPN

#8

Post by dstaley »

This seems like another attempt to acquire a new revenue stream for Mozilla. I'm glad it's through something like providing a user-focused VPN as opposed to increased ads and tracking, but I still feel a bit bummed that Mozilla feels the need to do this.

The other day I came to the realization that Firefox is the only portal to the web that's not affiliated with a tech giant. Microsoft has Edge, Google has Chrome, and Apple has Safari. It's so strange that the web is such a huge, important part of our lives, and we only have four ways[1] to access it, three of which are driven by profit-seeking organizations.

[1] I'm not counting forks since those are largely still the same as the original code base, and none of them have gained a significant amount of traction. I'm also not counting experimental browsers since I'm not aware of any that are both largely-compatible with current web platform features and not based on a fork of one of the primary browser engines.

Re: Mozilla Announces Experimental Partnership with ProtonVPN

#9

Post by jvehent »

IngoBlechschmid wrote: post #6

Honest question: Why not bundle Tor, instead of relying on a proprietary VPN service? It seems that Tor satisfies the advertised use case ("insecure public WiFi") just as well.

Because bundling Tor in Firefox would generate so much traffic it would take down the network. Tor needs to grow significantly before that integration is possible.

Re: Mozilla Announces Experimental Partnership with ProtonVPN

#10

Post by intopieces »

preinheimer wrote: post #3

(disclaimer I guess I own a company that offers VPN services, it's like ~1% of revenue though). I think this seems like a bit much. I'd love Firefox to double down on building a great browser, rather than getting into Pocket, VPN, a Phone, IOT, etc. Sure, a VPN can be really helpful when you're on sketchy open wifi, or other adversarial network conditions. But you're still trusting someone to handle your connections…

>But do we really expect VPN providers to not crunch the same numbers and come to the same conclusions?

Yes, because those numbers are different -- there's actual competition among the providers, which is not so for ISPs. I agree it's still a gamble, and still requires trust, but if/when that trust is broken, there's someone else ready to fill that void.

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