posted by
martyb
on Saturday November 22 2014, @05:46AM
from the should-name-a-search-engine:-"Sir Ch" dept.
from the should-name-a-search-engine:-"Sir Ch" dept.
Mozilla announced a change to their strategy for Firefox search partnerships. They are ending the practice of having a single global default search provider. Instead, the default search provider would be determined by location in the following ways:
- United States: Yahoo (new five year deal), who would support the Do Not Track setting in Firefox
- Russia: Yandex
- China: Baidu
Google - together with Bing, DuckDuckGo, and other (depending on location) will continue to be a pre-installed search option. While not a default search provider, Google is not fully out - they will continue to power the Safe Browsing and Geolocation features of Firefox.
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(Score: 2) by melikamp on Saturday November 22 2014, @06:05AM
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday November 22 2014, @07:03AM
I use noscript and havent tried, this but reading your link it sounds interesting. A setting to 'allow all trivial scripts' sounds like it could be very useful.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Saturday November 22 2014, @07:40AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @08:09AM
> Yet another reason to switch to icecat.
Seems like a stretch - because google is no longer the default search engine that is a reason to switch to another browser in which google is not the default search engine? Does icecat include google at all? Making google the default search engine on the new firefox is trivial, just pick it off the search bar menu and leave it. It is hard to imagine an easier configuration change.
I'm all for alternate browsers, but bogus advocacy is counterproductive.
(Score: 1) by Wrong Turn Ahead on Sunday November 23 2014, @03:43AM
Firefox has been moving in a direction that isn't comfortable for some and it's rapid release cycle makes small incremental changes seem much more visible. Perhaps this specific change was the tipping point for some.
Personally, I'm unimpressed with how all of the major browsers have evolved. Forcing god-awful, unintuitive UI changes that everybody hates. Removing features, burying settings, cramming all options into a single button, data/heath/crash/geo reporting all on by default, constant nags about updating and donating, constant breaking of add-ons, sponsored ads (tiles, on by default)... I could go on but what's the point? Mozilla is just another player in an ever-growing list of projects that no longer care about, or respect, user opinions. It's all about balance sheets now, users can fuck off.
[rant]
The Internet should not be an application and the browser should not be an operating system. Javascript-dependent websites suck...
[/rant]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday November 22 2014, @07:21AM
Can't buy Google any love.
Its odd, that Google single handedly kept Mozilla alive for 5 consecutive years, supplying just about every dollar of their budget.
You kind of wonder if this isn't part of Google's plan to pretend there is more competition than there really is now that the EU is pretending like they could order Google to "break up".
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @08:06AM
If you read the announcement Mozilla's goal is explicitly to foster competition, they want to reduce the google monoculture.
You can take that at face value, fully consistent with Mozilla's mission statement.
Or you can decide that it is a conspiracy by google to create the appearance of competition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @01:58PM
Mozilla caused the current Google monoculture by shitting all over every Firefox user time and time and time again.
Mozilla hasn't fixed Firefox's poor performance, years after users asked for it to be fixed. Mozilla hasn't fixed Firefox's excessive memory usage, years after users asked for it to be fixed. Mozilla broke all of our extensions for a number of releases after Firefox 4. Mozilla pushed one dumbass UI change after another on us. And because Mozilla never fixed the performance and memory usage problems affecting Firefox, the mobile version of it for Android has turned out to be total shit.
Users aren't dumb. They aren't going to put up with Mozilla's shit in their mouths! So off to Google Chrome they went, where the performance isn't total shit, where the memory usage is reasonable, where extensions weren't broken every release, and where the UI is predictably shitty, and where the mobile version is at least usable.
If Mozilla was dumb enough to create this Google monoculture in the first place, how they hell are they supposed to be smart enough to fix it?
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Saturday November 22 2014, @04:10PM
I've been using Firefox since v2 and I haven't noticed any performance issues, experienced no issues with heavy memory use, never had any extensions break on me, haven't had any issues with the UI changes and love the Android version. Don't blame Mozilla because Google outmaneuvered them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @05:39PM
> Mozilla caused the current Google monoculture by shitting all over every Firefox user time and time and time again.
Unless there is some connection between your rant and google's search engine that only you are aware of, you seem to have a lose grip on sanity.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @11:23AM
I suppose, Moz served its purpose for the period, keeping IE in check. With Chrome established, Google doesn't need Moz as much.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @03:48PM
Competing with IE was never Firefox's raison d'etre - it was there to prevent Microsoft from appropriating the web's essential standards. Unfortunately, Google has snuck up from behind and done exactly that while undermining Firefox's defense of open and free standards. Despite opposing media source extensions that push support for closed source DRM, Google's decision to force their use on Youtube for particular formats of video have undermined Firefox's position and it's users are now demanding support for a closed 3rd party technology that damages free speech on the web.
Google don't need Moz at all any more - they're busy trying to kill them. F*** Google!
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Saturday November 22 2014, @02:12PM
Try accessing founding partner of the Prism program with scripting disabled and a one character User-Agent string.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Saturday November 22 2014, @04:12PM
Google is not fully out - they will continue to power the Safe Browsing and Geolocation features of Firefox.
I'm not terribly familiar with the geolocation or safe browsing features, but why is Google involved in them?
(Score: 3, Informative) by doublerot13 on Saturday November 22 2014, @04:46PM
Google maintains a malicious website list that firefox uses[Safe Browsing] and firefox also sends your public IP to Google for it to return a location/region for that IP.
Google is involved because they provide these 'services' for free to Mozilla.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Ian Johnson on Saturday November 22 2014, @04:44PM
Here at Mozilla we believe many users are confused by the large number of countries, oceans and seas in the world. We've therefore simplified the world with a new map that's fun, innovative and reduces clutter:
http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1caTN2CojvtbCaQHSyzyQdjikqXnAk [pixentral.com]
Some geographical features may have been lost in this update, but we believe this sacrifice is necessary in the name of innovation. Anyone who objects to the loss of these features is stupid and can't understand the genius of our vision.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @05:11PM
lul
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Tuesday November 25 2014, @10:12AM
Actually, they do have an "all countries" section in TFA, where they mention that, if you are not unlucky enough to live in one of the countries in the previous sections, you'll get a choice of "61 search providers pre-installed in Firefox across 88 different language versions", instead of only a handful of alternatives.
(Score: 2) by doublerot13 on Saturday November 22 2014, @04:49PM
Hopefully this means the end of the Chromification of Firefox in the form of UI, versioning, privacy sacrifices, and feature removal/burying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @11:38PM